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HIGHLIGHTS THIS MONTH
REVIEW
OF THE MONTH

Full contents overleaf

p44

Fairphone 5

One of the big announcements at trade show
IFA – read our highlights from p38 – was the
Fairphone 5. This is, without doubt, the world’s
most sustainable phone. Fairphone is hoping you’ll
keep hold of the phone for ten years (yes, ten), and
so the company has upgraded the processor, the
screen and the cameras. But has it done enough
to persuade you from the latest, far less
upgradable offerings from the likes of
Apple, Google and Samsung?
Find out in our full
review on p44.

p34

p26

ADVICE
OF THE MONTH

Billions of PCs are still running Windows 10,
but the clock is ticking for this much-loved
OS. Should you stick with it, upgrade to 11 or
switch to a new OS? Find out from p26.

PERSON OF
THE MONTH

Alan Sugar

While Alan Sugar
didn’t have much
to do with the
making of the CPC
series, he definitely
had a vision for the
machine. Here, we
give an extremely
long-term review of
an all-time classic
machine.

p122

POWER-UPS
OF THE MONTH

Just as Windows 10 is the dominant OS in the
world, Chrome dominates for web browsers.
But don’t keep it running in its bland, vanilla
form: power it up with these ten add-ons.

THE LABS IN
ONE NUMBER

p38

BEST OF
IFA 2023
NEW PRODUCTS
OF THE MONTH

Sadly you can’t yet buy most of the items
we saw at IFA this year, but it’s a brilliant
way to see what’s coming around the corner.
Turn to p38 to find out.

p74

This month’s number?
13. That’s not only how
many laptops we have
on test, but also the Intel
Core generation of almost
every processor. And
there are a few tasty 13in
machines in there, too...

3

p34

10 WAYS TO TURBOCHARGE GOOGLE CHROME
LAPTOPS FROM £430
Perfect for work
Superb battery life
Big-name brands

13

TESTED

p74

REGULARS
7 Editor’s letter
14 The A-List
24 Readers’ letters

104 Subscriptions
129 Next month
130 One last thing…

BRIEFING

10 UK enters the AI race

The government has splashed out
£100m on Nvidia GPUs for “BritGPT”.

11 Amazon pivots to
video shopping

TikTok threat prompts ecommerce
giant to launch its own TikTok-style
scrollable video feeds.

Windows10

p26

£699!

Get a
bargain
mini PC

isending

12 The slow road to
self-driving cars

Drivers were meant to be redundant
by now. But as James O’Malley
discovers, self-driving technology
is quietly improving.
VIEWPOINTS

20 Dick Pountain

UPGRADE?

To everyone’s great disappointment,
Dick refuses to don false eyelashes and
a sunny disposition simply to make
money online.

21 Nicole Kobie

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106 Jon Honeyball

Jon feasts his eyes on a
210in video wall and
purrs over cat cabling.

109 Lee Grant

114 Mark Parvin

Our guest columnist is
feeling grumpy about
rubbish laptops.

116 Davey Winder

Lee politely explains
why he’s not giving
you a refund.

Do not adjust your sets:
Davey has only praise
for Google this month.

112 Rois Ni Thuama

118 Steve Cassidy

The dangers of placing
too much reliance on
Elon Musk and other
super-rich
technocrats.

Why people working
from home should have
a James Bond suitcase.

BELOW The
diminutive
Oscium WiPry
Clarity catches
Jon’s attention
on p106

22 Barry Collins

Barry’s getting fed up with people
asking him what gaming PC they
should buy.

p69

Real World Computing

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Facebook and Google should get their
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FEATURES

26 Windows 10: stick, upgrade
or switch?
With millions of computers still stuck
on Windows 10, due to go end of life in
2025, we investigate your options.

34 10 ways to turbocharge
Chrome

Nil Rawlinson reveals ten brilliant
extensions to help you supercharge
Google Chrome (and Microsoft Edge).

38 Best of IFA 2023

What were the biggest releases and
announcements from this year’s
European showcase of all things tech?
PC Pro trawled the halls of Berlin Messe
to find out.
THE NETWORK

100 Optimise your website
for Google

If your business has a web presence
then it makes sense to maximise its
visibility on Google. Nik Rawlinson
explains how to do just that.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

REVIEWS THIS MONTH
SMARTPHONES

44 Fairphone 5
64 Asus ROG Phone 7 Ultimate
65 RedMagic 8S Pro

MINI PC

46 Geekom Mini IT 13

PCs

47 Dell Inspiron 24 All-in-One
50 Acer Predator Orion 7000 (2023)

LAPTOPS

52 Dell XPS 13 Plus (2023)
80 Acer TravelMate P6
81 Asus ExpertBook B9 OLED
82 Dell Latitude 7340
83 Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1
84 Huawei MateBook 16s 2023
85 Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11
86 Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360
87 Acer TravelMate Spin P4
87 Asus ExpertBook B1
88 Chillblast Prestige 15.6in
88 HP ZBook Firefly G9
89 Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 4
89 PCSpecialist Fusion Studio

WI-FI MESH

54 Linksys Velop Pro 6E

November2023 Issue350
LABS

INKJET MFP

58 Canon Maxify GX6550

MONITORS

61 NEC MultiSync E274FL
62 Asus ZenScreen MB16QHG

USB SSD

63 Kingston XS1000

PASSWORD MANAGERS
70
71
72
72
73
73

NordPass
Bitwarden
Keeper
1Password
Dashlane
RoboForm

BUSINESS BACKUP

94 Arcserve UDP 9.1
95 Hornetsecurity VM Backup 9
Unlimited Plus
96 Nakivo Backup & Replication 10.9
97 Veritas Backup Exec 22.2

IP CAMERA

98 Synology BC500

WI-FI 6E ROUTER
99 Zyxel SCR 50AXE

WI-FI 6 ROUTER
57 Asus RT-AX59U

p74

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Looking to update your fleet of business laptops, dabble with
2-in-1s or buy one or two powerful machines for individuals?
We test 13 of the latest offerings, starting from just £430.

p50
Rainbow warrior:
Acer’s latest Predator
gaming PC is no
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Labs

p69

PASSWORD MANAGERS
Buyer’s guide
92 On-premises business backup

Threats to your data come in many forms, so a
reliable backup strategy is essential for SMBs.
Dave Mitchell examines your options.

Futures
122 Amstrad CPC 6128

David Crookes has had an Amstrad CPC 6128
on his desk since the 1980s. So how does the
classic computer shape up today?

126 The writing’s on the wall

Nicole Kobie looks at how books have been
used to train LLMs, and asks two authors
whether they see AI as a threat.

5

@PCPRO

Editor’sletter

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Whyisitsohardto
beaneco-friendly
techshopper?

I

have a perverse love of trade
shows, so when IFA invited me
to attend this year’s feast of
technology in Berlin, I said yes
faster than an MP fills out their
expenses. Like many others, I’m
trying to be more eco-conscious these
days, so I spent the next couple of days
looking for practical ways to reach
Berlin by train, but circuitous routes
and ridiculous pricing meant I
succumbed to the inevitable.
Never mind, I told myself. IFA is
going big on sustainability this year,
so if I mention all the great, green
things that are happening then – if
you squint and ignore the air miles
– my trip is still justifiable. And onto
the plane I hopped.
One of the first events I went to
was the opening press conference by
IFA itself, where I was intrigued to
discover that, according to GfK
Research, sustainability is now one of
the top factors people consider when
buying. It’s leapt right up there with
great design, price and trust in the
manufacturer’s brand.
Sadly, that message doesn’t appear
to have reached the world’s’ R&D

departments. Don’t get me wrong:
most companies are delighted to talk
about post-consumer recycled
plastics and how they’ve switched to
eco-friendly packaging. All of which
is indeed great, but it’s also the
low-hanging fruit. It was still
incredibly rare, as I trudged through
the 26 halls that make up the show,
that I saw technology putting
circularity at its heart. In other words,
products that understood that one day
they would die and need to be
disassembled into, one would hope,
reusable metals, plastics and glass.
There are signs of progress: I
highlight several eco-friendly
products and companies in my report
from the show on p38. However, it’s
telling that the Fairphone 5 – which
we review in full on p44 – was the only
big launch that lived up to the
sustainability promise. And that the
show’s most headline-grabbing
product announcement was a phone
that I suspect will be incredibly tough
to repair, the Honor Magic V2.
But the thing I find most galling?
How much I want that phone. At last,
a foldable device that will fit in my

jeans pocket without making me walk
lopsided! Its battery life is great. It has
the latest camera tech and all the
speed I could conceivably need. And
it’s likely to undercut rival folding
phones for price, too. My credit card is
pulsing as I type these words.
The question I keep asking myself,
though, is what happens to that phone
after five years, when its battery has
degraded to the point of unusability or
dirt has seeped into its smooth hinge,
so that it creaks whenever I open it?
Will the Magic V2 be repairable or will
it slip into the Great Drawer of
Forgotten Tech? I know the answer.
One consolation is that my current
phone is now four years old and still,
aside from a broken USB-C port,
provides excellent service. And
there’s more good news: next year,
thanks to a new service that has seized
the opportunity presented by
eco-conscious travellers, there will be
a direct train from Paris to Berlin.
Let’s hope for equally positive
progress in the tech world, too.

Tim Danton
Editor-in-chief

CONTRIBUTORS

Dick Pountain
If you want to make
money via your words,
images or ideas, then
you’d better be quick.
argues Dick. The Googlebased economics of
online publishing may be
crumbling. See p20.

Rois Ni Thuama
Rois is never afraid to air
her vehement views in
our podcast (join us each
Thursday 1pm at pcpro.
link/discord), and if you
head to p112 you’ll find why
she’s unimpressed by tech
billionaires’ meddling.

Jon Honeyball
There’s something of a
Wi-Fi theme in this month’s
Real World Computing
section, and Jon leads the
way with his analysis of
Wi-Fi analysis tools – plus
some early thoughts on
Wi-Fi 7. Turn to p106.

Nicole Kobie
The writers are revolting!
Against AI, that is, which
has cribbed their works
without consultation or fair
pay, the argument goes.
Nicole reveals the next plot
twist in this never-ending
story from p126.
7

November2023Issue350

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

w
EDITORIAL
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Tim Danton: editor@pcpro.co.uk
EDITORIAL FELLOW
Dick Pountain
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Darien Graham-Smith
FEATURES EDITOR
Barry Collins
FUTURES EDITOR
Nicole Kobie
NEWS WRITER
James O’Malley
BONUS SOFTWARE EDITOR
Nik Rawlinson
ART & PRODUCTION
ART DIRECTOR
Paul Duggan
FREELANCE DESIGN
Bill Bagnall
PRODUCTION EDITOR
Steve Haines
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Steve Cassidy
Lee Grant
Dave Mitchell
Jon Honeyball
Rois Ni Thuama
Olivia Whitcroft
Davey Winder
CONTRIBUTORS
Philip Berne
David Crookes
Jim Hill
Allisa James
Mike Jennings
Bram Lodewijks
Jon Mundy
Mark Pickavance
Alex Wawro
ADVERTISING
GROUP ADVERTISING MANAGER
BenTopp:ben.topp@futurenet.com
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PRODUCTION
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ENDORSEMENT LICENSING MANAGER
Ryan Chambers:
ryan.chambers@futurenet.com

8

Windows 10 is many people’s
favourite OS – but what, we
wanted to know, was our
contributors’ favourite?
“I still remember MS-DOS fondly, if
only because I could wow less
tech-literate friends with my batch
coding ‘skills’, but also the simplicity
of the EPOC OSes on my muchmissed Psion PDAs.”
“Difficult! Should say CP/M on which
I first wrote in WordStar, learned
BASIC, Forth and Pascal. Should also
say Windows, which supported most
of my career to date. ChromeOS,
which I use now, offers less hassles
than any of them. Final answer,
though, is NextSTEP, which I tasted
only for a few months – but what I’d
always wanted an OS to be (and I’ve
been bodging imitations ever since).”

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“Call me a hipster but I miss BeOS – it
really showed up how bloated and
sluggish Windows 95 was. The rest is
history, of course…”

COPYRIGHT
© Future plc 2023. PC Pro 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.

“I loved Palm OS – innovative in its
time, everything looked clean and
just worked, made Windows CE
look like the over-burdened
jumble sale it was.”

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“DietPi for giving single-board
computers superpowers. It’s
running many, many services in my
home and reducing my reliance
on the cloud.”

Please note: Distribution remains disrupted within UK
and international delivery networks. Please allow up to
seven days before contacting us about a late delivery.

“Vax VMS. The precursor to
Windows NT, in that the same guy
wrote both of them, and yet to me it
felt much more complete, more fully
controllable, because the quality
approach penetrated deep into the
guts of the minicomputer. I had no
idea what ‘waiting time’ was until the
first few PCs started arriving. At the
time, it didn’t feel revolutionary!”
“Honestly, I’ve really tried hard, but
20 years of fixing PCs prevents my
brain from putting ‘favourite’ and
‘operating system’ together. I have a
genuine fondness for Windows 8 as it
was blisteringly quick compared to
its predecessor. As a kid, I remember
seeing Atari’s TOS for the first time
and thinking the future had arrived.”
“Windows NT4 with NeXT OpenStep
running on top of it. All the power
of NT4 with display PostScript,
and the gorgeous NeXT
development platform.”
“CP/M – because I cut my
hacker teeth on it.”

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money” comments are based on UK prices at the time of
review, which are subject to fluctuation and are only
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Briefıng
Background and analysis on all the important news stories

Government orders

5,000 GPUs for ‘BritGPT’

Downing Street intervenes in British AI building project

I

t’s been about a year since
ChatGPT first exploded into
the public consciousness.
Since then, everyone from the
biggest global tech firms to the
smallest local organisations have
been racing to catch up with a
technology that’s already changing
the world. And the British
government is no exception.
According to the Daily Telegraph,
the UK has dropped a cool £100m
on procuring GPUs – or “AI chips”
in the parlance of the traditional
press – from companies such as
Intel, AMD and Nvidia. And it is
with the latter that the government
has reportedly already moved to
acquire 5,000 GPU units.
It’s all part of the plan, which was
first announced back in March, to
build a “National AI Resource” – a
supercomputer that will help British
scientists and researchers go
toe-to-toe with the big tech firms
in Silicon Valley.
10

This plan follows a report
recommending that the Resource
“should provide significant
accelerator capacity of at least
3,000 top-spec AI accelerators,
sufficient to support exploratory
compute for every UK AI researcher
as well as large-scale training runs,
and provide access to a wide range
of key datasets and skilled staff to
support its use”.
In other words, it needs a heck of
a lot of computational power to
crunch through data and train AI
models. (Though critics are quick to
point out that the supercomputer
that trained GPT-4, the model
behind ChatGPT, used 25,000 GPUs.)
“We are committed to supporting
a thriving compute environment
which maintains the UK’s position
as a leader across science,
innovation and technology,” a
spokesperson for the Department
of Science, Innovation and
Technology told PC Pro.

ABOVE The UK
government has
reportedly ordered
5,000 Nvidia GPUs

Shortageofhardware

There is something striking about
the purchase, which will be
managed through the UK Research
& Innovation Agency, and that is
that the GPUs are being bought en
masse – with what appears to be the
government’s direct involvement –
instead of in smaller quantities or by
organisations further down the
public sector food chain.
The reason the government is so
closely involved allegedly goes far
beyond just haggling for a bulk
discount. “The reason for trying to
secure the GPUs at that level is
because there’s actually quite a
shortage [of hardware],” said Vasilis
Kapsalis, UK
Public Sector
Lead at VAST,
an AI data
platform.
“There’s so
much demand
globally, and if

The GPUs are being
bought en masse, with
what appears to be the
government’s direct
involvement

@PCPRO

Briefing News

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

you look at Nvidia’s share price, it’s
been rocketing. So, the rationale at
governmental level is to try and
secure some of that equipment.”
The industry-wide problem is
that in the race to train new AI
models, many “hyperscale”
customers such as Google, Amazon
Web Services, Microsoft Azure
and even car maker Tesla have
bought up most of the world’s GPU
production capacity by making
similar bulk orders of upwards
of 10,000 units each. Smaller
customers don’t stand a chance.
The British government may be
hoping that its
involvement
will improve the
UK’s place
in the queue,
and not have
our scientists
muscled out of
the way by giants
such as Google and Meta. But this
won’t be a next-day delivery. “If you
try to order that number, you could
be waiting literally years for it to be
delivered,” said Kapsalis.

It’s also about
having access to be
able to control and
update technology in
the way you want to

Takebackcontrol

Assuming the plan is realised, in a
few years’ time a UK university
could be home to the new National
AI Resource. “Once the technology is
in situ, I think they want to make
sure our researchers keep up the
pace effectively because they’ve got
access to the right sort of facility,”
said Kapsalis.
He speculates that training a
British AI model on our own
computers could mean that models
are more customised to serve British
needs. And it also enables scientists
to more carefully control what data
an AI model is trained on, which
could help avoid the sorts of issues
with copyright and privacy that
OpenAI, which trained GPT-4, is
currently wrestling with in the
United States (see p126).
But there are other, more political
motivations that may be driving the
investment, which has been dubbed
“BritGPT” by some commentators:
making sure Britain’s AI capabilities
aren’t controlled by a foreign power.
“I think, fundamentally, it’s also
about having access to be able to
control and update technology in the
way you want to, rather than having
it dictated by another company,” said
Kapsalis. “It’s probably a bit about
sovereign control.”
So, perhaps in a few years’ time,
our AI assistants could sound a lot
more British – assuming that
Downing Street isn’t secretly
building a massively overpowered
rig on which to play Starfield.

Amazonpivotsto
videoshopping
TikTokthreatpromptsecommercegianttoact
When TikTok took the world by storm in
the late 2010s, its powerful rivals raced
into action. Instagram rapidly built its
own short-form video product, called
Reels. And YouTube turned its business
on to its side and into portrait mode, with
the launch of YouTube Shorts. But this
wasn’t the only big tech company starting
to worry, because TikTok wasn’t just
coming for video – it was coming for
online shopping, too.
That’s why in the past couple of years
Amazon, which is typically more
interested in selling shoes than viral
videos, has found itself under threat, as
TikTok launched its “TikTok Shop”,
enabling users of the platform to buy
products from directly inside the app.
“TikTok has just exploded when it
comes to shopping in general, ever since
they made it native in-app to be able to
purchase,” said Tom Walters, CEO of
influencer marketing agency Billion
Dollar Baby.
According to TikTok’s own published
figures, 67% of users of the app say
that TikTok “inspired them to shop”
when they weren’t previously looking
to do so, and 73% felt “a deeper
connection with brands”.
The numbers speak for themselves.
Last year, TikTok brought in $4.4bn worth
of ecommerce sales, and this year the
company is reportedly aiming to increase
sales to $20bn. That’s still a long way from
Amazon’s annual sales of around $500bn
(yes, billion), but it’s not nothing.

“You’re seeing TikTok aggressively go
after this social commerce market,” said
Walters. “Amazon is obviously still the big
dog when it comes to online commerce,
but it’s undoubtedly ruffling a few
feathers and people are trying to make
defensive moves.”
That’s perhaps why Amazon has
launched its own TikTok-style infinitely
scrollable video feed. And it’s why the
company is reportedly offering video
creators up to $25 per video to create
custom videos talking about different
Amazon products. “It’s basically trying
to create more of an entertainment
destination for shopping similar to
TikTok,” said Walters.
This isn’t Amazon’s first foray into
video shopping. In 2019, the company
repurposed technology from game
streaming site Twitch, which it also
owns, to offer a desktop-only “live”
shopping experience – albeit one that
didn’t last very long.
Now the company is aiming its guns at
mobile users and directly aping TikTok’s
functionality, Walters thinks that it could
have a different outcome. “Undoubtedly
this is a far more impactful launch from
Amazon than the desktop Amazon Live
probably ever was,” he said.
“I can see people going on Amazon
looking for a particular thing, getting
distracted by being pushed towards it and
suddenly having ten things in their basket
because they’ve been swiping up and
they’ve been inspired by this feed.”

Amazon is “trying to create an
entertainment destination for
shopping”, according to one analyst

11

PCProbe
Exclusive investigations into technology practices. Email probe@pcpro.co.uk if you have a story

The slow road to
self-drivingcars
Drivers were meant to be redundant by now.
But as James O’Malley discovers, self-driving
technology is quietly improving

N

ot so long ago it felt like we were on the cusp
of a transport revolution, as the promise of
autonomous vehicles took hold. “You can count
on one hand the number of years until ordinary
people can experience this,” said wildly optimistic Google
co-founder Sergey Brin in 2014, who after making his
billions created the company’s X-Lab, which later spun
out Waymo, to research autonomous technology.
And, of course, there was Tesla CEO Elon Musk. In 2015
he confidently predicted that within two years “full
autonomy” would be achieved, and then a year later
during a TED talk predicted that by the end of 2017, one
of his company’s cars would be capable of driving across
the United States without the driver once having to
touch the steering wheel.
Look out of the window, however, and you’ll probably
be there an awfully long time waiting for a self-driving
car to pass by. The hyperbole has subsided and several
major autonomy or autonomy-adjacent projects, such as
Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group or Ford’s Chariot

division, have been shuttered completely. “The problem
is considerably harder than it was originally thought to
be, and the business models might not make as much
sense,” said Mahmood Hikmet, head of research and
development at Ohmio, a New Zealand-based “intelligent
transport” company.
You might have given up all hope of ever being driven
around town by your own car. However, with a good deal
more modesty than before, the technology has continued
to slowly improve.

Cars on the road

Even though most of us don’t see self-driving cars passing
by our front door, they are starting to creep on to public
roads. Google’s Waymo robo-taxis are in routine
operation on the streets of Tempe, Arizona. And earlier
this summer, Cruise, a robo-taxi subsidiary of veteran
car manufacturer General Motors,
was granted permission to run its
vehicles, fully autonomously, on
the crowded and chaotic streets of
San Francisco.
Yet even though these projects
are starting to break cover, Hikmet
remains sceptical of the robo-taxis
that companies such as Waymo and

The problem is harder
than it was originally
thought to be, and the
business models might not
make as much sense

Levels of autonomy
Not all autonomous systems are created equal, as
any argument between a Tesla evangelist and a
sceptic will reveal. But back in 2014, the Society
for Automotive Engineers published a document
outlining what it considers to be the six “levels” of
autonomy by which we can judge a vehicle’s
capabilities – and they have since become the
de facto standard across the industry for
classifying autonomous systems. Here’s what
each level means.
Level 0: The human driver has to do all of the
work. The car may warn the driver about things,
or even apply the emergency brake if need be.
But that’s it.
Level 1: Cars with systems such as adaptive cruise
control, which vary speed based on the car ahead,

12

or lane-keeping systems that gently steer to keep
you in between the lines. These are standard on
many cars today.
Level 2: The car can drive itself “hands off”, but
the human driver must pay attention to the
road and be ready to jump in at any moment.
This is what Teslas with what Elon Musk
calls “full self-driving” are
capable of in some parts of
the world today.
Level 3: The driver is safe
to look away – though
must be ready to jump
back in. Some Audi cars
have “traffic-jam pilot”
today, which can stop

and start the car, keep in lanes and alter speeds
in slow-moving motorway traffic.
Level 4: The driver is theoretically able to not pay
attention at all, and the car can drive itself – albeit
in specific geographic areas. This is roughly what
Waymo and Cruise are testing in the US today,
with their services limited to a handful of
carefully monitored cities.
Level 5: Driving where no actual
driver is needed, where the
vehicle can travel wherever
you need it to, across long
distances, without you
even needing to be in the
driver’s seat. For now, it
remains an elusive dream.

@PCPRO

Briefing PCProbe

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Cruise are attempting to make a reality. “Unless you’ve
got a big tech company backing you, it means that you
can’t fulfil those business cases because there’s very little,
if any, profit that could come out from that,” said Hikmet.
“The technical complexity to go from [working] in a
restricted area to ‘Level 5’, being able to work absolutely
everywhere is a huge technical hurdle to jump,” he added.
“Is it worth it, money-wise? I’m not sure that it is.”
Instead, he thinks the future is in autonomous public
transport systems, and vehicles such as autonomous
buses. Projects such as the CAVForth AB1 autonomous
bus service, running between Fife and Edinburgh Park
every 30 minutes, which picks up and drops off
passengers just like any other bus (see issue 347, p126).
That’s music to the ears of Jim Hutchinson, CEO of
Fusion Processing, the company behind the autonomous
driving system that is the brains behind the CAVForth
trial. “I think people are being unduly pessimistic now,”
said Hutchinson.
He said the pace of change in the industry might be
slower than first expected because “the initial
expectation was it was a done deal, it was all going to be
done in a couple of years.
“Obviously that was a bit far-fetched, but I think the
industry now is in a much better space,” he added.
Though progress may feel slow, it might ultimately be
better that companies take their time, incrementally
improving their technology. “With it being a [bus]
service, it’s not just running ad hoc when there [are]
people available. There [are] many buses running that
service every day,” said Hutchinson. “So, we’re getting a
lot more data on our system, but also a lot more data on
the operational aspects, and most importantly, on the
passengers and how they’re responding to it.”
He’s well aware of the risks of applying the Silicon
Valley mantra of “move fast and break things” to vehicles
on the road, having seen recent controversies in
California, with complaints that robo-taxis are blocking
emergency vehicles or access to certain streets. “If you try
to go too far too soon, then inevitably you’re going to run
into problems, and I think that’s what we’re seeing now
with some of the companies,” he said.

Bending the rules of the road

It’s not only in public transport where progress is being
made. When Tesla first launched its “full self-driving”

ABOVE CAVForth
has already brought
autonomous buses
to Scottish roads

mode in 2020, social media was
quickly flooded with footage of
vehicles running red lights, veering
across lanes and otherwise causing
mayhem on the streets of the US.
But three years on, it’s possible to
find videos of lengthy trips where
the driver doesn’t once have to
touch the wheel.
However, there’s still a big
challenge ahead for the
technologists. The jump from
Tesla’s “Level 2” autonomy, where
the driver is expected to maintain
vigilance at the wheel, to true
“Level 5” autonomy (see box,
opposite) might be trickier than
many autonomy evangelists anticipate.
Hikmet compares it to parents supervising their
children at a swimming pool. Even if the parents don’t
have to jump into the pool to save a drowning child, it
doesn’t mean their presence wasn’t necessary. Similarly,
even if a Tesla is mostly driving itself, there’s still a
human who can slam on the brakes – which is a luxury
that “real” autonomous vehicles won’t have.
And then there’s the question of how to create vehicles
that can handle strange, one-in-a-thousand chance
events. On a large enough scale, even edge cases become
commonplace. But training an autonomous system to
deal with an animal jumping into traffic or police tape
blocking the road can be tricky.
Hutchinson is confident his software will get there.
“The vehicle knows how to put itself into a safe state,
which may be as simple as pulling over onto the hard
shoulder,” he said. “It can do that safely in all situations
and then it will await further instruction.”
But what about the edge cases where a human driver
will know to break the rules, like, say, driving on the
pavement or into the opposing lane, to handle a difficult
situation in the safest possible way? Can an autonomous
system really be programmed to break the rules?
“In truth, there does have
to be a little bit of flexibility
here and there,” said
Hutchinson, “Obviously you
want a vehicle that largely
obeys the Highway Code.”
But “largely” isn’t “always”.
“There has to be a little bit of
flexibility here and there
otherwise it would be a
little bit stuck in certain scenarios,” said Hutchinson,
keen to stress that the Highway Code is obeyed in all
“normal” circumstances.
“There are some hard and fast rules [that] shall not be
broken,” said Hutchinson. “But then there are others
where there [are] a few shades of grey in there.”
However, Hutchinson was unsurprisingly reluctant to
discuss specific situations when an autonomous vehicle
may need to “nudge” the rules. “This is the real
complexity in getting a system that works in the real
world,” he said. “The thing I would always say is safety is
never compromised.”

The initial expectation was
it was a done deal… Obviously
that was a bit far-fetched, but
I think the industry now is in a
much better space

13

The A-List

The best products on the market, as picked by our editors

PREMIUM LAPTOPS

BUSINESS LAPTOPS

Apple MacBook Pro 16in

NEW ENTRY

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11

M2 Pro power from £2,699

Business class from £1,583 exc VAT

from apple.com/uk

from lenovo.com

All the upgrades to this 2023 model
are within, as Apple’s M2 Pro and M2
Max processors take charge. Combine
this power with the 16.2in mini-LED
screen, superb sound system and
phenomenal battery life, and you
have the world’s premier workstation laptop.
REVIEW Issue 342, p48

Fight past Lenovo’s opaque pricing –
another flash sale, really? – and you’ll find
a slim, powerful and long-lasting laptop
for a competitive price. With a wide range
of available configurations, all based on
Intel’s 13th generation Core chips, this is
our top choice for all sizes of business.
REVIEW Issue 350, p85

ALTERNATIVES

Asus
Zenbook S 13
OLED (UX5304)

The perfect 13in laptop?
At 1kg, it packs power
along with 1TB of storage,
a top-quality OLED panel
and superb battery life.
£1,600 from
uk.store.asus.com
REVIEW Issue 348, p58

ALTERNATIVES
NEW ENTRY

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Ultra
Samsung packs everything
into this 16in laptop, from a
superb AMOLED panel and
a slim 1.8kg chassis to a
Core i9 CPU and RTX 4070
graphics. Expensive but
top quality. From £2,449
from samsung.com/uk
REVIEW Issue 344, p46

Apple MacBook
Air 15in

It’s no MacBook Pro, but
with an 8-core M2 chip
the 15in MacBook Air
offers solid performance
and a spacious, goodlooking display for a great
price. From £1,399 from
apple.com/uk
REVIEW Issue 347, p60

Dell Latitude
7340

NEW ENTRY

This 1.1kg laptop offers
terrific battery life and, if
you choose the better nontouchscreen (look for 400
nits of brightness) it’s a joy
to use, too.
From £1,109 exc VAT
from dell.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 350, p82

NEW ENTRY

AcerTravelMate AsusExpertBook
P6 (TMP614-53) B1 B1502

The all-new TravelMate
P6 benefits from a 14in
OLED screen with a 2,880
x 1,800 resolution, plus a
very generous spec for
the price. It’s simply great
value. £1,209 exc VAT
from acer.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 350, p80

With a Core i7-1255U, 16GB
of RAM and 1TB SSD, this
1.7kg laptop packs in lots of
power, albeit with a so-so
15.6in screen. Part code
B1502CBA-BQi711X,
£358 exc VAT from
asus.com/uk
REVIEW Issue 350, p87

EVERYDAY LAPTOPS

GAMING LAPTOPS

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023)

Honor MagicBook 16 X (2023)

from rog.asus.com/uk

from hihonor.com

Core i9/4090 for £4,100

Full metal jacket for £700

A high-quality all-metal
chassis marks the MagicBook
16 X 2023 out from the budget
laptop crowd, and it’s packed
with good-quality (albeit not
top-quality) components,
from a 12th gen Core i5
chip to a 1,920 x 1,200
16in IPS panel.
REVIEW Issue 348, p59

Asus includes everything in this
gaming laptop, including a
personalisable lid via a matrix of
lights. And a 16in AMOLED
screen, 2TB SSD and cuttingedge components. If the £4.1K
price puts you off, Overclockers
UK sells an RTX 4080 version
with a plain lid for £3,300.
REVIEW Issue 343, p50

ALTERNATIVES

Lenovo Legion
5i Pro (16in)
A great-value gaming
laptop that’s extracts the
most from its powerful
components. We love the
keyboard, too. Part code
82RF002LUK, £2,000
from lenovo.com/gb
REVIEW Issue 337, p61
14

Asus ROG Strix
Scar 18

It’s expensive, but if you
want an 18in laptop that
delivers all-out power this
is the no-compromise
3.1kg beast to buy – it
packs quality everywhere.
£3,999 from scan.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 344, p54

Razer Blade 18

A great advert for 18in
gaming laptops, the
Blade 18 partners a Core
i9-13950HX with RTX
40-series graphics in a
stunning, slim design.
From £2,900 from
razer.com/gb-en
REVIEW Issue 343, p52

Asus Vivobook S Microsoft
MSI Prestige 15
15 OLED
SurfaceLaptopGo2 Not the most cultured

The Core i5 version of
this 1.7kg laptop offers
amazing quality for under
a grand, including a
high-quality 15.6in OLED
display. From £949 from
pcpro.link/347asus2
REVIEW Issue 347, p85

The Laptop Go 2 won
our recent group test of
affordable laptops thanks
to its high-quality 12.5in
screen, 1.1kg weight and
sleek design. £555 from
microsoft.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 347, p89

laptop, but great
value considering the
connectivity, 15in screen,
fast specs and a GeForce
RTX 3050 GPU (part code
A12UC-034UK). £849 from
laptopoutlet.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 347, p93

@
@P
PC
CP
PR
RO
O

The A-List

FAC
FACEEB
BO
OO
OK
K..C
CO
OM
M//P
PC
CP
PR
RO
O

CHROMEBOOKS

Acer Chromebook Vero 514

Ethical choice for £599
from currys.co.uk

Acer combines its eco-conscious
brand with Chrome OS to great
effect. With a 12th gen Core i5, 8GB of
RAM and a 256GB SSD, plus updates to
2030, it’s a fine long-term investment.
REVIEW Issue 340, p54

Asus Chromebook Flip CX5

The best big-screen Chromebook
we’ve tried, with a bright 15.6in Full
HD display with decent black levels
and surprisingly rich colours to enjoy.
And it’s a good specification for the
price, with a Core i3 processor, 8GB of
LPDDR4 RAM and a 128GB SSD in tow.
Part code 90NX0361-M00010, £600
from johnlewis.com.
REVIEW Issue 337, p84

HP Elite Dragonfly
Chromebook

This is quite simply the best
business Chromebook around,
although at the time of writing
we’re waiting for units to
hit the market. Build quality
is stunning, as is this 13.5in
convertible’s 1.3kg weight.
From £1,000 from hp.co.uk.
REVIEW Issue 337, p86

EVERYDAY PCs

Apple Mac mini (2023)
M2 masterpiece from £649
from apple.com/uk
The outside remains the same, but this simple yet effective update to the Mac
mini introduces the M2 and M2 Pro processors with predictable effect. The
entry-level price quickly rises once you start upgrading – moving from 8GB to
16GB costs £200, as does doubling the base storage from 256GB to 512GB – but
there’s enough power here to last you for years.
REVIEW Issue 343, p60

Intel NUC Pro 13

If you don’t need discrete graphics
then Intel’s mini PCs are a fantastic
choice, being easy to upgrade, low
on energy consumption and more
than powerful enough to cope with
Windows applications – despite being
little larger than a coffee coaster.
Barebones, from £350; full PCs,
from £600, from scan.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 345, p48

PCSpecialist Topaz
Supreme

This is an all-AMD system, with a
Ryzen 5 7600 partnered with Radeon
RX 6600 graphics. That’s enough for
smooth 1080p gaming, and the Topaz
also has 16GB of Corsair DDR5 RAM
and a speedy 1TB SSD. At this price,
it’s simply fantastic value. £899 from
pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews
REVIEW Issue 347, p54

ENTHUSIAST PCs

Chillblast Apex Ryzen 9 RTX
4090 Gaming PC
7950X3D and RTX 4090 for £4,400

from chillblast.com
A brilliant choice if you’re looking for easy expansion
tomorrow coupled with cutting-edge gaming with
high-quality components today.
REVIEW Issue 347, p52

ALL-IN-ONE PCs

HP Envy 34 All-in-One

£2,099 widescreen wonder
from hp.com
Built around a high-quality 34in widescreen
– which is perfect for viewing two windows
side by side thanks to its 21:9 aspect ratio – this also comes
with Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics. We’re big fans of the
magnetic 16-megapixel camera, too.

REVIEW Issue 335, p46

HP Omen 45L (2023)

We tested the top-end 45L with a Core
i9-13900K, GeForce RTX 4090
graphics and 64GB of RAM, and it
doesn’t come cheap. Switch to the
Core i7/RTX 4070 Ti version, however,
and the price almost halves without
losing any of the superb design and
build quality. £4,800 from hp.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 347, p50

Alienware Aurora R16

An understated yet stylish gaming PC
that runs quietly even when pushed.
This rig has power where it counts,
mixing Intel’s latest CPUs with Nvidia’s
RTX GPUs. Choose an RTX 4070 or
higher to benefit from the glass side
and liquid cooling, which lifts it above
rivals. From £1,349 from dell.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 349, p54

NEW ENTRY

Dell Inspiron 24
All-in-One

Despite being built to hit a price point,
the Inspiron 24 All-in-One manages
to look classy, include a good-quality,
1,920 x 1,080 24in panel and have enough
power to breeze through a typical day’s
tasks. It even packs mod cons such as a
720p webcam. Superb value for money.
From £599 from dell.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 350, p47

Apple iMac 24in

Apple’s M1 processor is the star
of this show, delivering all the
power we would expect with
minimal power draw. Apple wraps
it up in a sharp new look, with a
4.5K Retina display and top-quality
1080p camera. Let’s hope a bigger
version arrives soon. From £1,249
from apple.com/uk
REVIEW Issue 322, p48

CREATIVE WORKSTATIONS

Scan 3XS GWP-ME A164T

Threadripper Pro for £8,333 exc VAT

from scan.co.uk
Scan matches the 32-core Ryzen Threadripper
Pro 5975WX with 128GB of ECC RAM and RTX
A6000 graphics to create a stormingly fast
all-rounder. As expected, it’s finished in a top
chassis (the Fractal Design Meshify 2 XL) with
Scan’s usual attention to detail for build quality.
REVIEW Issue 348, p87

Armari Magnetar
MC16R7
A strikingly fast workstation for the
money, with Armari’s customised
liquid cooling extracting the most
from an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X. With
64GB of DDR5 RAM and AMD’s
Radeon Pro W7800 in support, this
is a fantastic value machine.
£3,758 exc VAT from armari.com
REVIEW Issue 348, p84

PCSpecialist Onyx Pro
Even in a creative workstation,
it makes a lot of sense to include
Nvidia’s consumer graphics due
to its core-per-buck. Here, an
Nvidia RTX 4090 partners with a
Core i9-13900K and an incredible
192GB of RAM to tremendous
effect. £3,750 exc VAT from
pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews
REVIEW Issue 348, p86
15

TABLETS

Apple iPad Air (5th generation)
M1 power for less, from £669
from apple.com/uk
A convincing alternative to the iPad Pro at a
price that’s much easier to swallow. Apple’s
M1 chip remains a stellar performer, you get
the Magic Keyboard and Pencil 2, and the 11in
screen is still one of the best panels around.
REVIEW Issue 340, p83

Samsung Galaxy
Tab S9 Ultra
This 14.5in tablet offers a size
and versatility that even the iPad
Pro can’t match, with its high
price more than justified by the
quality of Samsung’s AMOLED
panel, speakers and productivity
software. 256GB Wi-Fi, £1,199 from
samsung.com/uk
REVIEW Issue 349, p56

OnePlus Pad
This is quite simply superb hardware
for the price, severely undercutting
rival Android offerings from
Google and Samsung. The bright
and colour-accurate 11.6in screen,
speedy performance and great battery
life are just three of the highlights.
128GB, £374 (£449 inc VAT) from
oneplus.com/uk
REVIEW Issue 346, p46

EVERYDAY PHONES

Motorola Moto G13

Amazing quality for £150
from johnlewis.com

If you only have £150 to spend on a phone then this is a
simply brilliant choice. The camera produces superb
results, the design is first class, and while it isn’t the fastest
performer it’s fast enough – and the battery life is great.
REVIEW Issue 346, p73

Google Pixel 7a

A phone that begs the question: why
spend £150 more for the Pixel 7? With
few compromises on the Pixel 7 – it uses
the same processor and cameras and
the only notable change is a smaller
screen – this is the new mainstream
pick for Google phone fans.
128GB, £449 from store.google.com
REVIEW Issue 346, p68

Motorola Edge 30 Neo

This stylish and compact
smartphone – reflected by a
small-ish 4,200mAh battery –
includes a gorgeous 6.3in OLED
screen, nippy Snapdragon
processor and a decent pair of
cameras for a great price.
£300 from motorola.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 348, p73

PREMIUM PHONES

Google Pixel 7 Pro

Flagship experience for £849 (128GB)
from store.google.com
In stark contrast to Apple’s inflated prices, Google stays
ultra-competitive with its flagship phone. Yet it delivers
a truly premium experience, from the excellent camera
to the way Android 13 runs so fluidly on the 6.7in 120Hz
screen. And its siblings are equally brilliant.
REVIEW Issue 339, p72

Google Pixel 7

If you can’t justify spending £849 on
the Pixel 7 Pro, then its 6.3in sister
makes a whole lot of sense. You lose
out on optical zoom, and the screen
is 90Hz compared to 120Hz on the
Pro, but the camera is still great and
it’s remarkably quick as it’s based on
the same processor as its sibling.
128GB, £599 from store.google.com
REVIEW Issue 339, p74

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5

While the Galaxy Z Fold5 has its
undoubted attractions, the Flip5
pips it onto this A List slot thanks
to it being £700 cheaper and
through the usefulness of the
expanded front display. It’s also
IP68 rated and packs a stellar chip,
beating rival flip phones. From
£1,049 from samsung.com/uk
REVIEW Issue 349, p70

EVERYDAY MONITORS

Lenovo ThinkVision P27u-20

4K Thunderbolt, £550
from lenovo.com

We reviewed this when it cost £470,
but even at £550 it’s a superb buy.
It’s a top-quality 27in panel with a 4K
resolution, and it packs superb
connectivity, including Thunderbolt 4.
REVIEW Issue 344, p89

AOC Q27P3CW

If you can’t afford the ThinkVision
P27u-20 then this 27in USB-C docking
monitor, complete with solid image
quality and a 1440p resolution, offers
unmatched value at a shade over
£300. It even includes a webcam
that supports Windows Hello.
£310 from box.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 344, p83

Iiyama ProLite
XCB3494WQSN

Curved 34in monitors proved a popular
choice in our Labs, and although it had
tough competition from the HP E34m
G4 this Iiyama steals a spot on our A
List due to Iiyama’s twin focus on value
and quality panels. There’s even gaming
potential. £400 from scan.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 344, p88

PROFESSIONAL MONITORS

Eizo ColorEdge CG319X

Creative masterclass, £3,960
from wexphotovideo.com
As the price indicates, this monitor is for
heavyweight creatives who demand the
best in every discipline: HDR video editing, print layouts,
professional photography and more besides. With superb coverage and
accuracy across all spaces, plus a built-in calibrator, it justifies the investment.
REVIEW Issue 327, p81
16

BenQ PD2725U

By no means a cheap 4K 27in monitor
– unless you compare it to the Eizos
– but it marries all-round quality with
ease of use thanks to a puck that
allows you to quickly move between
settings. You can even daisy chain
a second Thunderbolt 3 monitor
for a monster setup. £859 from
photospecialist.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 327, p80

Eizo ColorEdge CG279X

Designers who need to work
across different disciplines will
love how easy it is to switch between
the Adobe RGB, DCI-P3 and sRGB
colour spaces using the Eizo’s
fantastic OSD. It’s certainly not
cheap for a 27in 1440p monitor, but
it’s packed with quality. £1,726 from
wexphotovideo.com
REVIEW Issue 327, p84

@PCPRO

The A-List

FAC E B O O K . C O M / P C P R O

WEBCAMS

Epos Expand Vision 1

Aukey PC-W3 1080p
Webcam

Top-quality 4K video from £142
from uk.insight.com
Videoconferencing expert Epos claims the
top spot with its first personal webcam. It
delivers on all fronts: audio quality, colour
accuracy and low-light performance, and all while
undercutting the 4K Logitech opposition by £100.
REVIEW Issue 340, p74

Obsbot Tiny 4K

If the thought of spending £142 on
a webcam has you spluttering into
your microphone then you should
consider this far cheaper but highquality alternative. Its colours are
low-key in comparison to the best, but
it still produces a sharp and detailed
image. £13 from ebay.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 321, p72

We love this dinky and oh-so-clever
webcam. With a pan, tilt and zoom
camera, plus a dash of AI, it can keep
you at the centre of the image if you
wish, crop to your head and shoulders
or slip into presenter mode. But most
crucially it delivers a high-quality and
crisp 4K image, with excellent colours.
£227 from amazon.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 332, p73

HOME OFFICE PRINTERS

HP OfficeJet Pro 9010e
Fast inkjet for £149
from printerland.co.uk
This is a superb multifunction printer for home
offices or very small businesses. It hit almost 19
pages per minute for black text but still produced excellent quality, then backs it up
with a great set of features – including an ADF. Even running costs are competitive.
REVIEW Issue 341, p81

WORKGROUP PRINTERS

Epson EcoTank ET-4850

HP Smart Tank 5105

Twice as expensive as the HP
OfficeJet Pro 9010e, and there’s no
ADF, but the EcoTank wins for running
costs: that price includes enough ink
to print 5,200 black or 14,000 colour
pages. Photos look great on glossy
paper, and scans are superb. A great
buy. £335 from printerland.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 341, p80

HP makes a late entrance to the
bottle-fed party, but this an affordable
all-in-one that delivers high-quality
mono prints at around 10ppm. And it
comes with enough ink for 6,000
pages. Photos aren’t a strength, and
you don’t get duplex printing, but it’s
superb value. £170 from hp.com
REVIEW Issue 346, p64

Brother X-Series
MFC-J6957DW

Xerox B315DN

NEW ENTRY

Canon Maxify GX6550

Ink tank all-in-one for £392 exc VAT
from canon.co.uk
Designed to fit in tight spaces, this
all-in-one includes a highly effective
ADF and backs it up with high-quality
prints at 24ipm in our tests. Running
costs are superb, too.
REVIEW Issue 350, p58

Ideally suited to SMBs on a tight
budget, this affordable large-format
inkjet delivers low running costs,
good output quality and the best
cloud and mobile support around,
as well as an A3 scanner with
50-page ADF. £471 exc VAT from
printerbase.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 337, p98

A fine alternative to the Brother and
Canon, this mono laser multifunction
printer produces superb results at
great speed – 27.5 pages per minute
in our 50-page test, which includes
the spool time. It’s similarly quick for
scans, with a dual-CIS ADF to speed
up double-sided copies. £238 exc VAT
from printerbase.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 341, p87

WIRELESS ROUTERS

Netgear Nighthawk RAXE300

Fast Wi-Fi 6E router, £350
from amazon.co.uk

The RAXE500 (see right) is faster than the RAXE300, but
in practice we doubt you would notice – this tri-band router still delivered speeds
between 50MB/sec and 150MB/sec in our tests. And it’s packed with features, too.
At £150 cheaper than its bigger brother, we think it hits the Wi-Fi 6E sweet spot.
REVIEW Issue 341, p68

NEW ENTRY

Netgear Nighthawk
RAXE500

If you want the fastest Wi-Fi then 6E
is the obvious choice, and this router
delivers. The Armor protection service
costs £38 in the first year, but then
rockets up to £85, so you’re buying top
quality and performance, but you pay
for it. £448 from box.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 332, p64

MESH WI-FI

TP-Link Deco XE200
Clever Wi-Fi 6E for £600
from amazon.co.uk
There are cheaper Wi-Fi 6E meshes, but the XE200
wins for its superb download speeds, excellent
coverage and the fact that older clients reap benefits
of 6E, not just new ones. And a two-pack (code
B0BKTDPWC8) should be enough for most premises.
REVIEW Issue 349, p65

Asus RT-AX59U

You can buy cheaper Wi-Fi 6
routers – such as the D-Link Eagle
Pro AI R15 for £55 – but Asus’
well-priced offering delivers
strong performance along with
lots of control and exceptional
VPN support. £125 from
uk.store.asus.com
REVIEW Issue 350, p57

NEW ENTRY

Mercusys Halo H80X

A new subsidiary of TP-Link, Mercusys
offers its parent brand’s XE75 router
some excellent value-for-money
competition. Not as fast due to Wi-Fi 6
rather than Wi-Fi 6E, but it has all the
bandwidth you need for everyday use
and should deliver it stably throughout
your house. There are plenty of features
too. 2-pack, £161 from ebuyer.com
REVIEW Issue 341, p71

Linksys Velop Pro 6E

Ironically, this Wi-Fi 6E router
will get the most out of your
non-Wi-Fi 6 devices thanks to
its use of the 6GHz network for
station-to-station traffic. And
you only need two units for rock
solid performance across a
three-bedroom house. 2-pack,
£380 from amazon.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 350, p54
17

BUSINESS WI-FI

TP-Link Omada EAP690E HD
Wi-Fi 6E access point, £515 exc VAT
from broadbandbuyer.com
The Omada has what it takes to satisfy businesses
planning on serving up high-density wireless networks.
This AXE11000 AP delivers impeccable wireless
performance and plenty of enterprise-class features.
REVIEW Issue 347, p103

Netgear WAX630E

The tri-band WAX630E – a Wi-Fi 6E
access point – delivers strong
performance across the 5GHz and
6GHz bands. Netgear’s Insight cloud
service provides classy remote
management and it can’t be beaten for
value. £275 exc VAT from
broadbandbuyer.com

REVIEW Issue 341, p95

Zyxel WAX630S

Not the cheapest Wi-Fi 6 AP, but the
Zyxel WAX630S delivers a lot of
features for the price. Performance
is impeccable, it can be easily
cloud-managed and the CNP+ threat
prevention service could save you the
cost of a firewall. £369 exc VAT from
broadbandbuyer.com
REVIEW Issue 340, p101

NAS SERVERS

Synology DiskStation DS1823xs+
10GbE NAS, £1,413 exc VAT
from broadbandbuyer.com
This powerful eight-bay NAS is a great
choice for SMBs that want plenty of
capacity, features and performance at a
reasonable price. The new DSM 7.2 software has security high on its agenda, and
the icing on the cake is Synology’s generous five-year warranty.
REVIEW Issue 346, p101

Qnap TS-h987XU-RP

Synology DiskStation
DS1522+

The TS-h987XU-RP is a ready-made
hybrid storage solution for SMBs.
This rack-friendly package offers
a great specification for the price,
and Qnap’s QuTS hero software
scores highly for its wealth of dataprotection features and business
apps. Diskless, £3,292 exc VAT from
broadbandbuyer.com
REVIEW Issue 344, p96

Small businesses that want a highcapacity desktop NAS at a good price
will find Synology’s DS1522+ a great
choice. Performance over 10GbE is
impeccable and the DSM software
offers a fantastic range of storage
features. 5-bay NAS, diskless £586 exc
VAT from broadbandbuyer.com

Logitech Rally Bar Mini

Poly Studio R30

Offers everything SMBs need for
professional meeting room VC
services. The three operational modes
make it versatile and it delivers
excellent video and audio quality, with
Logitech’s Sync cloud service
providing valuable remote
management features. £1,840 exc
VAT from meetingstore.co.uk

An affordable and easy-to-use
4K solution for small buinesses.
Video and audio quality are very
good and its clever peopletracking and framing features
add that all-important
professional touch to your
meetings. £439 exc VAT from
broadbandbuyer.com
REVIEW Issue 340, p99

REVIEW Issue 344, p98

VIDEOCONFERENCING

Biamp Parlé VBC 2500

4K meeting room star, £1,737 exc VAT
from midwich.com
Not as versatile
as Logitech’s Rally Bar, which offers standalone modes courtesy of Android OS,
but Biamp can’t be beaten for the quality of its video and audio. Digital
auto-framing is fast, and the smart launch mode makes meeting room setup a
piece of cake.
REVIEW Issue 347, p102

REVIEW Issue 340, p97

SCANNERS

Xerox D70n Scanner

Fast and furious, £765 exc VAT
from ballicom.co.uk
The D70n delivers a mighty scan speed together with a
wealth of scan management tools and apps. Businesses
that want a high-volume networked desktop scanner at an
affordable price should put the Xerox at the top of their list.
REVIEW Issue 346, p99

Brother ADS-4700W

Epson WorkForce DS-870

A fine choice for small businesses,
with an impressive range of scanning
features at a price that can’t be
faulted. Output quality is top notch and
the versatile LCD touchscreen
menus provide great walk-up
scan services. £355 exc VAT from
printerbase.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 346, p96

For a 65ppm desktop scanner, the
WorkForce DS-870 is good value and
offers top output quality and solid scan
management apps. If you don’t need
network support (Epson’s add-on unit is
expensive), this scanner has what it
takes to handle heavy workloads. £568
exc VAT from printerbase.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 346, p98

Dell EMC PowerEdge
R250

Broadberry CyberServe
Xeon E-RS100-E10

SERVERS

Dell EMC PowerEdge T350

Xeon E-2300 power, from £1,399 exc VAT
from dell.co.uk
Perfect for SMBs and branch offices looking for an
affordable and powerful single-socket tower server.
Along with support for Xeon E-2300 CPUs and lots of
memory, it has a high storage capacity, plenty of
expansion space and is sturdily built.
REVIEW Issue 335, p98
18

With prices starting at around
£850 exc VAT for a Pentium Gold
CPU, and the option of Xeon E-2300
series chips from £1,461 exc VAT, this
is a slim, rack-mounted alternative
to the more high-powered T350
that’s ideal for SMBs. From £845
exc VAT from dell.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 332, p98

This represents a powerful hardware
package at a price that will please
small businesses. We love its
low-profile chassis and the fine
selection of remote-management
tools. It’s a great alternative to the Dell
EMC servers also listed here. £983 exc
VAT from broadberry.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 318, p96

@PCPRO

The A-List

FAC E B O O K . C O M / P C P R O

SECURITY SOFTWARE

PASSWORD MANAGERS

VPNs

NEW ENTRY

G Data Total Security

NordVPN

A suite for power users with a host of useful
features that offers formidable protection
against viruses. 5 devices,$82 per year (first
year and renewals) from gdatasoftware.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 343, p83

NordVPN won our VPN Labs for the second time
running thanks to its consistent, fast speeds, great
security features and excellent support for video
streaming. £80 for two years from nordvpn.com
REVIEW Issue 349, p86

Avast One
Essential

ProtonVPN

The only product in our
tests to score a 100%
protection rating for
blocking all malicious files,
this reliable choice is our
pick of the free AV tools
available and includes a
free if limited VPN service.
Free from avast.com
REVIEW Issue 343, p82

McAfee+
Advanced

A high-end choice with
high-end features and
support for an unlimited
number of devices. Good
value for the first year, but
watch out for renewals.
Unlimited devices, £75
first year, £150 renewals
from mcafee.com/en-gb
REVIEW Issue 343, p84

CLOUD SHARING

The best free VPN service
available, with quick
speeds and unlimited
bandwidth. The paid-for
service isn’t cheap, but
offers a bunch of useful
extra features that
might just tempt you
into coughing up. Free
from protonvpn.com
REVIEW Issue 349, p88

Surfshark

The fastest VPN we’ve
tested, and it’s generally
a good performer in our
region-shifted streaming
tests, too. Cancellation
is trickier than it should
be, but it’s a great-value
choice for heavy VPN
users. £56 for two years
from surfshark.com
REVIEW Issue 349, p89

NordPass

This hassle-free option is a great choice for both
personal and business use, with a competitive
price matched with all the features most people
need. £1.89 per month from nordpass.com
REVIEW Issue 350, p70
NEW ENTRY

Bitwarden

Free for individual use
and open source, the
only important thing
Bitwarden lacks is phone
support: it works with
virtually every device
and browser, and the
paid option is well worth
£10 per year. Free from
bitwarden.com
REVIEW Issue 350, p71

Keeper

NEW ENTRY

A great choice for
businesses thanks to its
focus on security and a
zero-knowledge policy,
and if you need more
options then Keeper
has them. Business
edition, from £2 per
user per month from
keepersecurity.com
REVIEW Issue 350, p72

VOIP SERVICES

BUSINESS BACKUP
NEW ENTRY

ShareFile Premium

A great-value choice for SMBs that want secure
cloud collaboration with all the storage they can eat.
It’s easy to use, supports massive file sizes, and the
Premium plan adds a wealth of app integrations
(including e-signature
services). From £99

Veritas Backup Exec 22.2

Our top pick for on-premises data protection,
Veritas Backup Exec 22.2 offers a superb
range of features, great value and backs
this all up with swift deployment and an
easy-to-use interface.

exc VAT per month
billed yearly from
sharefile.com
REVIEW Issue 343, p96

Simple Core Pack,
5 instances, £389 per
year exc VAT from
uk.insight.com
REVIEW Issue 350, p97

Egnyte Business

IDrive Business

Not our pick for value, but Egnyte provides a wealth of
easily managed file-sharing services. App integrations
and anti-malware add to its appeal. Business plan, £16

SMBs that want affordable cloud backup and data
recovery features will appreciate IDrive Business,
with its extensive app and platform support. 2.5TB,

excVATperuserpermonthbilledyearlyfromegnyte.com
REVIEW Issue 343, p97

£479 exc VAT per year from idrive.com.
REVIEW Issue 347, p99

NETWORK MONITORING
Progress WhatsUp Gold 2022

REMOTE SUPPORT
IDrive RemotePC Team

3CX StartUP

SMEs worried about the cost and complexity of
hosting an IP PBX will love 3CX’s free StartUP. It’s
easy to use and provides all the call-handling services
you need. Free for 1-10 users from 3cx.com
REVIEW Issue 345, p96

Gradwell Wave

Ideal for SMEs that want the smoothest possible path
to VoIP, this cloud-hosted service is easy to manage
and packed with features. Wave 100, from £7.50 exc
VAT per user per month from gradwell.com
REVIEW Issue 345, p98

UTM APPLIANCES
WatchGuard Firebox T45-W-PoE

Easy to deploy, and with flexible device-based
licensing plans, WhatsUp Gold is an affordable
choice for SMBs. It presents an impressive set of
network-monitoring tools in a well-designed
console and tight integration with the LoadMaster
and Flowmon apps.
50 devices, Premium,
yearly licence,
£1,309 exc VAT from
whatsupgold.com
REVIEW Issue 342, p90

IDrive’s RemotePC Team will appeal to SMBs
that want affordable cloud-hosted remote
support for their offices and home workers.
It’s exceedingly simple to deploy, easy to manage
and delivers tough access security measures.
First year, 50
computers, £172
exc VAT from
remotepc.com
REVIEW Issue
349, p98

Offering enterprise-class gateway security measures
at an affordable price, this is a great choice for small
to medium-sized business and remote offices.
Integral Wi-Fi 6 services add extra value and it can be
easily managed and monitored from WatchGuard’s
slick cloud portal. Appliance with 3yr Total Security
Suite, £3,148 exc VAT from guardsite.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 348, p98

Paessler PRTG Network Monitor22.4

NetSupport Manager 14

Zyxel ZyWALL ATP500

The ability to assign sensors to any device brings
versatility, and everything is included in the price so
there’s no need for optional modules. 1,000 sensors,
1yr maintenance, €2,499 exc VAT from paessler.com
REVIEW Issue 342, p89

Delivers a wealth of support tools, including secure
access to home workers, and licensing plans are
good value. 1-500 systems, perpetual licence, £10
each exc VAT from netsupportmanager.com
REVIEW Issue 349, p100

This desktop appliance gives sophisticated protection
against zero-day threats, is easily managed and
very good value. Appliance with 1yr Gold Security
licence, £1,191 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com
REVIEW Issue 348, p99
19

Entertainment
isahardsell

Dick Pountain is
editorial fellow of
PC Pro and likes
to kid himself that
he’s an analog
influencer.
Email dick@
dickpountain.co.uk

To everyone’s chagrin, Dick refuses to don false eyelashes and a sunny
disposition simply to make money online

D

espite the fact that I spend
much of every day in front of a
computer screen – writing,
reading, editing, drawing, coding,
listening – I’ve never made any real
money online. Sure, I’ve made money
writing about computers and online
enterprise, but I’ve never been paid for
an article that appeared only online.
As a keen photographer I have
2,000+ photographs on Flickr, but
no-one ever buys a print. Those few
photos I have been paid for appeared
in foreign magazines whose art
directors contacted me having seen
them online, which barely counts. I
also create abstract digital artworks
based on fractals and similar stuff, but
they don’t sell online either. My friend
Catherine successfully sells her oil
paintings via the Saatchi Art website,
but her buyers get an original painting
whereas I’m offering prints of images
they could screen-grab for themselves.
I do have a YouTube channel with
some of my computer-generated
music on it, but that’s never reached
the required threshold of followers to
become monetised. To do that
nowadays you need a home studio,
proper lights, and to cultivate
winning/irritating mannerisms, none
of which I’m prepared to do. In any
case, getting rich online is more likely
on TikTok, OnlyFans or Substack than
YT, which means being 20-something
and wearing false eyelashes, which
I’m not prepared to do either.
I’ve given up writing blogs (too
mean to pay to promote them) and
rejected podcasting as it requires a
greater frequency of new content than
I can muster. I do, however, waste
hours listening to podcasts by those

more motivated, like Andrew Hickey’s
monumental “History of Rock and
Roll in 500 Songs”. By and large I don’t
pay for them, Patreon notwithstanding.
I also do enormous amounts of reading
online, almost always in PDF or
Kindle format, from platforms such as
Medium, Quanta and the Atlantic
magazine, as well as academic papers.

A

t this point one would
traditionally launch into a
debate about whether this vast
and spreading digital ecosystem will
eventually supplant older media, such
as newspapers, books, cinema and live
concerts. I’ll spare you most of that, to
merely remark that there are many
omens that suggest otherwise.
The original premise of this
ecosystem was that internet access
would democratise media production,
allowing anyone a shot at online fame
(remember an age ago when this was
called Web 2.0?). It sort of did,
although the result has been an
explosion of volume accompanied by
an implosion of quality. The amount
of clickbait content on YouTube
makes it a real chore to use.
Then we come to the streaming
giants such as Amazon Prime and
Netflix, who are in financial trouble
because of the expense of generating
endless streams of ever-more witless
content, and because the cost-ofliving crisis forces people to stop
subscribing to stuff. Meanwhile, the
sheer hubris of macromoguls Musk
and Zuckerberg tempts them to
self-destruct their own platforms
(although that cage fight would be
worth watching).
Unsettling enough, but there’s
worse to come,
from several
directions. Telcos
are grumbling
about having to
invest in ever
more bandwidth

Getting rich online is more likely on
TikTok, OnlyFans or Substack than YT,
which means being 20-something and
wearing false eyelashes
20

The original premise was that
internet access would democratise
media production, allowing anyone a
shot at online fame
to feed the streaming moguls’ audience
without getting a fair share of the
profits: last year, 16 European
providers signed a statement calling
for Google, Meta and Microsoft to pay
more, since they have to spend €50bn
annually building and maintaining
full-fibre and 5G networks.

T

here’s increasing pressure from
governments to regulate online
content and big tech behaviour.
The US government’s first antitrust
trial of the internet era, against
Google, has just begun – the biggest
since the Justice Department took
Microsoft to court in 1998. It accuses
Google of abusing its monopoly over
online search to throttle competition.
And then there’s the Hollywood
writers’ strike, which threatens to go
beyond matters of current payment
and become an all-out offensive
against the possible future
deployment of AI content generation
by the studios and streamers.
In Europe, the EU’s Digital Services
and Digital Markets Acts seek to curb
online hate speech, child sexual abuse
and disinformation, and end Silicon
Valley’s status as its own gatekeeper.
The UK’s Online Safety Bill might add
a face-slap to the EU’s arse-kick.
The bottom line is that I’ve only
ever been paid for writing – books,
journalism, reviews – that appeared in
print, or by a print publisher. I
subscribe to print editions of the
London and New York reviews of
books, partly in order to support a
future for long-form journalism, but
mainly because they’re easier to read
in bed over coffee and toast.
dick@dickpountain.co.uk

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Viewpoints

Fixthebasics
first,thenlet’s
gettothefuture

Nicole Kobie is PC
Pro’s Futures editor.
She hopes someone
reads all the reports
she files because
she takes her time
crafting some truly
annoyed responses.
@njkobie

Facebook and Google should clean up their own houses
before trying to get into mine

T

ech companies love to look to
the future rather than deal with
the here and now. OpenAI warns
shrilly about the existential risks of
artificial general intelligence while
ignoring the current harms caused by
less capable AI. Google develops
driverless cars and other moonshots
while spam still filters through, and
search gets less and less helpful in
finding unsponsored information.
And Facebook-owner Meta heralds
the beginning of the metaverse, yet
can’t stop basic malware from
spreading across the site.
I know this because I’ve watched
it happen. First, it hit my uncle’s
account. He’s not a frequent Facebook
user, so the sudden flood of posts was
a clear sign of dodgy activity, as were
the many friends tagged in each post,
ensuring as many people saw it as
possible. The post’s text was also odd:
two sad-faced emojis – my uncle isn’t
an emoji sort of guy – followed by
“passed away, a moment ago” and
then a shortened link.
When I saw that message, I took
two actions. First, I laughed – as

by my uncle’s account or accidentally
tapped it; it happens to the best of us.
It’s bewildering that malware
following such a clear pattern can
continue to evade Facebook’s systems.
This particular clickbait scam has
been around for months. Facebook’s
clever AI should be able to spot this; a
basic script could. And its human
moderators should, too, if Meta has
any left. But when I report these posts,
time and again, Facebook tells me the
same thing: “We’ve taken a look and
found that this content doesn’t go
against our community standards.”
Account-infecting spam that spreads
malware by tagging dead loved ones is
apparently fine with Facebook.

S

o when Meta goes on about how
my dad and I will be playing
cards in the metaverse, I laugh
– how about you fix the basics of
Facebook before we start handing
over more of our lives?
Facebook isn’t the only example of
the internet slowly rotting while tech
giants plot the future. Recently, I
needed to launch Zoom from a
browser instance on my
Chromebook rather than
the app installed on my
usual laptop, because my
dog was asleep under my
desk. Like most people, I
don’t type web addresses
into the bar at the top of
Chrome; I just search “Zoom”. And I
clicked the first result. Silly me. That
was an advert for a weird linkharvesting site – no idea what its scam
even was, to be honest – but it
certainly looked like Zoom from the
blue linked text. Once again, I had to
do the manual labour of filing a
sure-to-be-ignored report.
A few days later, I looked at my
Gmail on my phone. Google has long
shoved ads into inboxes, styling them
to look like email; we’ve all learned to
ignore them. But this one caught my

Account-infecting spam that
spreads malware by tagging
dead loved ones is apparently
fine with Facebook
though anyone would fall for that!
And then, I clicked the menu button
on the post and reported it to
Facebook. My uncle quickly figured it
out and changed his password, and his
account stopped spewing malware.
All was well in the world.
Until a few weeks later, when my
father’s account started doing the
same. Post after post, all identical in
format and behaviour, tagging
everyone on his friend list, including
my dead grandfather. Clearly, my dad
was fooled and clicked the link shared

eye: it was a website named for a
slang euphemism for sex. (No, I’m
not telling you the name; check your
Gmail if you want to know.)
It didn’t seem possible that Google
could allow someone to advertise
prostitutes in Gmail, so I did a bit of

These companies want us to let
them automate more of our lives
when they can’t even get their own
houses in order
desk-based investigation – as in,
Googling. The advertiser calls itself a
“dating site”, but the internet tells
me it’s widely known as a place to
purchase such attentions, rather than
ask someone out for dinner. It’s illegal
to advertise sexual services in the UK;
I once again hit the report button,
hoping that extra signal might make
the machines notice this aberration.

A

dvertising and search are
Google’s core businesses. They
fund everything else it does.
Though worth billions upon billions
every quarter, even these golden geese
are allowed to crumble like a British
school made of questionable concrete.
These companies want us to let
them automate more of our lives
when they can’t even get their own
houses in order. They want us to allow
AI to make more decisions for us,
claiming these systems are so clever
we better watch our backs, but they
can’t even train them to spot basic
malware and dodgy ads.
Alphabet and Meta invest in future
technologies to keep ahead of
competitors and maintain the sheen
of innovation. But we can all see under
the hood, and it looks pretty manky in
their businesses’ core parts. If they can’t
automate their own problems away,
why should we trust them with ours?
work@nicolekobie.com
21

Viewpoints

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Timetoend
thisstupid
game

Barry Collins is
a former editor
of PC Pro. This
doesn’t make him
qualified to assess
whether a ThinkPad
will run Red Dead
Redemption 2.
Capeesh?
@bazzacollins

We either need a universal way to benchmark the performance of PCs…
or for people to stop asking Barry what they should buy

W

hen friends come to me for
tech advice, there’s one
question I dread above all
others: “Can you recommend a gaming
PC?” Can’t you ask me something
easier, like “can you sequence the
DNA of a Cadbury’s Twirl?” or “why
do people keep hiring Piers Morgan?”
There’s no such thing as a gaming
PC. A gaming PC means different
things to different people. To my dad,
it means a system capable of playing
Solitaire without crashing when the
cards bounce and cascade down the
screen after a win. To the 15-year-old
son of my friends, it means being able
to play Cyberpunk 2077 with ray
tracing, at high texture quality and
medium volumetric fog resolution.
Of course, parents of said 15-yearold don’t know that. They know he
plays “that shooting game” when
they’d rather he was doing his maths
homework, but they don’t know what
the game’s called, and don’t want to
ask him because they’re buying the PC
as a surprise and they haven’t spoken
to him for the best part of three years
anyway. He’s a teenage boy, after all.
So I end up recommending a £3,500
hulking desktop tower with the latest
Nvidia monstrosity inside it, just to be
on the safe side, and said parents
never speak to me again, either.
Still, at least they’re better off than
the poor souls who buy “gaming PCs”
from the Facebook Marketplace. I’m
not sure whether the sellers of these
used systems are unaware that PCs
depreciate faster than signed photos
of Phillip Schofield or whether they’re
pulling a fast one, but the amount of
vastly overpriced old hardware you
see changing hands on there is insane.

Few bother detailing the spec,
relying on three blurry pictures of a
dust-ridden case in a dimly lit
bedroom to sell the thing. Those that
do will list a Pentium III with 128MB of
RAM and a Matrox graphics card for
“£650, no timewasters”. And yet these
things do sell. When I see such a
listing, I’m enormously tempted to
warn off potential buyers in the
comments, telling them that Windows
XP-era heap of rubble isn’t fast
enough to run Jet Set Willy, but I don’t
want Dave from Croydon sliding into
my DMs and threatening to stab me.

E

ven when people can tell me
what games they want to play on
a prospective purchase, it’s far
from easy to guide them. “My kids
want it for Minecraft” is a common
request, but trying to work out which
laptops will run that happily is no
cakewalk. The official specs from
Microsoft state that for optimum
performance you’re looking at “Nvidia
GeForce 700 series or AMD Radeon RX
200 series (excluding integrated
chipsets) with OpenGL 4.45”.
Well, the GeForce 700 series was
released back in 2013. Surely most
integrated graphics chipsets inside a
semi-decent laptop will cope with
that? But then there’s that “excluding
integrated chipsets” warning on the
AMD side. And now I’m starting to
doubt myself. I’ve run Minecraft on
integrated graphics and it’s been
largely fine, but there’s a huge range
of performance across integrated
GPUs. So maybe it’s safer to
recommend something with a discrete
graphics chip – but now we’re
cranking up the cost, and my friend
only wanted to spend
£500, and... can someone
please make this stop?
What we need is an
industry-wide benchmark
– something simple and
relatable that measures a

The amount of vastly
overpriced old hardware you
see changing hands on Facebook
Marketplace is insane
22

What we need is an industry-wide
benchmark – something simple and
relatable that measures a PC’s
performance and gives it a score
PC’s performance and gives it a score.
Manufacturers and retailers could be
compelled to publish this score for
new PCs in their marketing material,
and consumers could download and
run the benchmark to score PCs
they’re thinking of selling. Games
firms would then use that score to give
buyers a clear indication of whether a
PC will run said game, in much the
same way they’re required to publish
a PEGI age rating. So, for example, if
you want to play Minecraft, you need
a PC with a score of 55 or greater.
Everyone knows where they stand.

I

can already hear the howls of
protest from PC and games firms.
Boiling down PC performance
into a single score isn’t easy, not when
you’ve got all manner of different
performance factors to contend with.
Microsoft tried it once with the
Windows Experience Index, and that
died a lonely death in a Manchester
bedsit. Likewise, the game companies
won’t want to be blamed when Angry
Mum demands a refund for Roblox,
because it won’t run on a theoretically
compatible PC that’s been crippled by
six different antivirus packages
running simultaneously. I get it.
None of this is easy.
But a benchmark that provides a
non-guaranteed guide to probable
performance is better than the
meaningless recommended specs
and pure guesswork that we’re
subject to at the moment. And if it
stops people asking me to recommend
them a gaming PC, it will have been
worth the effort. Trust me.
barry@mediabc.co.uk

Readers’comments
Your views and feedback from email and the web

PowerToys to
the rescue

The tip regarding PowerToys
text extraction (see issue
348, p36) has been a great
help. I get a number of
French documents that
have been scanned into PDF
but don’t include text, so I
can’t do a copy and paste.
PowerToys has proved a time
saver feeding the OCR’d text
into Google Translate.
On a different note, I liked
the VPN article in the October
23 edition (see issue 349, p78),
but perhaps you could have
mentioned a DIY technique
using a Raspberry Pi and PiVPN? I use
this whenever I’m abroad as it cuts
down on the number of times bank
sites and suchlike say that I’m using a
different location and go through a
laborious identification check.
Roger Preston

ABOVE Our VPN Labs
last month provoked
plenty of discussion

Associate editor Darien Graham-Smith
replies: PiVPN is certainly an interesting
tool. We’ve previously discussed using a
Raspberry Pi as an outbound VPN gateway
(see issue 336, p42), but PiVPN operates an
inbound server, allowing you to securely
access your own home network over the
internet. Look out for a guide to setting up
and using PiVPN in a forthcoming issue.

Sideloading a VPN

I read your reviews of VPNs with
interest, as I have been running your
favourite free one, Proton, for some
months now. What you did not
explain was how to download them if
your internet service provider (such
as TalkTalk) does not allow them. I got

Starletter

Foreign fingerprints

To follow up on the comment by Davey Winder
(see issue 347, p118) about the leaking of
fingerprint data, I have often wondered
about the security of fingerprint data
which is gathered by countries for visa/
passport access.
I visited Libya in late 2010 just before the
outbreak of civil war in early 2011 and have
since worried about who has control of my
fingerprint data that they collected for my
visa application.

around this by tethering my laptop to
my mobile phone and using its data to
download the VPN to my laptop.
Andy Kadir-Buxton

No Norton VPN?

Whenever I read about VPNs one that
never gets mentioned is Norton VPN. I
use Norton on my PC and my iPhone,
with the idea if I have to use or
unknowingly use a public Wi-Fi it will
give me protection from being hacked.
I also activate it on my PC for the same
reason but I never take it outside.
Is Norton never mentioned because
it doesn’t work or do the VPNs you list
have a lot more uses, which would not
be used by me?
Charles Williams
VPN expert and author of our Labs,
KG Orphanides, replies: Charles, your
assumption is correct: Norton Secure VPN
is more limited than the services we
generally review. You have to use Norton’s
own clients, with no option to connect

While we might have oversight of data
collected by private companies I very much
doubt we have any for countries.
John Falk
Contributing editor Davey Winder replies:
That’s an extremely valid point. Research by
Comparitech (pcpro.link/350prints) has looked
at how biometric data is used country to country,
especially as it relates to government collection
and storage.
The countries that showed a “concerning lack
of regard for the privacy of people’s biometric
data” included China, India, Iran, Bangladesh,
Uganda, Iraq, Russia and Saudi Arabia. When it

This month’s star letter writer wins a Cherry KW 7100 Mini BT keyboard plus Gentix BX mouse,
worth £75 – and appropriately finished in Cherry Blossom. Email letters@pcpro.co.uk

24

routers, servers, NAS devices or anything
other than a desktop PC running Windows
or macOS, or a mobile device running
Android or iOS/iPadOS.
Its connection speeds via most
endpoints are pretty quick, but Norton has
been a slow adopter of new technologies:
for instance, you won’t find support for the
power-efficient WireGuard protocol. More
critically, Norton only started adding VPN
kill switches to its clients at the end of 2021,
and its iOS app still doesn’t have one. That
means that if you lose your connection
your device will revert back to using its
standard internet connection, potentially
exposing your online activities.
Like many VPN providers, Norton
promotes its service as a way of avoiding
being compromised on unfamiliar
networks. This is, to some extent, true, but
only partially. Connecting via a VPN makes
it impossible for other devices on your local
network to see or intercept what you’re
sending, which is a form of protection
against man-in-the-middle attacks.
However, as the modern web uses TLS 1.3
to encrypt HTTPS traffic, you’re unlikely to
ever send or receive anything secure in
clear text over the network in the first
place, so you’re already protected.
A VPN doesn’t protect you against
being hacked – if a compromised file is
executed on your system, a VPN
connection won’t help you, nor will it
prevent attack vectors such as drive-by
downloads, unless the VPN service comes
with additional anti-malware tools.
If you don’t use a VPN, it would be
possible for someone on your network –
particularly its administrator – to see and
log (unencrypted) DNS queries and what
kind of data you’re sending and receiving.
Similarly, local or ISP-level content
filtering systems might block or log your

came to those that fared best, Luxembourg,
Bulgaria, Lithuania, Norway, Portugal, Belgium,
Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Ireland,
Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland
and Turkmenistan came out top.
The research concluded that EU countries
generally protected biometrics better than
non-EU ones. But, the takeaway was that “no
country protects its citizens’ or visitors’
biometric data to an extent that privacy is
maintained”. Your fears, therefore, are well
founded. Unfortunately, if you want to travel you
have little choice when it comes to giving up
biometric data.

@PCPRO

Viewpoints

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Readers’ poll

Is Windows 10 Microsoft’s
best OS of all time?

activities, and, of course, the server at the
other end of the connection will see your
real IP address, rather than that provided
by the VPN service.

Flipping phones

Win 95 was revolutionary.
Win XP by far the best OS.

Simon Nutter

No, Windows 10 isn’t
Microsoft’s best OS, Windows
XP SP3 is. Perfect for gaming
from back in the day. Windows
7 is a close second.
Michael Oglesby

Jointhedebate

NO! XP still rules the roost
man. Daniel Mackay

Join the growing PC Pro
community on Facebook at
facebook.com/pcpro

Pound for pound Windows
7 was the best. If it wasn’t for
hardware I’d still be using it
now. Pete (@pas5898)

Get the latest news and
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ISSUE

Last month we promised that we would
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Visual Studio” article. Unfortunately,
we have had to delay this by a month,
so please look out for the follow-up (on
creating graphical user interfaces) in
next month’s PC Pro. Our apologies for
any disappointment!

MS-DOS 3.3, it did what it said
on the tin and no distractions.
Also easy to configure and
program for. David Wright

2023 £5.99

Amplifications and clarifications

We suspect that if we had opened up the options to include Windows 7 then it would have just pipped
Windows 10 to the title of Microsoft’s most loved OS. “The constant forced updates rendered
software, hardware and sometimes peripherals useless,” wrote Gordon Jackson of Windows 10.
“Win 7 had reached the stable stage by the time it was overtaken.”
“Bring back Windows 2000!” cried Iain Clarke (@IainClarke13) on what was Twitter and we must
now reluctantly call X. “The jumps between OS capabilities have been lower since, so less interesting.
I miss the days when it was worth upgrading a PC regularly.”
And we suspect a lot of readers decided to upgrade so they could move to Windows XP. “I loved XP
back in the day and 7 was excellent,” wrote Keith Miller on Facebook. “8 was possibly the worst ever
but 11 has to take the modern day crown. What I would say is that crown is for the OS and NOT the
irritating ads and promos, they are the worst ‘features’ ever.”
Other readers went even further back in time. “Windows 3.11 forever changed the way I worked
[on a] PC,” said Mike Gannon (@Scrufter) on X. “It wasn’t perfect, no OS is, but it changed the game
for me in a way no further OS ever has.”
But just to show that some people like the new stuff best, several readers mentioned Windows 11.
“It does more than all others combined,” wrote Marcin Gorecki. And we’ll give the final word to Alan
Bourke. “Windows XP? Win 7? Good for the time, how in any sane way are they better than 11?”

348 SUMMER

Contributing editor Jon Honeyball replies:
Folding phones have always had a price
premium, if only for the wow factor. In
fairness, there has been a huge amount of
engineering effort to make both a foldable
screen surface and a hinge that will
withstand abuse. And this means a great
deal of testing time, which adds to the cost.
I agree that flip phones have a distinct
size advantage when folded. I have found
that on both my original Samsung Galaxy Z
Flip and the recent Flip5. The Flip5 has
improvements, but if you’re looking for a
straightforward Android phone then its
predecessors have much to commend
them. Maybe look for a used one of these
with a warranty? A quick search of a
certain well-known site suggests that
around £450 will buy a Flip4, and Flip3
models cost around £300.
Rather than splashing out almost a
grand, it might be worth trying out one
of these to see if the form factor really
works for you.

YES 39% NO 61%

ISSUE

I was interested to see in your recent
readers’ poll (see issue 348, p25) that
a very small number of people say
they’ll buy a flip phone [only 3%].
The last three or four smartphones
I’ve owned have all been such a size
that I can’t sit down with them in the
front pocket of my jeans.
The latest offender is the
Pixel 7 Pro, but I do like the
large size when I’m actually
using it. I feel that a flip
phone is the perfect
answer to this and
the only thing
stopping me from
getting one is the
price. If Google made
a Pixel Flip – for the
same price as my
Pixel 7 Pro
– I’d jump
at it.
Rob Lightbody

Windows 10

Stick, upgrade
or switch?
Don’t panic!

Those were the words so famously written
across the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in
Douglas Adams’ eponymous book, and they
apply equally well here. Windows 10 has
already stopped getting new features and
security updates will come to a halt in October
2025. The clock is ticking.
While you shouldn’t panic, you should think
about what happens next before your hand is
forced. Follow Microsoft’s advice to the letter
and that perfectly functional PC or laptop will
be consigned to landfill, as security updates
end. Lee, opposite, is not happy about that.
Perhaps you want to wait it out. Maybe
Microsoft will bow to the pressure and keep
releasing security updates? Or you could simply
ignore Davey Winder’s advice on p31 and keep
running Windows 10 anyway.
We don’t think that’s a great idea. If you
can upgrade to Windows 11 – and by
now you’ll have been nagged
many times by your
installation – then we
recommend doing
so. If not, then
you do have
options.

26

We explore what Linux Mint and Tiny11 have to
offer on p28 and p29 respectively. There’s also
the streaming option. Jon Honeyball delivers
his verdict on that on p30.
We also give the final word to Jon. What, we
asked him, would he tell someone down the pub
if they were still running a Windows 10
system? And what about a small
business that had a few older PCs
still going in its fleet? As ever,
he wasn’t backward in
coming forward with
words of wisdom.

MINI INDEX
28 Linux Mint
29 Tiny11
30 Windows 365 streaming
31 Windows 10 security reality check
32 Jon Honeyball’s verdict

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Windows10or11
Windows10options

With hundreds of millions of computers still stuck
on Windows 10, due to go end of life in 2025, we
investigate your options
CONTRIBUTORS: Lee Grant, Jon Honeyball, Nik Rawlinson, Davey Winder

Don’t landfill
that old PC
Lee Grant is not overly
impressed by Microsoft
failing to provide an
upgrade path
There’s always a better option than automatically shoving
an old PC into landfill. First, let’s look at the machine. A
ten-year-old desktop PC may include a 4th gen Core i7,
with 16GB of RAM and decent graphics. Even today,
something like that will perform for everyday needs. It
may need a cheap SSD upgrade to give it some pep, but
that goes for 99% of machines with spinny drives.
If the machine is a decade-old Athlon 2, then running
Windows 10 is probably hard work. However, adding
copious amounts of RAM to an old machine is as cheap
as chips, and switching from 4GB to 16GB will help even
the slowest CPUs.
Fundamentally, this is a software issue. Windows 10 is
much more sluggish than previous versions of the OS, so
ditching Microsoft for a good, user-friendly software
option – Ubuntu, Mint, ChromeOS Flex – breathes new life
into old kit and keeps them out of landfill. As we move
towards a browser-based existence, a quick OS and an
up-to-date browser will satisfy the needs of many users.
Landfill should always be the last option. There will
be parts inside a ten-year-old machine that others can
make use of. The whole machine may be useful to
someone who isn’t unalterably besotted with Windows
and is willing to explore alternatives that other
platforms can offer.
If you decide that the machine no longer fits your
needs, then give someone else a chance to use it. There
are organisations all over the country who take in
machines, refit them and give them to people stuck in
digital poverty. Via these organisations, the machines can
also be sent to places where some genuine recycling will
take place – and perhaps some rare-earth element
extraction. In the UK, landfill use is on the decline and
most things now are exported or crushed and burned.
The uncomfortable reality of sustainability is that we all
need to buy less stuff, so keeping something in use is part
of that deal.
Microsoft, by killing Windows 10 without an upgrade
path for old hardware, is condemning millions of
machines to a crusher. It can wave its green credentials
all it likes. This is on its shoulders.
27

Linux Mint
Nik Rawlinson is already a
Linux convert. Here, he offers
a few good reasons to switch

L

inux was once the standard
but never entirely helpful
answer when asked what to
do with an old computer.
For many, it was an academic
exercise: something you tinkered with
when you’d moved to a new machine
and could afford to corrupt your old
workhorse. There was no guarantee
that a Linux machine would play
nicely with your existing data, sharing
files with friends and family could be
difficult, and the overall process could
often have often been a lot more user
friendly. None of that is true today.

A familiar environment

Let’s be blunt: there’s no reason why
Linux shouldn’t be your primary
operating system. Most of your data is
platform agnostic, many apps run in
the browser, and Linux itself is as
friendly and easy to use as Windows.
Ubuntu might be the best-known
distribution, but Linux Mint
(linuxmint.com), which is based on
Ubuntu, is where many Windows
switchers end up. Where Ubuntu uses
the Gnome desktop environment, Mint
uses Cinnamon by default, but can also
work with MATE or Xfce. Cinnamon
retains many Windows constructs that
Gnome lacks, including the taskbar,
applets and desklets (reminiscent of
Windows’ desktop gadgets).
I also recommend checking out
Zorin OS (zorin.com), particularly if
you’d be happy to pay £39 for the Pro
edition. This includes one of the best
Windows 11 desktop themes you’re
ever likely to come across.

Long-term support

Linux may only command around 3%
of the market for desktop operating
systems, but the community that uses
it is active and supportive. You’ll have
no trouble finding help when you
need it, nor in keeping your system
secure. Linux checks for patches and
downloads them as required – just
like Windows Update. The latest
release of Linux Mint, version 21.1,
Victoria, is based on Ubuntu 22.04
LTS, so will receive support until
April 2027. That makes it a great
choice for long-term deployments.
28

A friendly interface

Using Linux once required familiarity
with the command prompt, but that’s
rarely the case today. You can install
software without touching the
keyboard, thanks to built-in app
stores, and comprehensive Setting
applets make configuration easy.
Nor do you need to relearn your
Windows muscle memory. Wellestablished keyboard shortcuts carry
across, so you already know 90% of
what you need to get started.

Access to your data

Mint comes bundled with LibreOffice,
which offers broad compatibility with
Microsoft’s Office document formats.
Linux distributions don’t have access
to the Calibri or Cambria fonts used in
Office, but alternatives are available.
Carlito (pcpro.link/350carlito) and
Caladea (pcpro.link/350caladea) were
designed to be metrically equivalent
to Calibri and Cambria, and Microsoft
has made other fonts available for
installation using Terminal. On a
Debian operating system like Linux
Mint, the necessary command is:
sudo apt install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
The package includes Arial, Times
New Roman, Georgia, Courier New,
Impact and Verdana.

Save money… and
the planet

Linux Mint requires 2GB of RAM, 20GB
of disk space and a 1,024 x 768 display.
Compare that to Windows 11, which
needs double the RAM, 64GB storage,
an HD (720p) display and, crucially,
Trusted Platform Module version 2
(TPM 2). If you want to keep older
hardware running into the future
without compromising security,
Linux is your best bet. It can also help
reduce your contribution to the
world’s e-waste mountain.

Carry on running (some)
Windows apps

Switching to Linux doesn’t necessarily
mean losing access to the apps you
rely on. Mainstream Windows apps
such as Inkscape, DaVinci

Resolve and Thunderbird have Linux
equivalents, others run in a browser,
and many older programs can be run
using WINE (winehq.org). WINE is a
Linux environment that acts as a
Windows layer on top of the Linux OS.
It isn’t installed by default, but you
can set it up through the Terminal.
WINE supports 30,000 Windows
apps, including Photoshop CS6, Excel
2016 and WordPerfect X3. When
browsing the list (appdb.winehq.org),
favour apps with Platinum or Gold
ratings, as these are considered to
work without issue. You’ll need your
old installation media to set them up.

Why not Linux Mint?

So far I’ve presented the arguments
for Linux Mint, but some might ask
why not run Ubuntu instead? You’ll
receive updates sooner and there will
be fewer links in the dev chain as your
OS won’t be an adaptation of an
existing operating system.
And you will notice that I only say
“some” Windows apps work. Not all.
If you need to run specific versions of
apps there’s often no option but to
stick with Windows or switch to
macOS, where equivalent
versions exist. In this case, if
your hardware doesn’t
have the specs
required by
Windows 11,
check out
Tiny11.

TOP Linux Mint
comes with most of
the tools you need
pre-installed
ABOVE Linux Mint’s
menu and taskbar
will be familiar to
Windows switchers

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Windows10options

Tiny11
We asked Nik Rawlinson to move out of his
comfort zone and give this stripped-down
version of Windows 11 a try
Tiny11 is a stripped-down version of Windows
11. Where the full-fat OS requires 4GB of RAM
and 64GB of drive space, Tiny11 can manage
with 2GB and 8GB respectively. It looks like
the perfect solution for older machines that
fall short of Windows 11’s specs as, in the
developer’s words, it will run on “basically any
computer that also ran Windows 10”.
That might leave you wondering why
Microsoft, with all of its resources, didn’t
manage the same. The answer is most likely
that Microsoft didn’t want to: its goal was to
ship a feature-rich operating system that was
a genuine step up from Windows 10, rather
than a minimised working environment.
Tiny11 developer NTDev hasn’t stripped out
everything. Accessibility features and smaller
apps such as the Calculator and Notepad, plus
Windows Terminal and PowerShell, have all
been retained. Microsoft Store is also in there,
so you can manually update applications and
add new ones as required. You can download
Tiny11 from pcpro.link/350tiny11.

Keep old hardware running

The most obvious benefit of Tiny11 is that it
should continue running efficiently on older
hardware over the longer term, not merely
the next year or two. Nor does it comes with
Microsoft bloatware: both Edge and Teams

BELOW Tiny11 is based on Windows 11 Pro, for
which you’ll need an activation code

have been removed. You can add them from
the Microsoft Store, or choose an alternative
browser and log in to Teams on the web.
There are two versions of Tiny11 available
for download, one of which is designed for
older hardware that lacks support for TPM2;
this handles on-device encryption and was a
key requirement blocking many users from
upgrading incompatible machines. Neither
does Tiny11 require secure boot.

Save yourself from
manually debloating

You could install a regular build of Windows 11
and strip out the features you don’t require.
There are utilities to help you achieve this,
such as Debloos/BloatyNosy (pcpro.
link/350bloaty), which can analyse your
system and automatically remove what it
considers bloatware, or give you the option of
manually removing components you don’t
need and have no plans to use.
However, you can only access postproduction apps such as BloatyNosy if you’ve
already successfully installed Windows 11,
which won’t always be possible. Tiny11, on the
other hand, is an all-in-one solution where
installation is possible precisely because it’s
been stripped down in advance.

Run the apps you know

The benefit of sticking with an operating
system based on Windows 11 is that you can

continue running the applications you already
use. There’s no need to use a workaround such
as WINE under Linux, and nor is there any need
to learn how to use a new OS or apps. You can
avoid converting your data from its original
formats, too.

Use a local user account

By default, Tiny11 uses a local account, rather
than a Microsoft account, so your activities
are less intimately linked to your profile (you
can revert to a Microsoft account if you
prefer). If you’re particular about your
privacy, this could be a reason to switch on
its own – particularly as Microsoft is now
encouraging Microsoft account login as the
standard option.

It’s improving all the time

Tiny11 hasn’t come out of nowhere: it’s a
follow-on from Tiny10, so has been in active
development for several years. As such, it’s
improving over time. The first release
achieved its small size through the removal of
the Windows Component Store, which made it
impossible to add new features and languages.
However, release notes for the latest build
state that Windows Component Store is back,
in a release that also sees the removal of
sponsored apps.

Why not Tiny11?

So, are there reasons not switch to Tiny11? For
sure. First of all, it isn’t an official build. It’s not
supported by Microsoft and there’s no
guarantee it will keep working in the future.
Neither is Tiny11 a free operating system.
If you don’t already have a code to activate
Windows 11 Pro, you won’t be able to activate
Tiny11, so if you’re installing it as a moneysaving measure, I’d recommend taking
another look at Linux. (In fact, unless you
absolutely have to run Windows, that’s still
what I would recommend people do.)
Tiny11 may be the best-known strippeddown build of Windows 11, but it isn’t the only
option. Ghost Spectre 11 (pcpro.link/350ghost)
likewise lets you install a debloated build on
machines without TPM support.
ReviOS (pcpro.link/350revi) is another
stripped-down OS, removing common tools
such as Photos and Windows Mail. It also
avoids pre-installed apps such as Disney, plus
core features such as the Telemetry Client,
screensavers and themes.
All of which is to say you have choice.
Download, play, and consider your options.

29

Windows 11
in the cloud
There is a novel, if painfully expensive,
option: stream a Windows desktop instead.
Jon Honeyball delivers his verdict

W

indows 365 – not
to be confused
with Microsoft
365, the new
name for Office
– has been largely hovering under the
radar for more than a year now. It
allows you to stream a Windows 11
desktop to pretty much any device (or
Windows 10, for that matter).
Microsoft offers a free month’s trial
of Windows 365 before you have to
commit to an annual subscription.
However, when Barry Collins tried to
sign up it was an exercise in pure
frustration: the procedure flopped at
the payment confirmation screen, at
which point he was given an error
code and told to call Microsoft. I’ll save
you the pain that stemmed from that...
So what do you get? A Windows
session that you connect to from
your PC, Mac or tablet, running in
a window in a browser. You can
connect via other technologies, but I
suspect most will use a browser like
Microsoft Edge. Just for fun, I used
Apple Safari on a Mac.
Once your account is set up, you
need to subscribe to the level of
capability that you want and add
it to your account. For most users,
this will be done by their business
administrators. I chose the Windows
365 Business plan, which offers three
levels of hardware: Basic for £29 per
month plus VAT gives two vCPUs,
4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
That’s not a lot of hardware
capability, especially for RAM. With
nothing running, about 3GB of that
4GB was taken already. However, it
didn’t hesitate much with Word and
Excel running, so will be fine for
single-task operation.
Next up is Standard at £38 per
month, which simply doubles the RAM
to 8GB; you can also choose Premium
at £61 per month, which increases the
CPU count to four vCPUs and 16GB of
RAM, again with storage at 128GB. The
Enterprise versions offer the same
pricing for the same configurations,
but you aren’t limited in user count.
30

You aren’t restricted to these specs:
a configurator allows for almost any
combination. At the cheapest end of
the scale, you get a two-vCPU system
with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage,
which in terms of specs matches the
worst possible system you’ll find on
the shelves at Currys, and yet still
costs £26 plus VAT per month. At the
other end of the scale, you can rent an
eight-vCPU system with 32GB of RAM
and 256GB of storage, but that comes
at the stonking cost of £123 per month.
There’s also a Windows Hybrid
mode, which allows you to run
Windows 10 or 11 Pro on existing
hardware, reducing costs by 10%.
Each setup comes with Office
preinstalled, but you’ll have to use one
of your own licences. And note that
the Basic level supports Teams only
for chat and audio calls, not for video.

Why choose the cloud?

So what are the top reasons for using
this? First, Microsoft takes care of all
OS updates, security updates and
apps, too. That’s one management
headache instantly removed. Second,
it’s portable. Since you usually access
the instance from a browser, you can
get to it from most any device.
Reason three? It’s going to be
largely immune to any compromises
of the client, because the whole
session is running in the cloud. Four:
the session never ends, and you don’t
shut it down. It just freeze-dries until
you log in again, picking up from
exactly where you left off. This can
be compelling if you move between
devices a lot.
All of this makes it a fine solution
for anyone who simply wants
Microsoft Office and a browser.
However, there are a bunch of
downsides that can’t be ignored.
Top of the lot is cost. This is really
quite expensive compared to the price
of a desktop or laptop, especially
when viewed over a multi-year
period. Second, your options for
adding in third-party apps or other
items is severely constrained.

Streaming really is only for the Office
plus browser community.
Which ties in to the next big
problem: there’s no obvious migration
path from your existing PC to the
cloud. Although it would be very
complicated to do, it would be nice to
have a “suck the brains of my desktop
and park it in my cloud Windows
please” applet. You need to think of
this as a clean start in a clean Windows
session, for most users.
Finally, we come to the unavoidable
fact that this is for businesses only. It
isn’t a Windows Home-oriented
product. So while it might at first
seem the ideal solution for an aunt or
wayward teenager, the inherent
complexity of licensing for the
business and enterprise customer puts
it out of reach for domestic users.

TOP The Basic
version of Windows
365 costs £29 per
month plus VAT
MIDDLE Each setup
comes with Office
preinstalled, but
you’ll need a licence
BELOW Your
selection of apps is
quite limited, even
on the top tier

@PCPRO

Windows10options

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Windows 10 end-of-life
security reality check
Davey Winder explains how vulnerable
you’ll be if you decide to carry on using
Windows 10 past its sell-by date
Windows 10 is not yet an ex-Windows. It is not
preaching to the choir eternal, and it has not ceased
to be. Yet, it will soon become as dead as the parrot in
that famous Monty Python sketch. So, what will this
mean in terms of the security of your data?
First of all, dates and details are important here.
Windows 10 Home and Professional 21H2 won’t get
any more security updates, having hit end of support
on 13 June 2023. Organisations running Education
and Enterprise versions have until 11 June 2024.
If you’ve updated to version 22H2 then security
updates will continue until 14 October 2025. And note
that this applies to all versions, including Education
and Enterprise.

Running Windows 10 after
14 October 2025

The security implications of continuing to use a
legacy version of Windows long after the security
updates have stopped are best illustrated in one
word: WannaCry. The 12 May 2017 worm was
spread using a vulnerability within the Microsoft
Windows server message block (SMB) protocol. A
vulnerability that had been patched two months
prior. Organisations that hadn’t yet patched, or
couldn’t patch as they were running unsupported
versions of Windows, were most exposed.
Recent research revealed that some 76% of the
vulnerabilities used in ransomware attacks in
2022 were at least three years old. The oldest
dated from 2012. These were not all Windows
vulnerabilities, of course, but it does stress the
importance of keeping up to date with patching.
While there’s no such thing as absolute
security, there is a spectrum of better to worse,
and running end-of-life software swings you
heavily towards the W. Unpatched vulnerabilities
spring to mind, but collateral damage also comes
into play. Not least, compliance issues in regulated
industries, legal liability if a breach can be shown
to come back to an unsupported system, and even
the likes of Cyber Essentials Plus certification not
being available, which could swing your
customers away to certified competitors.

Real-world security
mitigations

The requirement for a TPM 2 chip to run Windows
11 means that a lot of older hardware isn’t up to the
job, and upgrading large numbers of machines is
not an option for some businesses. However, most
new computers will be compliant, and there aren’t
too many UI issues when switching from 10 to 11.

Certainly not as many as when switching from XP
to 7, for example.
When it comes to the remaining mitigations,
these can be split into three groups: high-cost, wing
and a prayer, and practical.
The high-cost option will be if Microsoft offers
extended support. This has been the norm
historically, and while there’s no guarantee that
it will happen with Windows 10, I’d be extremely
surprised if it didn’t. I’d be equally surprised if the
cost weren’t enough to bring a tear to the finance
director’s eye. A cost that increases with every year
it’s renewed. Migrating to Windows 11 will likely
sound cheap by comparison.
Then there’s the wing and a prayer option, by
which I mean the simple fact that Microsoft has a
history of releasing “emergency” security updates
for unsupported software when the circumstances
are severe enough: WannaCry patches for XP and
Vista in 2017, PrintNightmare patch for Windows 7 in
2021. The problem is that for each of these critical
situations, there are hundreds of critical and
high-rated vulnerabilities that will go unpatched.
Relying on out-of-band emergency updates doesn’t
make for a workable security policy.

Practical mitigations?

Which brings us nicely to the answer for most
people, most of the time: the practical mitigations.
Faced with criminal actors who will be actively
looking to exploit unpatched Windows 10
vulnerabilities, there are numerous things you
can do to mitigate the risk of your legacy machines.
You will likely only need legacy support for specific
software needs, so run those within a virtual
environment where possible. If it’s a matter of
specialist hardware that can’t be run virtualised,
then look to network isolation instead.
You might also want to consider third-party
patch providers. These tend to fall into two camps:
virtual patching and micro-patching. The former has
the advantage of speed, as it applies an additional
security layer using pattern-matching to spot
known vulnerabilities. This is also a weakness if the
attacker obfuscates that vulnerability pattern.
Micro-patching, the best-known example being
0Patch for Windows, acts like a traditional vendor
patch, correcting the vulnerable executable code.
0Patch often releases patches before an official
Microsoft patch is available.
Let’s conclude with a reality check: the best risk
mitigation is to upgrade to the latest Windows
operating system.

31

The Honeyball
We asked Jon Honeyball to share the advice he would
give to someone down his local if they were still running
Windows 10 for personal or business use

W

hat’s that I hear
on the jukebox?
“All Good
Things (Come to
an End)” by
Nelly Furtado? How apt. For that
saying is as true for a balmy summer
as it is for operating system support.
Windows 10 has aged well, but the
carriage clock is ticking. Windows
10, 22H2 version, will go into
retirement on 14 October 2025. That
might be around two years away,
but it’s somewhat startling as to
how quickly that time will pass.
But, you ask, what am I to do?
The answer to that depends almost
entirely on where you are now.
Of course, you’re on the current
build of Windows 10 aren’t you? You
keep it up to date, patch all thirdparty code including browsers, and
have appropriate disaster recovery
and archive solutions in place? If
not, don’t even finish that pint: head
back to base and tick those boxes.
Note, by the way, that I consider
disaster recovery and archive
solutions to be two separate things.
This is not the time to go into
exactly why, but I hope the
answer is obvious enough.
While we’re talking hard truths,
don’t be lulled into a state of
relaxation due to the fact that
Windows 10 is still doing good work.
You wave me away. It fulfils my
needs, you say, and I can see the call
to change is falling on somewhat
deaf ears. Allow me to raise my
voice. Although it’s tempting to
put your head in the sand and
shout “La la la la”, this isn’t a wise
course to take.

Soft choices

Let’s walk though some
alternatives. The first and most
obvious answer is “upgrade to
Windows 11”. I understand why
you might prefer Windows 10’s
look and feel, and think that a
Start button should never be in

32

the middle of the screen. You might
find Microsoft’s attempts to make
things cuddly and helpful almost
offensive. But the inescapable
reality is that Windows 11 is the
path of least resistance for you
moving forward.
Therefore, if you have an upgrade
path, then I would recommend that
you take it.

Old hardware

However, we will now hit some
roadblocks. There is perfectly
serviceable hardware out there
running Windows 10, and it cannot,
at least at present, upgrade to
Windows 11. I have such a device
here (don’t ask me why I brought it
to the pub): a 27in Dell XPS all-inone desktop PC. It includes an Intel
Core i7-7700 CPU, but Microsoft’s
PC Health Check app says this isn’t
supported. At this point, there is a
temptation to say “that’s all folks!”
But it isn’t quite so clear cut.
The list that Microsoft uses to
determine whether something is a
valid upgrade target appears to be
changing over time. And it depends
on which version of Windows 10
you’re on. For example, I have seen
examples where joining the Insider
Build channel and then choosing the
Beta channel has allowed hardware
running Windows 10 to upgrade to
Windows 11, despite the Health
Check app saying it isn’t valid.
This might well happen to your
computer. On the assumption that
it’s reasonably recent hardware, it
might simply be that Microsoft
hasn’t yet finalised the upgrade path
for that combination of hardware.
That means it might come in the

near future, once some miracle has
occurred in Redmond that deems
that currently “not supported”
magically becomes “supported”.
So, if you’re in no rush, I would
stay put on Windows 10, and wait to
see if it becomes supported in the
next two years.
If you can’t wait, then try the
Insider trick with the Beta channel,
and maybe that will deliver the
upgrade for you now. After all,
you’ve got a full backup of all your
data, and a disaster recovery plan in
place to take you back to Windows
10 should everything go badly
wrong. You have, haven’t you?

Hard choices

The next alternative is to consider
changing the hardware. While this
isn’t such a big deal in a business
or corporate environment, where
one-quarter of the hardware estate
is changed out each year, it can
be something of a shock to the
home user.
Nevertheless, it’s worth looking
at the device and considering its age.
A PC that’s pushing towards teenage
years is going to become a reliability
liability. If it’s nearly reaching its
tenth birthday, it might be worth
considering buying new hardware,
especially if it’s a laptop, a market
segment that has seen huge
improvements in the past decade.
That way, you’ll get Windows 11
by default, new hardware and
current driver support, and a future
support plan from Microsoft that
runs for the foreseeable future. Even
if Windows 12 is released next year,
Windows 11 will continue in support
until nearly the end of this decade.

Although it’s tempting to put your head
in the sand and shout “La la la la”, this
isn’t a wise course to take

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Windows10options

verdict
If you do decide to change
hardware, then don’t immediately
throw away your current machine.
Make sure all of your data is safe,
and consider moving to a different
OS platform as detailed elsewhere in
this article. My favourite is Linux
Mint Cinnamon (see p28), simply
because it’s the most “Windowslike” that I’ve found. There are
tools to let you try it out, booting
from a USB stick. And it’s usually
simplicity itself to repartition the
hard disk and allow Mint to sit
alongside the existing Windows
installation. You might well be
stunned as to how quickly Mint will
run on relatively recent hardware.
Of course, everything comes
down to apps. If your work rotates
around Microsoft Office and web
apps, then LibreOffice and a choice
of browsers will deliver everything
you need. If you’re wedded to a
rather old version of Photoshop,
then more consideration needs to
be taken. And then the dual-boot
mode can be useful to keep the old
Windows installation for
irreplaceable tasks, and use the Mint
installation for all ongoing work.
If Linux doesn’t appeal, don’t
throw it away. Not without reading
Lee’s comments on p27.

Business choices

What’s that? You run a small
business? I really should be
invoicing for this advice, but buy me
another pint and we can talk.
Tortured scene-setting aside, a
different set of rules apply if you’re a
small business. That’s due to the
benefits of tax write-offs, and the
requirements of businesses to have
reliability. There’s little point in
sending a travelling salesman to a
customer 150 miles away only for
the laptop to die when they arrive.
For a small business, then, your
choices are simple. Upgrade now to
Windows 11 if you can. If the
hardware won’t support it, leave
upgrading the hardware until
an appropriate point is met, but
ensure that everything has been
transitioned to new hardware by no
later than 1 March 2025. That gives
six months to ensure there are no
unexpected problems.
This date, however, means that
work needs to start now on

considering how to move businesscritical apps forwards to Windows
11. Again, if the users are just
working in Microsoft Office and a
web browser, with a smattering of
Teams meetings, then there are
unlikely to be issues. But small
businesses have a habit of acquiring
some very weird and wacky apps,
often written years ago, and
unfortunately often out of support.

I’m no fan of unnecessary landfill, but a
PC that’s pushing towards teenage years
is going to become a reliability liability
Custom apps

If you have such a line of business
application, and support is a
historical memory, then work
must start now to decide what to
do. Is there a newer version from
the same developer? Can the data
be exported and read into an
alternative application? What
will be the cost of the licensing,
along with realistic costs for
installation, and then training
of the existing users?
If it relates to your business
accounts, then talking to your
accountants about making the
change at year-end can certainly
help. Only the desperate change
accounts packages in the middle
of a financial year.
If the app is so critical that you
can’t move from it, and it doesn’t
work on Windows 11, then you have
a ticking time bomb. Consider
trying to run it in a virtual machine,
although this approach can add
more complexity than it fixes.
Finally, look carefully at the
hardware you have and consider
how it is ageing. What is the risk of
that machine going bang, and its
impact on your business process?
This is an especially acute issue in
the smaller end of the SMB market,
where hope triumphs all sense.
And now, just like Nelly so aptly
sung, this lovely time we’ve had
discussing Windows 10 must come
to an end. What’s that? Another, for
the road? Well, it’s only a short
walk home, I suppose.

33

Supercharge
Chrome& Edge
with these

10BRILLIANT
EXTENSIONS
Last month we investigated
browsers that could speed
up your work. This month,
Nik Rawlinson finds
ten extensions
for Chrome
holdouts

34

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

hrome is the most
popular web
browser in the
world, and there are
good reasons for
that: it’s not only
underpinned by one
of the biggest names on the net, it’s
supported by an active community of
extension developers. A huge library
of extensions massively increases the
range of tasks that Chrome can
accomplish, making it as much a
productivity platform as it is a
window on the web.
Here’s our pick of ten essential
extensions that can save you time and
enhance your web experience,
whether you’re a casual browser, a
power user or an online professional.
You don’t even have to be using
Chrome to make use of them – you
can also install Chrome extensions in
Microsoft Edge to get the exact same
benefits (see pcpro.link/350edge).
If you have your own suggestions
to add to the list, let us know at
letters@pcpro.co.uk.

Chromeextensions
different browsers will give you some
real-world data to work with. To use
this feature, open the extension’s
options and make sure the box beside
Enable Web Speed is ticked.

C

1 Extension Manager
pcpro.link/350c1

There are hundreds of thousands of
Chrome extensions in existence –
some on the Chrome Web Store,
others distributed via GitHub or
personal websites. While the browser
might have no trouble dealing with
dozens of extensions, it can quickly
get confusing when you need to
navigate them yourself.
That’s why the first extension
you install should be an extension
manager. There are several to
choose from, but we’ve opted
for the simply named Extension
Manager on account of its quick
and easy management tools.
Extension Manager lets you
browse your installed extensions in
a list or grid, import and export
extension lists, and customise the
layout of the manager, with control
over icon size, columns, and light
and dark UI options.
Where Extension Manager really
comes into its own is its ability to
switch between extension sets
depending on what you’re doing.
Just open the manager’s settings and
click Group in the sidebar to start
setting up extension groups; you
might have one for home and another
for work, or you could create
task-focused groups for writing,
video calls, online shopping and so
on. Each group gets its own tab on the
dashboard; click through the tabs,
then click on the icons for each
extension that should be included in
that group. Once you’ve set up your
groups, you can instantly switch

3 Scribe: AI
Documentation,
SOPs & Screenshots
pcpro.link/350c3

between them using the dropdown
menu in the Manager panel. You can
also create rules that automatically
enable or disable extensions when
you visit a specified domain.

ABOVE Extension
Manager helps you
organiseextensions
into logical groups

2 Speedtest by Ookla
pcpro.link/350c2

Is the web running slow? If it’s a
consistent problem, you should take
it up with your ISP – but not before
you’ve gathered some evidence.
When our broadband starts to lag, we
head for Ookla Speedtest (speedtest.
net), which has so far performed
around 50 billion tests across more
than 15,000 servers. Its Chrome
extension lets you launch a test
directly from the toolbar, making it
effortless to check your broadband
performance whenever you need to.
The stripped-down interface
will be immediately familiar if you’ve
ever used the speedtest.net site.
Simply click the single button to
perform ping, upload and download
tests without leaving the site you’re
already browsing.
The plugin also has a second
function which is very useful for
anyone running their own website:
it can calculate how long the site
you’re currently viewing took to load.
Search engines
use load times
as a gauge when
ranking results,
so reducing
them as far as
possible is very
worthwhile.
Ideally, you
want your page
to load in less
than two
seconds, or
three at a
push; anything
longer than this
needs attention.
Being able to
quickly check
at different
times of day
and through

BELOW Scribe can
watch what you’re
doing and make a
screenshot of it

BELOW A mile from
a large city centre,
the broadband
isn’t great

Screenshots are a powerful tool for
sharing all types of information and
instructions, but taking and
organising multiple grabs can be slow
and fiddly. Enter Scribe. Once you’ve
installed it and signed up for an
account, it watches what you’re doing
and takes a screenshot of every action,
including clicks, button presses and
text field entries. When you click a
link, button or field, it’s highlighted,
and the screenshot is intelligently
cropped to put the active element at
the centre of the frame without
unnecessary distractions. Better yet,
each screenshot is briefly annotated.
Thus, if you want to show someone
a process of
clicking in a
search box
containing
the hint
“search
term”, typing
“GPU” then
clicking
“Go”, you
simply need
to perform
those actions
yourself and
you’ll see
three steps
added to the script. The first will be a
cropped image of the search box,
labelled “Click the ‘search term’
field”; the second will be the
annotation “Type GPU” without a
grab; and the third will be another
cropped grab of the search box with
the “Go” button highlighted. The final
annotation will be “Click Go”. You
can then click the “stop” button to
review your steps: at this point you
can optionally edit the annotations
before exporting the result as a PDF or
embedding it in a web page.
The free Basic plan is designed
for browser-based tasks, but there
are two other paid tiers that add
support for step-by-step capture
of other applications, and can
export workflows in HTML or
Markdown formats.

4 Perplexity – AI
Companion
pcpro.link/350c4

There’s a skill to crafting questions
that will get the best results from AI.
35

If you don’t have that knack, try
Perplexity. To use it, simply open the
add-on’s drop-down UI and type a
question, such as “What is the average
annual rainfall in Britain?”, or “How
many singles did Toto release?”
By default, Perplexity then
performs a web-wide search for data,
then uses its findings to compile an
answer, giving you the best features
of a natural language tool and search
engine in one. The “facts” in the
answer are referenced so you can
see where they come from, which
makes fact-checking the output
quicker and less arduous.
One possible use for this kind of
content is to improve a website or
report by generating references that
lead directly to authoritative
publications. You might also want
to use it to enrich your own site’s

internal structure by producing
cornerstone content that draws
together related pages. For example,
if you maintain a site about electric
cars, you might ask Perplexity to
recommend chargers, explain the
differences between rapid and
non-rapid units, outline what
subsidies are available, explain three
phase power supplies and so on – but
to limit its search only to the domain
you own. With the results you can
compile a fully indexed page that
weaves new links through your site
and attracts more web traffic.
Perplexity can also help promote
your content through social channels:
visit any page and click the
Summarize button, and it will draw
out the page’s main points in flowing
copy. If it’s your own page, you can
paste the result into your social tool of
choice to promote it. And, if it’s
somebody else’s page, you can get the
gist of what they’re saying without
reading every word in detail.

5 FlowCrypt: Encrypt
Gmail with PGP
pcpro.link/350c5

A VPN can secure the connection
from your PC to a remote server – but
36

its protections only extend so far.
When you send someone an email,
it’s ultimately transmitted as plain
text from their mail server to their
PC, smartphone or tablet.
If you want a truly secure
communications channel, PGP
encryption can help – and FlowCrypt
provides an easy way to use it within
Gmail. Once you’ve installed the
extension, launch it from the toolbar
and sign in to the Gmail-hosted
account you want to use. You’ll need
to grant it permission to see your
emails, then create a passphrase that
only you know. This is used to
generate the public and private key
pair that will be used to encrypt and
decrypt messages. Once you’re done,
log in to Gmail as usual and you’ll see
that the regular Compose button has
been supplemented by a Secure
Compose button.
When you click this
you’ll get the option
to encrypt, sign or
both encrypt and
sign your new
message before
sending. If you’ve
opted to encrypt
the message and
included an
attachment, that
will also be
encrypted.
FlowCrypt is free
to install and use for

BELOW Shut down
tabs and save their
locations to a list to
save resources

LEFT Perplexity
summarised this
page in just a few
seconds

BELOW FlowCrypt
enables you to
keep your Gmail
activity secure

waste considerable resources in the
background while you’re working in
a different tab. OneTab can slash
resource usage by closing your
unused tabs – while maintaining a
private quick-access list of their

addresses so you can instantly restore
any closed pages with a single click.
This list can also be conveniently
shared with others; for example, if
you’ve been compiling a shortlist of
venues for an upcoming conference,
you might save the pages to OneTab,
then click the “Share as web page”
link to create a shareable link that
you can send to colleagues via email,
Slack or whatever your preferred
communications platform might be.
If you’d rather keep things
completely local, you can also copy
the links directly to your clipboard, as
well as importing and exporting tab
lists, and locking, starring and
renaming groups.

7 uBlock Origin
pcpro.link/350c7

domains with fewer than 100 users.
There are some additional advanced
features that are only available in the
paid edition, but most personal users
and small businesses will find all they
need in the gratis implementation.
You’ll find a comparison table listing
the full feature set of both tiers at
pcpro.link/350flowcrypt.

6 OneTab

pcpro.link/350c6
Running too many browser tabs
can seriously impact system
performance. And if the active sites
include scripts or video, they can

Another way to save resources is to
block extraneous content. uBlock
Origin, which is free and open source,
does just this. There are versions for
Firefox and Edge as well as Chrome.
uBlock Origin blocks embedded
web content based on publicly
available lists, which typically
have specific focuses such as
removing social media buttons
and widgets, cookie banners,
GDPR overlays and other unwanted
notices. You can choose which lists
you want to use, and you can also
configure the extension yourself
to block pop-ups, scripts or large
media on specific domains.
Conversely, you can mark
individual sites as trusted, in which
case no filtering will be applied.
This can be helpful if you don’t
want to block resources on internal
domains, or a site you rely on doesn’t
work properly when resources are
put out of reach.
To provide reassurance that
uBlock Origin is on the up and up,

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

all code – plus any ongoing changes
– is available for inspection through
GitHub, and if you want to support
the project, developer Raymond Hill
asks benefactors to donate to list
maintainers rather than himself.

8 Share to Mastodon
pcpro.link/350c8

Microblogging service Mastodon is
one of the biggest social sites in the
Fediverse (see issue 348, p40) – and its
popularity is growing, hitting more
than ten million users earlier this
year. It’s a long way off being a serious
challenge to Facebook or X, but plenty
of individuals and businesses are
seeing the benefit of its open model.
This extension makes it easier to
maintain a rich presence on
Mastodon. Once you’ve set up your
home instance, a single click on the
extension will create a new post
containing a link to the page you’re
currently browsing. If you want to be
more specific, you can highlight part
of a page and right-click to use that
content as the basis of your post.
If you’ve configured several
instances and logins in the
extension’s settings, you can select
between them before posting, which
makes it easy to direct content to
specific feeds if you’re writing for
several different audiences.
Regular Mastodon user should
also check out the
Mastodon Air theme
extension (pcpro.
link/350mastodonair): it
gives the standard
Mastodon layout a gentle
brush-up, with control
over background, text
and accent colours, as
well as the ability to hide
trends and About links.

9 Toggl Track:
Productivity &
Time Tracker
pcpro.link/350c9

If you work from home
– on professional or
personal projects – an

automated activity
tracker makes it
easy to track how
you’re spending
your screen time.
Toggl is a free
browser-based
solution for five or
fewer users, which
is ideal for home
workers and
solopreneurs.
To use it you’ll
just need to set up
an account at
toggl.com, which you can do from
within the extension. Answer a few
questions about who you are and how
you plan to use it, and you’re good to
go. Once you
start tracking, it
will watch what
you’re doing in
the browser and
keep a log. You
can optionally
add a manual
note to each
session to
describe the
job involved.
As well as
passively
monitoring your
activity, Toggl
offers a built-in
Pomodoro timer
to help keep you
motivated, and
there are various options for starting
timings automatically, stopping at a
specified time each day, or posting
notifications when the timer is
running but the PC is idle.
Toggl integrates with an
impressive range of third-party web
apps, including business essentials
such as Xero, Zendesk, Trello, Slack,
and Salesforce, and while it’s easiest
to enable them all up front, you can
manually deactivate any that you
don’t want to include in your log.

Chromeextensions
LEFT Blockelements
onawebpagewith
helpfrompublicly
maintainedlists

BELOW Generate
accuratetimesheets
bytrackingyour
onlineactivities

ABOVE Setting up
snippets can save
you a lot of typing
in the long run

LEFT Quickly and
easily share
content to several
Mastodoninstances

10 Text Blaze:
Templates and
Snippets
pcpro.link/350c10

Most jobs involve a certain amount
of writing the same sentences or
paragraphs many times over – be they
boilerplate text, caveats for a standard
offer, or your contact details. Text
Blaze saves you time and tedium
by storing these standard phrases as
snippets, which you can insert into
any text field by typing a shortcut
with a slash. For example, you might
create one with your standard email
signoff as “/bye”, and another with
your contact details under “/me”.
It’s up to you what you choose as
your shortcuts – they only have to
make sense to you. Once you’ve set
them up, typing a shortcut and
pressing the Return button instantly
pastes in the associated text. Text
Blaze works across all websites,
and if you want to use a shortcut
in a text box, you can right-click
the text space and select it from
the context menu.
Snippets aren’t limited to simple
plain text, either. You can use a
wide range of formatting tools, and
even insert dynamic elements such
as the contents of the clipboard or
today’s time and date. Text Blaze
can even calculate future dates, so
if you were writing a covering note
to be used every time you attach an

invoice to an email, for instance, you
could add a variable to specify the
payment deadline as 30 days from
the present date.
The free basic plan lets you create
up to 20 snippets with a maximum
of 2,500 characters per snippet.
Upgrading to the Pro version costs
around £29 per year and lets you store
1,000 snippets with a maximum of
25,000 characters each, as well as
unlocking a range of advanced
features such as date choosers and
dropdown menus. The top-tier
Business plan (around £67 per year)
allows up to 4,000 snippets of 50,000
characters, with snippet change
histories and usage statistics.
37

BEST OF
IFA 2023
WHAT WERE THE BIGGEST RELEASES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
FROM THIS YEAR’S EUROPEAN SHOWCASE OF ALL THINGS TECH?
PC PRO TRAWLED BERLIN MESSE’S MANY HALLS TO FIND OUT

A

t the start of September this
year, almost 200,000 people
descended upon Berlin for the
world’s biggest trade show
dedicated to consumer
electronics and home
appliances: IFA. It’s a show
with a long and glistening
history, too. This is where Philips unveiled
the CD, Telefunken the first widely
available TV sets and Sony the world’s
first video cassette player.
Unless we missed it, nothing to match
the import of those releases happened at
this year’s show, which celebrates its
100th anniversary next year, but it was a
bustling event. One that suggests trade
shows are on their way back to full health
after three extremely difficult years
because of Covid.
Here, we pick out the key trends from
the showfloor and the products that caught
our eye. We also give six products our
best-of-show awards.

CONTRIBUTOR: Tim Danton

I

A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE?

FA’s show organisers made much of sustainability at
this year’s show. And it isn’t just for posturing:
according to Oliver Merlin, IFA’s managing director,
this is a response to consumer demand. “I would say,
even only a year or so ago, sustainability was at maybe
number four, number five [in reasons to buy a
product], right behind the price, behind the brand,
behind the quality of the product,” he said at the
show’s opening press conference. “Now, sustainability
is one or two.”
That was based on data from IFA’s partner,
consumer research specialists GfK, and was no doubt
one of the reasons that the show created an area
dedicated to sustainability for the first time. Called the
Sustainability Village, it contained a handful of
companies with the S word at their heart, along with
an area for speakers. These included Fairphone,
whose employees gave practical demonstrations on
how to upgrade phones. And we attended one session
on how robots could help to make industry more
sustainable, rather than being a further drain on
components and minerals.
Would we have liked to see a bigger Sustainability
Village, packed to the hilt with companies that put
environmental considerations first? Yes, absolutely.
But even though only Ambient Photonics, below, made
our cut for this feature, we saw many companies
around the halls that were doing great things.

AMBIENT PHOTONICS

Even if Ambient Photonics becomes huge, you will
never hear the company’s name. That’s because it
creates solar panel technology rather than the final
products; and who knows the name of the company
38

that supplies those tiny panels that power calculators?
There are two things that mark Ambient out from the
norm. First, its panels are demonstrably three or four
times more effective than the incumbent tech. The
second is that one of its key backers is Amazon.
We suspect its products will be tucked within
keyboards, mice and other accessories within months
rather than years. And if that means less reliance on
batteries and mains power – cutting down the clutter
of cables in the process – then it has to be progress.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

HUNE

A good five-minute walk away
from the Sustainability Village,
tucked into a corner of one of
the many halls apparently
dedicated to purveyors of
off-grid power supplies, we ran
into Hune. This company, based in
Argentina and Italy, puts sustainability and
transparency at the heart of what it does, right
down to publishing an impact report for every
product it produces.
So far that includes chargers, earphones, cables
and a speaker, but don’t be alarmed if you visit
hune.eco and see prices in the hundreds of dollars.
Those are Mexican pesos, and the Mex$399 it
charges for earphones equates to around £20. Its
upcoming Fauna headphones, complete with active
noise cancelling, will cost around £50. If Hune gets a
distributor in the UK, at least, and we hope it does.

FIXFIRST

With so much space in the Sustainability Village,
it was perhaps a missed opportunity to tuck
environment-friendly companies such as FixFirst
into the IFA Next area. There
we found Sebastian Daus,
co-founder and CEO of
fixfirst.io, to talk about the
organisation’s mission: “We
want to make the repairing
and circularity of products
easy,” he told us.
His main weapon is a
software platform, “an
Airbnb for repair”. This
oversimplifies what the
company has to offer,

BestofIFA2023

though, which
includes an AI tool
that can help
support staff to
identify faults and
fixes, a remote video
service and an
accelerator programme to
help companies think in a more
circular fashion. Daus told us
FixFirst is already working with
a couple of “bigger brands in the
electronic space and retailers”.

BELKIN

A quick word for Belkin. As we chatted about its trio
of new 15W Qi2 BoostCharge chargers, its
spokesperson casually mentioned that not only will
all of its new products be built from as much
post-consumer recycled plastic as possible, but
that it is also updating its most popular designs to
use PCR instead of virgin plastic (something Belkin
announced at CES but we missed at the time).
Every little helps.

FAIRPHONE 5

During his
announcement of the
Honor Magic V2 phone
(see p42), Honor’s
CEO, George Zhao,
mentioned that phones
have become boring.
He’s 100% right. And
while Honor’s approach
is to produce one of the
most unrepairable phones ever, Fairphone is going
in the opposite direction with the Fairphone 5: you
can repair almost every component that can go
wrong. The battery, its all-new OLED screen, the
USB-C port, the speakers and the trio of cameras.
Fairphone backs this up with a five-year
warranty and says it will support Android
updates during that time, and aims to keep
support running for ten years. You can
order the Fairphone 5 right now, albeit at a higher
price of £649 compared to £479 for the Fairphone 4
(which is still on sale). Read our review on p48.
39

ROBOTS

S

ome optimists – you could even call them
pessimists – think that robots are going to be
everywhere within ten years. Helping out in care
homes and hospitals, driving our cars, performing
operations. But if IFA 2023 is anything to go by, we
have many problems yet to solve.
Yes, some robots are well developed. Dozens of
stands, from the glossy to the ramshackle, offered
robot vacuum cleaners, a handful showcased robot
mowers, and we wandered past one robot cleaning
windows. Sadly, the latter was more like a vertical
robot vacuum cleaner than anything Isaac Asimov
wrote about.
But there are signs of more intelligent,
general-purpose robots. Read on to discover
what makes Desdemona special, and how a
French company is indeed hoping to support
carers with a helper on wheels.

DESDEMONA

The idea behind Desdemona, making her European
debut at IFA 2023? To become the world’s first
robot celebrity, the makers claim. Clearly they’ve
never heard of Max Headroom. But where Max’s
wordplay was all scripted, Desdemona is powered
by SingularityNet’s artificial intelligence and can
engage in fluent conversation with you. In virtually
any language. She has the added advantage of being
able to sing (not that we heard this at the show,
sadly), and unlike most pop stars her range and
talents are theoretically unbounded.

Up close, there’s still something
weird about humanoid robots and
their near-perfect skin. Especially
when Desi (as she’s called) turns her
head towards you as you attract her
attention, which is almost as
unnerving as her suggesting that
she’s intrigued by the idea of robots
taking over the world.
Desdemona is the result of a
partnership with Hanson Robotics,
which gained plenty of fame as the “world’s
first robot citizen” – she even made an appearance
on Good Morning Britain. According to the joint
venture’s creative director, Ben Ditto, who we spoke
to at the show, they think of Desdemona as Sophia’s
little sister. Let’s just hope she doesn’t grow legs and
act on her world-dominating ambitions.

ENCHANTED TOOLS

While humanoid robots with semi-realistic skin have
a habit of creeping people out, Enchanted Tools has
taken a different approach: its robot helpers have
cute, cartoon-like faces and navigate via giant
rollers. Just like Desdemona, however, they’re at
the prototype stage, with actual robots
not going on sale until 2025 – and for a
cost of around €30,000.
They’re designed for hospitals,
care homes, hotels, restaurants and
museums, and we were told that in
these early stages of development
they’ve gone down very well with
older patients. They can already
carry trays up to 3kg in weight,
with ongoing work to increase
that further. Enchanted Tools is
40

a French company and it expects the first rollout to
be in Parisian hospitals, but if all goes well then the
rest of Europe will follow.
Unlike Desdemona, we would actually welcome
these robots into the PC Pro residential home. Not
least because they had a humorous habit of
wandering away from their owners, which meant
the CEO of the company had to cling on to his charge
during a TV interview we gatecrashed.

ROBOROCK Q5 PRO

Out of the seemingly hundreds of companies that
make robot vacuum cleaners, Roborock has
emerged to be one of the market leaders. It
announced two more in its already extensive lineup
at IFA (along with a washer-dryer that cleared its
own lint): the deluxe Q8 Max with object avoidance
for €499 and the more basic but affordable Q5 Pro
for €349. But this isn’t really a basic model at all, with
a clever dual brush to pick up fur matched with the
option for automatic emptying, so you only have to
empty the bin (which attaches to the base) every
couple of months. This may not be robots as sciencefiction writers intended, but we still like them.

@PCPRO

I

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BestofIFA2023

ANOUTDOORLIFE

f we never see an off-grid power supply again, it
will be too soon. At one point, it felt like every other
stand we passed offered variants on the same
thing: a cuboid box of varying size powered by as big
a battery that could fit inside. You then simply plug in
your devices of choice and start working.
Speaking to people on the stands, it became
clear there were two main problems being
addressed. One was the increasing number of
blackouts and brownouts happening around the
world, including many US states. The second was a
trend towards outdoors living, particularly camping.
It turns out people really can’t live without ready
access to electricity any more.

URBANISTA MALIBU

It may take us decades to fully switch from
carbon-based fuel sources for our homes and
offices, but there’s nothing to stop us switching to
solar power for peripherals today. Urbanista
already produces solar-powered headphones and
earphones, and at IFA it announced the Malibu
outdoor speaker.
This outputs 2 x 10W audio and comes with IP67
protection against rain, for when the solar panel
integrated into its top isn’t soaking up the sun’s rays.
In fact, you may never need to charge the Malibu.
And it will soon be on sale for £149. To sign up for
updates, head to urbanista.com/pages/malibu.

LG STANBYME GO

Perhaps the one thing that’s been stopping you from
camping is the prospect of not being able to watch
TV? Well, rejoice, because LG has solved the
problem via a TV-in-a-briefcase.
At heart it’s a 27in 1,920 x 1,080 IPS display, so
can be used as a normal screen too, but LG is
working with partners such as Apple, Amazon and
Disney to give that vital out-of-suitcase smart TV
experience. You can also stream Spotify via four
built-in speakers. It’s heavy, due to a built-in battery
that can keep the TV going for three hours.
The StanbyME Go is already available in South
Korea and on pre-order in the US for $999.

JACKERY SOLAR GENERATOR 300 PLUS

Two things makes Jackery’s off-grid power supplies stand out. One is the design of the chargers,
with a distinctive orange flash that breaks up the monotony of what would otherwise be a dull, grey
box. The second is the maturity of its solar panels, which can charge the all-new Solar Generator
300 Plus in four hours if you buy the optional 100W solar charger.
The 300 Plus is designed for camping in particular, and at 5kg it’s carryable, too. With a
capacity of 288Wh, and an output of 300W that gives it its name, it can recharge a laptop
up to three times and a phone 13 times. It’s available from Amazon from £349.

41

I

PHONES AND WATCHES

FA 2023 isn’t the main launchpad for phones and
tablets: that’s left for Mobile World Congress in
Barcelona at the end of February each year.
However, we do tend to see offbeat launches, and
this year was no different.

HONOR V PURSE

The V Purse was announced with great fanfare by
Honor’s CEO George Zhao, and we were certainly
intrigued by it. It uses an incredibly similar design to
the Huawei Mate Xs 2, with the screen folding
around the outside of the phone rather than being
inside. We’ve always liked this design, but
the Xs 2 isn’t available for sale in the
UK. Now, Honor has added its own
twist by turning it into a purse.
Well, kind of.
There are three key
differences compared to the
Huawei phone. One, Honor adds
fashionable, interchangeable
straps so that it can be carried like a
purse. Two, it’s created a bunch of
clever (and effective) screens that can
flow with you as you walk. We saw one furry version
that allowed you to stroke it. Three, it runs Android
rather than Huawei’s custom OS.
Just as we were going to press, Honor
announced that the Purse could be
pre-ordered in China for 5,999
yuan (around £665). So could this
phone be on sale in the UK by the
turn of the year? It’s possible, and
hopefully for a competitive price.

WITHINGS SCANWATCH 2

It’s hard not to like Withings’
approach to smartwatches. First
and foremost, you’re buying a watch:
it looks good on your wrist, lasts
for weeks on a single charge

and has a low-profile design (all
the more so if you choose the
38mm design in the ScanWatch 2’s case).
The ScanWatch 2 doubles down on health
sensors, with the headline feature being constant
skin temperature measurement. Changes here
could give you an early sign of underlying issues.
There’s also an ECG module, SpO2 monitoring and
all the usual sensors. It’s available now for £320.

TCL 40 NXTPAPER

With virtually no fanfare, TCL launched the 40
Nxtpaper smartphone series at IFA 2023. It even
took us a while to find the phone on TCL’s stand,
with a choice between the standard version for
€199 and its 5G variant for €249.
The idea is simple: rather than using
IPS or OLED displays, these phones
feature a 6.8in Nxtpaper display
that’s almost paper-like to touch
and is easy on the eyes. The
display doesn’t have the rich
colours of a normal phone, but
we would far rather read long
documents on this than our
normal phone. You can switch
to mono mode if you prefer, too.
We await UK pricing and availability,
but expect it to be almost immediate.

HONOR MAGIC V2

We already knew about the Magic V2; it was
launched in China in July. But IFA 2023 was the
first time we had seen it in the flesh in Europe,
and what an impressive device it is. The first
thing that strikes you is its slimness; as Honor
CEO George Zhao put it during the company’s
keynote address, we have entered the
“millimetre era” for foldables at last. This
makes a real difference compared to, say, the
Galaxy Z Fold5, as the Magic V2 fits neatly into a
jeans pocket in the way the Fold5 simply can’t.
The rest of the phone is predictable enough,
with a trio of high-spec “rear” cameras, a
narrow front screen and Qualcomm’s latest
chipset in charge. The only surprise is that
Honor manages to squeeze a 5,000mAh
battery into its narrow confines, claiming to
outlast the iPhone 14 Pro even if you use the
main, unfolded screen.
So far, all we know about UK pricing is that
it’s likely to undercut Samsung by a good
amount. In China, the base model sells for
9,000 yuan, roughly £1,000, but we expect it to
be higher than that when it finally goes on sale.
One other thing: as with all foldables, the Magic
V2 looks tough to repair, so this doesn’t fit with
the sustainability trend.

A CREATIVE LIFE

I

FA isn’t a show geared towards creative
professionals, but two launches might just
have your credit card twitching…

LENOVO THINKVISION 27
3D MONITOR

First the bad news. This glasses-free 3D
monitor won’t be available until February
2024. Nor will it be cheap, with Lenovo
stating a price of €2,499. The good news is

42

that, for its target audience of creative
designers, we suspect it will be worth both
the wait and the price.
Acer has already shown how effective
glasses-free 3D tech is with its SpatialLabs
View and View Pro displays (see issue 344,
p58), but those were 15.6in portable screens.
When viewing 3D models, the more space the
better, and Lenovo implements it brilliantly
here. The technology works via eye-tracking
cameras and a lenticular lens on the panel

@PCPRO

BestofIFA2023

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LAPTOPS AND PCs

A

nyone hoping to catch sight of exciting new
laptops at IFA 2023 would have been
disappointed. MSI displayed its Commercial
14 laptop, but that was launched at Computex
in Taiwan back in May; the most interesting
action was happening away from the showfloor
in a private event hosted by Lenovo in a nearby hotel.
Fortunately, we were invited to take a look.

LENOVO LEGION 9i

If you’re only going to release one laptop at IFA, you
might as well make it a corker. That certainly seems
to be Lenovo’s thinking, as it has packed the Legion
9i with its own liquid cooling system.

That isn’t merely for show.
It means that it can supply
even more power to the Intel
Core i9-13980HX processor
and GeForce RTX graphics:
you can choose between an
RTX 4080 for £3,999 or an RTX
4090 for £4,599 when it goes
on sale at some point, we
hope, in October. Lenovo
says the design means it can
deliver 230W of total power to
the GPU/CPU combo, which is
quite a feat in a laptop that
measures between 18.9mm
and 22.9mm deep.
The 16in mini-LED also
looked superb during our play with
the device, with a 165Hz refresh rate and a choice
between DCI-P3 and sRGB factory-calibrated
colour spaces.

LENOVO LEGION GO

There was a positive
swagger to Lenovo’s staff
as they talked through the
Legion Go at its pre-IFA
launch. This is a straight-out
rival to the Asus ROG Ally
and Steam Deck, and
while both those portable
gaming devices have the

itself. This adjusts to send one pixel to your left eye,
the other to the right, in effect turning a 2D 4K
display into a 3D 2K display. It’s truly remarkable in
use, and the only software it needs is Lenovo’s own
3D Explorer to view the models.
It’s also a top-quality panel, calibrated to the
Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 colour spaces. We look
forward to testing the final model next year.

HUION KAMVAS PRO 19

Tucked away in one of the tougher-to-reach halls
at IFA, our eye was caught by this 19in graphics
tablet sitting on the Huion stand. While Huion was
a new name to us, you can buy its tablets in the UK
via its website at store.huion.com.

advantage of already being
released, it appears that
Lenovo has spent its time
wisely to produce a bettercooled, more versatile offering.
When we talked to the man
leading the presentation, Joey
Bell, he explained why he was so
confident. Due to the extra
space for cooling Lenovo has
allowed, he said there’s minimal
throttling, and that means he
was yet to find a game that
didn’t run smoothly on his
prototype. And this was a
prototype running on the AMD
Ryzen Z1 processor rather than
the Z1 Extreme, which will launch (the
company cautiously predicted) in October for £699.
That model includes 512GB of storage (there will
be a 1TB version), with all versions shipping with a
vivid 8.8in OLED screen. It’s bright, peaking at
500cd/m2, and covers 97% of the DCI-P3 gamut
according to Lenovo. You can choose between 800p
and 1600p modes, with refresh rates up to 144Hz.
As the Legion Go runs Windows 11, there’s even
the prospect of using it as a mini PC at a push. Lenovo
has built a trackpad into the right controller, and
when detached you can pop it into a magnetic holder
and it turns into an ingenious and effective mouse.
There’s even a kickstand so you don’t need to find a
way to prop up the screen when in this mode.

The Kamvas Pro 19 is its latest launch, and
aside from its sheer size it has 16,000 levels of
pressure sensitivity and a 4K resolution on
its side. You can use it flat or in an
easel-like position via an integrated
kickstand. And it works with either a
pen or fingers.
While our editor’s artistic
prowess has never been a
strength (that’s his “drawing”
of a house to the right), we
can reveal that it’s easy to use
and responds to the lightest touch. It
will be available this year for $1,000 in the
US, so hopefully less than £1,000 here.

43

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Fairphone5
The best Fairphone yet is also
the most repairable, but don’t
expect the pinnacles of speed
or image quality

SCORE
PRICE £541 (£649 inc VAT)
from shop.fairphone.com

I

t’s been two years since we
reviewed the Fairphone 4 (see
issue 328, p72), but this delay is
deliberate: the Dutch company wants
its phones to last for years. Buy the
Fairphone 5 and you’re guaranteed
five Android updates and eight years
of security updates, and Fairphone
hopes to extend the latter to ten years.
And where the Fairphone 4 has eight
separate parts that could be replaced
by an owner, this update includes ten
replaceable parts.
That’s great, but for the Fairphone
5 to be a success it must still meet
expectations for speed and quality.
Especially when it costs £649 for the
one available spec, with 8GB of RAM
and 256GB of storage; you can expand
the internal storage via a microSD card.

A modular approach

The most important aspect of the
design, of course, is that it’s modular.
Nothing beats the nostalgic feeling of
a plastic back that can be torn off at a
moment’s notice. The back is firmly
44

fixed and even when I dropped the
phone by accident during testing, it
remained stuck in place. After that
fall, there was no scratch to be seen on
the screen, which is protected by
Gorilla Glass 5.
This modular approach leads
to a chunky design compared to
normal phones. Fairphone has
scraped off a couple of
millimetres compared to the 4,
but you’ll notice its 9.6mm
thickness. Still, it sits well in
the hand and that plastic
rather than glass back means it
doesn’t slip on smooth
surfaces. The right-hand side
still holds the power button
with a built-in fingerprint
scanner, but this works much
better than on the Fairphone 4.
An improved IP55 rating
means it’s safe from heavy rain
or a shower jet. Don’t submerse
it in water, though. Finally, the
option with a transparent back
is a nice addition for users who
(rightly) like to brag about
their eco-friendly Fairphone 5,
or you can choose sky blue or
RIGHT The upgraded screen is now an
OLED panel with a 90Hz refresh rate

ABOVE It’s a cinch to
replace almost every
part of the Fairphone 5

matte black variants. All made,
naturally, from 100% recycled plastic.

Big display upgrade

Then we come to the screen, perhaps
the biggest upgrade over the Fairphone
4. Where this had an IPS display
with a 60Hz refresh rate and a
notch, the 5 includes an OLED
display with a 90Hz refresh
rate and punch-hole for the
selfie camera. In addition, the
screen bezels are smaller, so
the display is now 6.4in
instead of 6.3in. The edge
bezels are thicker than rivals,
but as the top and bottom
edges are the same size, you
get a fine, balanced design.
OLED technology delivers a
wider colour gamut than
before, but the screen isn’t
flawless. For example, certain
shades of red appear darker
than usual. Nor is there
support for HDR10 or similar
standards. What you do get is
excellent brightness, with a
maximum of 880cd/m2
ensuring easy readability; only
in the brightest summer sun
might you have trouble seeing
everything properly.

@PCPRO

Reviews

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

I’m not a fan of Fairphone’s
auto-brightness feature, however,
especially when watching videos
indoors. Usually it started fine, then
the screen would darken before going
brighter a few seconds later.

Camera boost

Fairphone has also tinkered with two
of the cameras. The main camera has a
larger sensor, which helps in low
light, while the selfie camera now has
a 50MP sensor instead of 25MP.
The DXOMark benchmark for
cameras gave the Fairphone 5 a 108
rating compared to 69 for its
predecessor, indicating the signficant
improvement. In natural light, the
main camera produces sharp images
with true-to-life colours and good
dynamic range. Parts of the photo
could be overexposed in artificial
light, but nothing I couldn’t quickly
fix in Google Photos. Selfies enjoy a
natural post-processing that adds a
warm hue and, even against strong
backlighting, the results are great.
I wish Fairphone had upgraded the
ultrawide camera, though. The first
photo I took with this was on a bridge
above a canal with trees on the bank.
The leaves of the trees at the edge of
the statue were indistinguishable
from each other. It looked like a
toddler had swept back and forth with
a green paintbrush. This pattern kept
recurring: the centre of the photo was
fine, but the edges showed noise and
sometimes even discolouration.
My other concern is over how slow
the camera app was to respond.
Videos especially took a
long time to save, and
you can’t take a new
photo or video while
the “save...”
message is on the
screen. Photos are
taken and saved
quickly, at least.

Power please

The delays may be
ironed out in software
updates, but they also
reflect the Fairphone 5’s
modest Qualcomm QCM6490 chip.
This has been chosen for stability – it
has guaranteed long-term updates –
rather than speed. Unfortunately, it’s
a poor choice for even undemanding
games such as Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links.
This game doesn’t falter on far

cheaper smartphones, but after
half an hour the Fairphone 5
became hot and I started to see
frame drops. I saw similar
problems on light games such as
Pokémon Go and Hearthstone,
and at one point the Fairphone 5
even got hot when I was
watching TikTok videos.
So, gamers shouldn’t choose
this phone. For everyone else,
the choice is more nuanced.
Geekbench 6 scores of 1,131
and 2,985 (single-core and
multicore respectively) are
roughly equivalent to Android
phones costing around £300,
and compare to 1,401 and 3,368
for the Google Pixel 7a (see issue
346, p68). The Fairphone 5 has
enough power for today,
overheating problems aside, but this
phone is likely to feel slow by 2028.
5G is present, so connection speeds
should be fine throughout the phone’s
life, but you’re stuck with Wi-Fi 6
rather than 6E for the phone’s life.
One more piece of good news is
that Fairphone won’t weigh you down
with bloatware: there’s the Fairphone
app and that’s it. All of which makes
the phone easier to update.

Battery swapouts

This brings us to another plus point:
when the supplied 4,200mAh battery
starts to deteriorate, it’s simplicity
itself to replace it. You may even
choose to buy a second at the time of
purchase (this costs €40), as this will
not only extend each unit’s
life but also give you the
option to swap it out if
the battery runs dry.
The Fairphone 5
supports 30W fast
charging, but
there’s no adapter
or cable in the box
to avoid wastage.
You can order
Fairphone’s charger
for €25, but because
Fairphone uses the
Quick Charge 3.0 standard,
almost every 30W charger will
charge the battery optimally: it took
about 30 minutes to go from empty to
50% with my charger. That charge
rate won’t win any prizes, but
Fairphone focuses on the health of
the battery rather than speed.
Wireless charging isn’t possible.

Sadly, battery life isn’t a
strength. Perhaps that’s why
the screen is set to 60Hz
refresh rates out of the box
rather than 90Hz. With light
to medium use, I eked out a
full day’s use, but if you scroll
too much on TikTok or watch
Netflix on your commute
home, you’ll have to charge it
in the evening. Games are the
death knell for the battery:
after barely an hour of
Hearthstone, I lost almost
half the charge.

Fair conclusion

On the one hand, this phone
is far too expensive for what
you get. Performance is slow
compared to similarly priced
phones, there are overheating issues,
ABOVE The new
and the battery is hardly a high-flyer.
transparent back lets
On the other hand, it’s a triumph.
your sustainable
Almost every part, from the cameras
creds shine through
and the screen to the battery and
speaker, can be easily replaced with
no more than a screwdriver.
Furthermore, the cameras are solid
and the screen has had a huge
upgrade in the form of an OLED
panel with a 90Hz refresh rate.
Away from the hardware, it comes
with an unrivalled five-year warranty,
along with software support well into
the 2030s. And every Fairphone 5 you
buy includes a $2.63 living wage bonus
for the people who made it. Fairphone
also invests in projects to reduce CO2
emissions, has a transparent supply
chain, and the assembly plant uses
100% renewable energy.
The final argument in the
Fairphone 5’s favour is that the
price needs to be looked at over the
course of years. If it lasts
“Almost every part, from
six-and-a-half years, for
the cameras and the screen the sake of argument,
that’s £100 a year, which
to the battery and speaker, is
likely to be far less than
can be replaced with no
the phone it replaces.
more than a screwdriver” BRAM LODEWIJKS

LEFT The cameras are
much improved since
the Fairphone 4

SPECIFICATIONS
8-core (2.7GHz/2.2GHz/1.9GHz) Qualcomm
QCM6490 SoC 8GB RAM Adreno 643L
graphics 6.5in 90Hz OLED screen, 1,224 x
2,700 resolution 5G 256GB storage IP55
rating triple 50MP/50MP/TOF 3D rear
cameras 50MP front camera Wi-Fi 6
Bluetooth 5.2 NFC removable 4,100mAh
battery USB-C 3 connector Android 13
76 x 9.6 x 162mm (WDH) 212g 5yr warranty
45

Geekom Mini IT 13

A beefy specification for a
mini PC, if you’re willing to
gamble on the comparatively
unknown company
SCORE
PRICE £583 (£699 inc VAT)
from geekom.co.uk

W

hen Intel announced it was
discontinuing its popular
line of NUC PCs, many may
have wondered if the mini-PC market
was collapsing. Fear not, if the Geekom
Mini IT 13 is anything to go by.
This compact unit packs in a feast
of decent components for a nearridiculous price. Inside you’ll find
Intel’s Core i9-13900H mobile
processor, partnered with 32GB of
DDR4 RAM. It’s not found wanting for
storage space, either, with a 2TB M.2
SSD included. There’s an Intel Wi-Fi
6E chip, ports aplenty
and Windows 11 Pro.
All this for £700!
For comparison, if
you wanted a Mac
mini with 32GB of
memory and 2TB
of storage, you’d
be looking at the
thick end of
£2,500, almost
four times the
price of this
machine.
Our suite of
benchmarks
confirm that this
little blue box is not short of
power. In Geekbench 6.1, it scored
2,445 in the single-core benchmarks
and 11,453 in the multicore section.
That’s roughly on a par with a 2021
MacBook Pro with 16GB of unified
memory, which scored 2,350 and
12,248 respectively.
However, the benchmarks suggest
Geekom isn’t squeezing every last
drop of power from that Core i9 chip.
That same processor pushed the
Huawei MateBook 16s (see p84) to
2,811 and 13,875 in Geekbench 6.1,
which is a double-digit percentage
BENCHMARKS
Geekbench 6.1 single-core

2,445
0

1,000

2,000

3,000

Geekbench 6.1 multicore

11,453
0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

3DMark Time Spy

1,922
0

46

5,000

jump. That contrasts with Intel’s NUC
machines, which tend to outperform
laptops with the same chips. Perhaps
the Geekom isn’t cooled as efficiently,
although this little machine’s fans
spin up to a clearly audible level at the
first sign of stress.
As you might expect, this isn’t a
rig that’s well suited to gaming. The
integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics are
just about good enough for games
such as Fortnite, where I managed
around 40fps at 4K with low-quality
graphics. It was playable, but far from
the smoothest gaming
experience I’ve ever
witnessed. That’s
backed up by the
benchmarks,
where a 1,922
score in
3DMark Time
Spy betrays
middling
skills. If you
want
something
better suited to
gaming, the
Ryzen-based
Geekom AS 6
with Radeon 680M graphics
delivers much stronger 3D
performance.
So, it’s not a gamer’s delight, but
the Mini IT 13 is well equipped for any
day-to-day tasks you might care to
throw at it. You could easily sit this
tiny PC beneath your monitor, or
even mount it to the back of the
screen with the supplied VESA
mount, and forget about it.
It’s not short of connections,
either. There are two USB-C 4 ports on
the rear, along with a pair of HDMI 2.0
ports, giving you plenty of options for
connecting external screens. Geekom
claims support for up to four displays,
but that would certainly be pushing

the capabilities of those integrated
graphics. There are a further three
USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, as well as a
solitary USB 2 connector. An SD card
reader sits on the side, with a 2.5GbE
socket on the back if you don’t want
to rely on the Wi-Fi.
Talking of stuff on the inside,
removing four Phillips screws on the
bottom of the Mini IT 13 gives you easy
access to the internals – something
you definitely couldn’t say about a
Mac mini – where the (occupied)
memory slots, SSD and wireless card
are within easy reach if you ever feel
the need to upgrade components.
ABOVE Two USB-C 4
Granted, you’re unlikely to want to do
and two HDMI 2.0
so for the foreseeable future if you’ve
ports give you lots of
gone for the top spec, but there’s a
options for connecting Core i5-13500H model with 16GB of
external screens
RAM that starts at only £499.
Which does beg the question: how
is Geekom able to knock these little
boxes out so cheaply? Certainly, it
seems something of a low-cost
operation based out of Shenzen in
China. We don’t know much about
its manufacturing facilities, while
support is offered via
“You’re buying a heck of a email or WhatsApp, and
lot of power for £700. More even then only between
than enough power to cope 8am and 7pm Central
Standard Time on
with regular desktop duties weekdays. That’s not
for years to come”
much cop if you run into
problems on a Saturday
morning. And if you do have a major
problem with your machine, it’s not
like there’s a Geekom shop on the high
street you can walk into and demand
something be done.
PC Pro readers who are used to
tinkering and fixing stuff themselves
LEFT The tiny blue box
might be willing to take a gamble, but
can be tucked away
out of sight or fixed to
this isn’t a PC we would recommend
the rear of a screen
for someone who might regularly lean
on the tech support lines. Still, there’s
no escaping the fact that you’re
buying a heck of a lot of power for
£700. More than enough power to
cope with regular desktop duties for
years to come. If you’re willing to take
a risk on a challenger brand, you could
be in for a tidy reward. BARRY COLLINS
BELOW There’s lots of
power on offer, but
tech support could be
problematic for some

SPECIFICATIONS
14-core (6 P-cores, 8 E-cores) Intel Core
i9-13900H processor
32GB DDR4-3200
RAM Intel Iris Xe
graphics Wi-Fi 6E
Bluetooth 5.2 2.5Gb
Ethernet 2TB M.2
PCI-E SSD 2 x USB-C
4 3 x USB-A 3.2 Gen
2 1 x USB-A 2 2 x
HDMI 2 3.5mm jack
SD card reader
Windows 11 Pro
117 x 112 x 49mm
(WDH) 652g 1yr
RTB warranty

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Dell Inspiron 24
All-in-One

By no means powerful or
luxurious, but this simple
work machine produces the
goods for a competitive price
SCORE
PRICE As reviewed, £624 (£749 inc VAT)
from dell.co.uk

I

t’s surprisingly difficult to find a
budget all-in-one PC that doesn’t
make huge sacrifices somewhere.
If it’s not the quality of the screen, it’s
the low-powered components. If it’s
not the specification, it’s woeful
design. While the Dell Inspiron 24
All-in-One is hardly the pinnacle of
perfection, it’s the best attempt we’ve
yet seen at this price.
Let’s start with the design. The
Inspiron 24 is a simple yet sleek
machine that’s easy to move around,
thanks to its relatively light weight of
5.2kg. (Perhaps I don’t need to
emphasise that
it’s made of
plastic rather
than iMac-style
metal.) That’s
roughly the same
weight as three
laptops. Setup
was a breeze, as I
only needed to
remove it from
its box, attach
the stands at the
bottom to sit on the
desk and plug in the power supply.
Not everyone will love the
white finish, but it adds a touch of
brightness compared to the industrystandard black or grey. Still, it would
have been nice for customisation
specialist Dell to offer different
coloured finishes that could be
selected when ordering.
You get more choice when it comes
to components, including AMD 7000
series processors or 13th generation
Intel chips. All of these are mobile
versions, as is typically the case with
all-in-one designs. Dell sent us a
BENCHMARKS
Geekbench 6.1 single-core

2,349
0

1,000

2,000

3,000

Geekbench 6.1 multicore

7,106
0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

3DMark Time Spy

1,252
0

5,000

sample with a Core i7-1355U,
supported by 16GB of DDR4-3200
RAM and a 1TB SSD, and while you can
save £100 by dropping to a Core
i5-1335U, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB
SSD, we’d stick with the higher spec
as it offers far better value.
Both Intel chips offer two P-cores
and eight E-cores – the i7 version runs
at higher frequencies – and that’s
enough to keep Windows 11 Home
running extremely smoothly. I
attempted to push
the Inspiron 24
All-in-One to its
limits with a
simultaneous
conference call,
video streaming
and various
productivitystyle tasks, but it
didn’t miss a
beat. It’s
refreshing to work
with a PC that
doesn’t have all the clutter of a regular
desktop yet performs just as well as
any other work machine.
Where it will come unstuck is if
you ever need to crunch through
hardcore tasks that demand multiple
threads. That much is made clear by a
multicore result of 7,106 in
Geekbench 6.1, which was then
backed up by 5,104 in Cinebench R23.
A 5,082 return in PCMark 10
emphasises that this machine is best
suited to less demanding workloads.
Don’t expect a gaming system,
either. The Inspiron scored a lowly
1,252 in 3DMark Time Spy, and no
gamer will find joy in a 22fps average
in Sid Meier’s Civilization VI:
Gathering Storm. That was at
Low settings, too.
There is entertainment to be had
here, however, courtesy of an
excellent 24in Full HD screen. While
1,920 x 1,080 pixels on a
27in panel means that

Reviews
text can look fuzzy, dropping
down by three inches makes a
big difference in perceived
sharpness. And Dell backs
that up with a panel that
covers 87% of the DCI-P3
colour space with an
average Delta-E of 0.17.
Were it not for the tinny
speakers at the front,
RECOMMENDED
despite their 5W rating,
this would be a cracking
choice for watching films. As it
is, you’ll need to slap on a pair
of headphones.
Preferably via Bluetooth.
There is a 3.5mm
jack, but this sits
at the rear of
the machine
along with
ABOVE The 24in Full
numerous companions: RJ-45 for
HD screen is sharp
wired networking, four USB-A 3.2
and colour-accurate
ports (one Gen 2 with a 10Gbits/sec
rating, the rest Gen 1 for 5Gbits/sec), a
full-size SD card slot, plus two HDMI
connectors, one for output, another for
input. It can be a drag that all of those
ports are situated on the rear (along
with the power input),
“It’s refreshing to work
with the USB-C 3.2 Gen 2
with a PC that doesn’t have port sitting forlorn on the
right side of the PC and
all the clutter of a regular
the power button hidden
desktop yet performs just as away on the underside.
Dell also hides away
well as any other machine”
the webcam, which makes
sense: pull it up when needed, tuck it
away for privacy. The downside is that
it can be hard to pull out and quality is
best described as average. It will get
you through a video call or remote
LEFT There’s a wide
class, but you’ll need good lighting if
range of ports, though
you want to make you look your best.
all but the USB-C port
The Inspiron 24 comes with a
sit at the rear
keyboard and mouse, which are also
white but plainer in terms of design
than the All-in-One. They’re fine in a
pinch, but if you own better then hook
them up – the Inspiron 24 has the port
BELOW The Inspiron
range and Bluetooth compatibility to
24 has a simple yet
handle nearly any setup.
sleek design
For those looking for a simple work
machine, then, the Dell Inspiron 24
All-in-One is a great choice. I hoped
for better from the speakers and the
webcam, but it’s hard to be overly
critical at this price. ALLISA JAMES
SPECIFICATIONS
10-core (2 P-cores, 8 E-cores) Intel Core
i5-1355U processor Intel Iris Xe graphics
16GB LPDDR5-6000 RAM 23.8in 60Hz IPS
non-touch panel, 1,920 x 1,080 resolution
1TB M.2 PCI-E Gen4 SSD Wi-Fi 6E
Bluetooth 5.3 gigabit Ethernet 1080p IR
webcam USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 HDMI input
HDMI output USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 3 x USB-A
3.2 Gen 1 3.5mm jack SD card reader
Dell Pro wireless keyboard and mouse
Windows 11 Home 543 x 40 x 359mm (WDH)
5.2kg 1yr on-site warranty
47

AcerPredator
Orion7000
(2023)
Killer gaming performance at 4K thanks
to an RTX 4090, but that power comes
at the expense of fan noise

SCORE
PRICE As reviewed, £3,333 (£3,999 inc
VAT) from currys.co.uk

W

ith its Orion 9000 range
stuck on Nvidia’s GeForce
RTX 30 cards, the Predator
Orion 7000 is now Acer’s premier
gaming PC series. The 2023 update has
just landed, packed with Nvidia RTX
40 series GPUs and Intel Raptor Lake
13th generation chips. After
spending a week with a top-tier
model, I can confidently state that
the Orion 7000 range is a power-

packed choice for hardcore gamers
—as well as being one of the largest PCs
you can buy.
I’m a big guy, and I still had to
take a deep breath and brace myself
before hefting the 17kg Orion 7000
around during the setup process.
The tall tower case measures roughly
half a metre tall and deep, so it takes
up plenty of desk space, too. I used
it as a literal desktop during the
review process, but I would much
prefer to keep it tucked away
underneath the desk.
That’s despite some gorgeous
design. The tempered glass panels

on the side and front give you an
enticing view of the innards, which
are illuminated with customisable
RGB lighting and cooled by fans at the
top and rear of the case. The glass
panel is easy to open when you want
to get inside the PC, though you do
need to unscrew a pair of screws on
the rear first.
Up front you’ll find a full
complement of USB ports (three
USB-A, one USB-C) and audio in/out
for easier cable routing. There’s also a
USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 hot-swappable bay
on the top of the case,
“After spending a week
which lets you quickly
with a top-tier model, I can swap external SSD drives
confidently state that the without much trouble.
Great for anyone who
Orion 7000 range is a great likes to keep a drive full of
choice for gamers”
Steam games handy.
The lion’s share of
the ports are mounted on the rear,
including six USB-A ports of various
speeds (one supports 10Gbits/sec
transfers thanks to USB 3.2 Gen 2)
and a single USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port.
There’s also an RJ-45 Ethernet jack
and a triptych of audio ports for
microphone, audio in and audio out.

ABOVE The huge fans
look great, but they
also are obnoxiously
loud under heavy load

Your biggest fan

LEFT You’ll need a
sturdy desk if you
want to place the 17kg
Orion 7000 on it
50

The gigantic fans at the front, top and
rear of the case do a great job of
looking cool as they cool your PC, but
they also get unbearably loud under
heavy load. So loud that there’s no

@PCPRO

GEEKBENCH5.5 (MULTICORE)

Alienware Aurora R15

2,151

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4090

Alienware Aurora R16

1,935

Acer Orion 7000 (2023)

1,908

Corei7-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4070
Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4090

Acer Orion 7000 (2022)

1,752

Corei9-12900K,32GBRAM,RTX3090

Alienware Aurora R15

22,494

Lenovo Legion T7 (2023)

22,275

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4090
Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4080

Acer Orion 7000 (2023)
Acer Orion 7000 (2022)
Alienware Aurora R16

30,371

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4090

Lenovo Legion T7 (2023)

25,745

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4080

18,535
17,203

129

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4090

93

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4080

Acer Orion 7000 (2022)

67

Corei9-12900K,32GBRAM,RTX3090

Alienware Aurora R16

Corei7-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4070

54

than its predecessor. However, it
couldn’t quite match the 2mins 17secs
of the Aurora R15.
Acer bundles a wired keyboard and
mouse with the Orion 7000, both of
which sport addressable RGB lighting
and are worthy extras. The full
keyboard has big keys with plenty
of travel that feel satisfying to
type on, as well as a row of
four media controls. The
mouse, meanwhile, has
two extra buttons
mounted above the
thumb rest and a DPI
switch for quickly
shifting sensitivity on the
fly. Neither is likely to
outclass your favourite
mouse and keyboard, but
they add value.
Acer’s PredatorArc app will
customise the look of the
included mouse and keyboard, while
more general profiles – lighting, fan
speeds, overclocking profiles – fall to
the PredatorSense app. Other than
this, the Orion 7000 comes with a
semi-clean Windows 11 install marred
only by a handful of Acer apps that are
easy to ignore or uninstall.

Star buy?

Lenovo Legion T7 (2023)

The 2023 update to the Acer Predator
Orion 7000 series is a stylish beast of a
machine. It will make any game look
great and run smoothly, even at 4K.
And although £4,000 is a huge
investment, it still offers more for

134

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4080

Acer Orion 7000 (2022)

93

Corei9-12900K,32GBRAM,RTX3090

Alienware Aurora R16

82

Acer Orion 7000 (2023)

73

Alienware Aurora R15

73

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4090
Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4090

Acer Orion 7000 (2022)

36

Corei9-12900K,32GBRAM,RTX3090

Alienware Aurora R16

Corei7-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4070

Lenovo Legion T7 (2023)

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4080

29

HIGHER IS BETTER

Alienware Aurora R15

HIGHER IS BETTER

129

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4090

183

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4090

METROEXODUSENHANCED (4K, EXTREME, FPS)

SHADOWOFTHETOMBRAIDER (4K, HIGHEST, FPS)

Lenovo Legion T7 (2023)

Alienware Aurora R15

Corei7-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4070

Acer Orion 7000 (2023)

187

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4090

HIGHER IS BETTER

Alienware Aurora R15

Corei7-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4070

Acer Orion 7000 (2023)

31,781

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4090

Alienware Aurora R16

15,764

Corei7-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4070

DIRT5 (4K, HIGHEST, FPS)

Acer Orion 7000 (2023)

Acer Orion 7000 (2022)

17,229

Corei9-12900K,32GBRAM,RTX3090

3DMARKTIMESPY

Corei9-12900K,32GBRAM,RTX3090

21,380

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4090

HIGHER IS BETTER

2,178

Corei9-13900KF,32GBRAM,RTX4080

HIGHER IS BETTER

I used our review unit for all my work,
play and day-to-day tasks for over a
week, and not once did I experience
crashes, stuttering or performance
glitches. If you don’t mind working
next to fans that occasionally sound
like jet engines, it’s a great machine
for getting things done.
I could easily imagine someone
using the top-tier components inside
to power through video edits or game
development work, and our testing
suggests it’s well suited to the task.
The 2023 Predator Orion 7000 blew
past last year’s model in every test,
even if it falls short of Alienware’s
Aurora R15 (which shares its Core i9
chip and 32GB of RAM).
Take our video-encoding test,
which times how long it takes the
PC to transcode a 4K video file down
to 1080p using Handbrake. Our
review unit completed the task in
2mins 26secs, a solid minute faster

GEEKBENCH5.5 (SINGLE CORE)

Lenovo Legion T7 (2023)

HIGHER IS BETTER

chance you can sneak in gaming time
without everyone in the house
knowing. Visitors will likely hear this
PC before they see it, even when it’s
sitting idle.
In return, you get a gaming
monster. The Orion 7000 had no
trouble running all my favourite
Steam games at 4K with all the
settings cranked to max, although I
sometimes had to rely on Nvidia’s
DLSS upscaling tech to get above
60fps. Case in point: even this PC
struggles to maintain 40fps when
running Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with
all the graphical settings cranked to
max, but when I flipped on DLSS 3 the
game ran at 60fps and above with
barely any noticeable change in
image quality.
To give you a sense of the power,
we chart its performance against the
Alienware Aurora R15 I reviewed
earlier this year, which costs roughly
the same and has basically the same
components inside. We also include
results from last year’s Orion 7000
with its RTX 3090 and 12th Gen Intel
CPU, to give you a sense of what kind
of performance boost you’re getting
from the 4090 over last year’s model.
As you can see, it’s quite a jolt.
Even in 4K our Orion 7000 delivered
above 100fps in games such as
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Dirt 5, Far
Cry 6 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
When you dial the resolution down
to 1080p it can run anything you care
to play at incredibly smooth frame
rates, to the point that we clocked it
running Total War: Warhammer 3 at
over 250fps at 1080p with all settings
cranked to Ultra. When I cranked
the settings down to Low just for fun,
the Orion 7000 ran the game at an
incredible 559fps.

Daily driver

Reviews

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Not tested

your money than the equivalents from
HP and Dell, and likewise similarly
specced machines we’ve tested from
Chillblast and Scan.
If the price is still too steep, you can
save £700 if you choose an RTX 4080
instead; both are available from
currys.co.uk, with the RTX 4080
spec using product code 605676
and the RTX 4090 610230.
Despite its value for
money, I can’t ignore this
PC’s obnoxiously loud
fans – fans that
are especially grating
when you’re merely
trundling along in
Windows. It’s this that
steals one of the stars
from the Orion’s
constellation and prevents
it from gaining an outright
recommendation. ALEX WAWRO
ABOVE This stylish
beast will make any
game look great,
even at 4K

SPECIFICATIONS
16-core (8 P-cores, 16 E-cores) Intel Core
i9-13900KF processor Acer (Intel Z790)
motherboard 32GB DDR5-4800 RAM
24GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics
liquid CPU cooler 1TB PCI-E Gen 4 SSD
2TB hard disk Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.3
2.5GbE port USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 hot-swappable
drive bay front ports: 2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2,
USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 rear
ports: USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, 3 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1,
2 x USB-A 2 Acer Predator Orion 7000
chassis 1,200W PSU Windows 11 Home
219 x 505 x 485mm (WDH) 1yr RTB warranty
part code DG.E39EK.001
51

Reviews

@PCPRO

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Dell XPS 13 Plus (2023)

An elegantdesignandlovely
3.5KOLED display are let
downbya frustrating
keyboardandbadbatterylife
SCORE
PRICE As reviewed, £1,333 (£1,599 inc VAT)
from dell.co.uk

T

his elegant OLED-equipped
ultraportable turned heads
when it debuted in 2022 (see
issue 337, p52), but I was disappointed
by its battery life and fiddly capacitive
touch function keys. I wish I could say
that things have changed with this
update to Intel’s latest chips.
Our review sample came with a
Core i7-1360P and 16GB of RAM.
That’s a potent combination, and it
showed its strength in our videoencoding test. Here, the XPS 13 Plus
took 6mins 31secs to transcode a 4K
video down to 1080p in Handbrake in
Ultra Performance mode; that’s 18
seconds faster than last year’s model
(which included an i7-1280P) and
over a minute quicker than
the MacBook Air M2 (see
issue 336, p50).
Intel’s Iris Xe
graphics are never
stellar performers in
3DMark Time Spy,
but Dell extracts
about as
much as
can be
expected with a
score of 1,812, while
an average of 28fps in
Sid Meier’s Civilization VI:
Gathering Storm graphical
benchmark is above average.
If only we could say the same
about battery life. The XPS lasted
6hrs 20mins in our web-surfing test,
and that’s with the screen brightness
set to 150cd/m2. That’s an awful result
for an ultraportable, and an hour less
than last year’s offering.
BENCHMARKS
Geekbench 6.1 single-core

2,545
0

1,000

2,000

3,000

Geekbench 6.1 multicore

11,822
0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

3DMark Time Spy

1,812
0

5,000

BATTERY LIFE
6hrs 20mins

Web surfing
0

52

5

10

15

20

This is partially due to a 3.5K OLED
display, which demands more power
than a 1200p IPS screen. Dell reckons
switching to the latter will give you
two hours of extra life. Still, I’d miss
the panel, which not only delivers
superb colour coverage and accuracy
– 81% of the DCI-P3 range with an
average Delta E of 0.2 – but also
supports HDR. In SDR mode, it didn’t
quite hit Dell’s claimed 400cd/m2, but
371cd/m2 is still strong for OLED.
The way the 13.4in screen stretches
to the edges
also enhances
the looks of
this fancy
premium laptop.
The machined
aluminium chassis
wouldn’t bend or
flex no matter how
hard I tried, yet it still
only measures 15.3mm
thick and weighs 1.3kg.
Dell sticks with its “zero
lattice” keyboard. The keys have
a satisfying bounce, but I was
constantly frustrated by hitting the
fingerprint reader (embedded into a
small, unmarked power button) that’s
wedged next to the Backspace key I
was trying to hit. And as cool as the
row of capacitive touch keys above
the keyboard look, they’re no fun to
use. By default they show a series of
useful media controls, but hitting the
Function key swaps them over to the
standard F1-F12 keys. However, I was
frustrated multiple times by having to
hit a capacitive
touch key two,
three, four or even
five times before it
registered my press.
The “invisible”
touchpad beneath the
keys is perfectly usable,

but this time it’s too easy to touch by
accident. Maybe I’m just inept, but
I’m used to feeling the edge of a
touchpad with my wrists in order to
know when I’m in danger of
activating it by accident.
I’ll end with a couple of more
pleasant surprises. First, the 720p
webcam can make you look great in
the right lighting, with
“TheXPSlasted6hrs20mins accurate colours a
highlight. It doesn’t have
inourweb-surfingtest.
sharpness of 1080p
That’sanawfulresultforan the
webcams, but that’s
ultraportable,andanhour
inevitable. Second, the
lessthanlastyear’soffering” speakers deliver clear,
resonant sound, and
quality stays decent even when you
crank up the volume. Just don’t expect
bass to have much punch.
As before, Dell provides two USB-C
ports, supporting Thunderbolt 4 and
USB 4, and that’s it, unless you count
the USB-A and 3.5mm adapters
LEFT There are a
bundled in the box. At least you get
measly two USB-C
Intel’s superb Killer Wi-Fi 6E adapter
ports on the sides
and Bluetooth 5.3.
The problem for Dell boils down
to usability. The OLED panel looks
amazing, the system performs well
in benchmarks, and the design is
striking. But what’s the point when
battery life is poor and typing so
frustrating? ALEX WAWRO
ABOVE The 3.5K OLED
display is one of this
laptop’s highlights

BELOW The touch keys
above the keyboard
may look cool, but
they’re no fun to use

SPECIFICATIONS
12-core (4 P-cores, 8 E-cores) Intel Core
i7-1360P processor Intel Iris Xe graphics
16B LPDDR5-6000 RAM 13.4in 60Hz OLED
touch panel, 3,456 x 2,160 resolution 512GB
M.2 PCI-E Gen4 SSD
Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth
5.3 720p IR webcam
2 x USB-C (Thunderbolt 4
and USB 4) 55Wh battery
Windows 11 Home 295 x
199 x 15.3mm (WDH) 1.3kg
1yr on-site warranty

Reviews

@PCPRO

Linksys Velop Pro 6E
Not the fastest 6E mesh
we’ve seen, but in terms
of bang per buck it’s a
compelling contender
SCORE
PRICE Two units, £317 (£380 inc VAT)
from amazon.co.uk (B0C86GLJKW)

T

he Linksys Velop Pro 6E is one of
the most affordable Wi-Fi 6E
meshes on the market – but that
doesn’t mean it’s cheap. Support for
6GHz inevitably drives up the cost of a
mesh system, as every station has to
include an extra radio alongside the
2.4GHz and 5GHz transmitters. So while
this Velop system is competitively
priced for what it is, you’re still looking
at £380 inc VAT for the two-unit
system, or £500 for three stations.
On the plus side, there’s a good
chance you don’t need all three.
Linksys advertises a huge coverage
area of 280 square metres per station,
and while such figures must always be
taken with a grain of salt, I found that
two units were more than ample to
completely cover my medium-sized
three-bedroom home.
There’s a certain elegance to the
design of the Velop units. They’re
basically little white towers, much
like Linksys’ previous meshes, but
these ones have a funky squared-off
corner that adds a bit of character.
At the rear of each there’s a pair of
gigabit Ethernet sockets; a dot-shaped
status LED on the top shines various
colours to give you a clue as to the
health of your network.
Getting set up is quick and easy via
the Linksys mobile app, and once your
WI-FI BENCHMARKS

5GHz

6GHz

100

125

Downloads (MB/sec)
Bathroom

81.9

52.5

Bedroom
Kitchen

51.9

Living
room

51.6

Study

64
71.3
69.8

63.6
0

25

50

85.7

81.2
75

Uploads (MB/sec)
22.5
21.3
23.9
22.8
21.2
20.6
22.6
19.9
24.6
32.7

Bathroom
Bedroom
Kitchen
Living
room
Study
0

54

25

50

75

100

125

mesh is running you
can use the same app
to manage it. This
works well enough, but
the system falls short on
high-end features: for example,
there’s no VPN support of any kind,
and you can forget about network
security scanning. Linksys’ parental
controls are also a letdown: you can
set simple per-device access
schedules, but if you want to block
dodgy websites you have to enter each
URL by hand, up to a maximum of ten.
I’ve mentioned that each Velop
unit contains three radios, operating
in the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz bands.
The former may be used for legacy and
IoT devices only, but it still has a
respectable top speed of 600Mbits/sec,
while the 5GHz and 6GHz ones use
2x2 MU-MIMO to support client
connection speeds up to 2.4Gbits/sec.
There’s no separate radio to take care
of backhaul communications,
however, which means that traffic
travelling back and forth between
Velop stations takes capacity away
from your own network activity.
What does this mean for
performance? I tested the system in
my usual way, measuring average
upload and download speeds from my
trusty laptop in a variety of locations
all around my home. As you can see
from the graphs on the left, the Velop
Pro 6E mesh can blast bits around at
quite a rate. Over a regular 5GHz
Wi-Fi 6 connection I saw fast and
remarkably consistent download
speeds all around my home,
ranging from 69.8MB/sec
in my living room to a
maximum of 85.7MB/sec
in the bedroom. I don’t
need to tell you that this is
way, way more than most
people need: it’s enough

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bandwidth to fully saturate a
500Mbits/sec fibre line, if you’re
lucky enough to have such a
thing. And remember, this is
with only two mesh stations.
Surprisingly, switching
to Wi-Fi 6E saw speeds fall.
Results were still strong across
the board, with download
rates never dropping below
50MB per second, but in every
location the 6GHz connection
was conspicuously slower.
Although Linksys doesn’t
explicitly say so, the obvious
inference is that the Velop Pro 6E
is using the 6GHz network for all
of its station-to-station traffic, as
well as for client communications.
Counterintuitively, therefore, this
Wi-Fi 6E mesh works best when
your client devices aren’t using
Wi-Fi 6E, so they don’t interfere
with the backhaul connection.
This arrangement of things isn’t
a new idea – we saw a similar
division of labour between the
5GHz and 6GHz bands last month
on the A-Listed TP-Link Deco XE200
(see issue 349, p65) – and it doubtless
ABOVE Each of the
helps to keep the price down. For
stylish units has a
comparison, the Netgear Orbi
2.4GHz, 5GHz and
RBK963E, which has a dedicated
6GHz radio
backhaul radio in addition to
client-side 2.4GHz, 5GHz and
6GHz radios, costs well over a grand
(see issue 331, p68).
The upshot, of course, is that the
Velop Pro 6E won’t realise the full
performance potential of your Wi-Fi
6E clients. However, as long as you
keep the 6GHz band clear, the Velop
RECOMMENDED
Pro 6E can still outpace almost any
5GHz-only mesh. For example, the
tri-band Huawei Mesh 7 (see issue
337, p70) isn’t much
cheaper at £330 inc VAT,
“Once you get past some
but
its download speeds
slightly confusing
only averaged around
performance figures,
40MB/sec in our tests.
there’s plenty to like
Indeed, once you get
past some slightly
about the Velop Pro 6E”
confusing performance
figures, there’s plenty to like about
the Velop Pro 6E. While it’s not the
fastest or most feature-laden mesh
you can buy, it delivers very strong
performance with impressively
BELOW There’s a pair
consistent coverage over a wide area,
of gigabit Ethernet
for a price that easily undercuts all
sockets at the rear of
6E-toting rivals. And, because its best
each unit
results are on the 5GHz band, you
don’t need 6E-compatible clients to
benefit. DARIEN GRAHAM-SMITH
SPECIFICATIONS
Tri-band 2.4GHz/5GHz/6GHz
Wi-Fi 6E mesh 6 x internal
antennas 2 x gigabit Ethernet
(per station) 1GHz dual-core
processor 95 x 95 x 196mm
(WDH) 3yr warranty

Reader offers

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T

hese days, running Windows on your
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Parallel lives

Parallels enables you to emulate just about any
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of your chosen VM and whether or not you have
valid install media (and a licence to activate).
It’s now easier than ever to run Windows
apps on your Mac. You can set up your VM in
Coherence mode, for example, where the
Windows desktop is hidden away and your

ABOVE Parallels Desktop makes it simple to run
Windows apps on your Mac

ABOVE You can emulate just about any flavour of
Windows, plus older builds of macOS and Linux

apps run directly from your Mac desktop in
their own window. Key Windows tools such as
the Start menu are accessible from the menu
bar, too. This makes it a great choice for people
who want particular pieces of software to run
on their Mac.
And it’s similarly easy to set up. Simple
wizards do the heavy lifting, while intelligent
presets (such as your regional settings
coming from your Mac) speed things up

further. What’s more, Microsoft and Parallels
have teamed up to allow Mac users to install
Windows 11 Pro without leaving Parallels.

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gap more than ever before. It promises faster
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If you’re serious about emulating Windows
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56

@PCPRO

Asus RT-AX59U

A very reasonably priced
Wi-Fi 6 router that provides
good performance and
excellent firmware features
SCORE
PRICE £104 (£125 inc VAT)
from uk.store.asus.com

A

sus’ latest router isn’t much to
look at, but it’s unassuming in
a way that in itself makes a
statement. Where previous routers
have tended to resemble model
spaceships as much as networking
components, the sober tower format
of the RT-AX59U bespeaks a more
sensible, practical approach.
It’s also a modest size, standing
204mm tall on its mount, or you can
remove the base and attach it to a wall
via a pair of convenient mounting
sockets on the side. The corrugated
casing adds just the right amount of
tasteful visual interest, while a single
multicoloured status LED wraps
around the front, so you can see it
from almost any angle.
For the price, you won’t be amazed
to learn that this router isn’t endowed
with top-end hardware. Most notably,
it doesn’t support Wi-Fi 6E, sticking
with the regular Wi-Fi 6 standard
instead. That’s not necessarily a
problem, though, as it’s still possible
to get excellent performance over the
5GHz network – indeed, as we’ll see
below, the RT-AX59U acquits itself
rather well in this department.
And since the RT-AX59U runs
the same firmware as Asus’ most
expensive (non-gaming) routers, it
has an impressive wealth of software
capabilities. Would-be network
architects will be delighted with the
deep, detailed controls you get over
your Wi-Fi and LAN settings, and
there are also built-in network
security and parental control
WI-FI BENCHMARKS
Downloads (MB/sec)
Bathroom

13.6
34.2
35.8

Bedroom
Kitchen

86.3
75.1

Living room
Study
0

25

50

75

100

125

Uploads (MB/sec)
Bathroom

8.9
17.6
24.5
30.4
29.6

Bedroom
Kitchen
Living room
Study
0

Reviews

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

25

50

75

100

125

modules, which
automatically block
threats and
unauthorised content.
As usual with Asus these
functions are free,
which is a pretty sweet
deal for a £125 router: by
contrast, TP-Link’s
HomeShield services
cost £54 a year to fully
unlock, while Netgear
will charge you £85
per annum for router
security, plus £50 a year
for parental controls.
Then there’s Asus’
exceptional VPN
support, which lets you
bind individual devices
to specific third-party
VPN servers. So if you
want your smart TV to
connect via a Surfshark
server in the US while
your laptop uses
Mullvad through
Sweden, the RT-AX59U
can make it all happen
seamlessly. There’s
an inbound VPN
server, too, for
secure access to your own
network over the internet.
To top it all off, this little router
comes with a pair of USB 3 ports,
which can be used to share USB
storage or a printer across your home
network – or as a failover option if you
plug in a 4G or 5G USB mobile internet
adapter. I was a little disappointed
that the four adjacent Ethernet
sockets only run at gigabit speeds, as
we’re seeing more and more
mid-range routers coming in with
2.5GbE and even 10GbE support, but
what the Asus
RT-AX59U provides
is absolutely fine for
most people’s needs.
The same can
be said for the
router’s wireless
performance. While
the RT-AX59U
doesn’t support Wi-Fi
6E, it does have an
unusual 3x3
MU-MIMO antenna
array, which means a
single client can (in
theory) connect to
the 5GHz Wi-Fi 6
network at speeds up
to 3.6Gbits/sec, or
three devices can get
1.2Gbits/sec at once.
I tested real-world
performance in my
usual way, carting a
test laptop around to
various parts of my

three-bedroom house and
copying files to and from a
NAS appliance connected
to one of the router’s
Ethernet ports. The
results were more than
satisfactory: I saw
download rates averaging
75.1MB/sec in the study and
86.3 MB per second in the
living room. Things
dropped off as I moved
further away into the
middle of the building, but
in the kitchen and bedroom
I still got very decent
speeds of 35.8MB/sec and
34.2MB/sec respectively.
Even in the bathroom at
the far end of the house the
RT-AX59U kept up a
sterling 13.6MB/sec.
Obviously these speeds
don’t match up to the most
powerful and expensive
routers: the £550 Netgear
Nighthawk RAXE500
achieved a top download
speed of 127MB/sec
over a regular Wi-Fi 6
connection, and hit a
massive 152MB/sec with Wi-Fi 6E (see
ABOVE The sober
issue 332, p64). Frankly, though, that
RT-AX59U stands just
sort of extreme performance is
204mm tall, but offers
unnecessary in a domestic setting:
plenty of features
even if you’re working from home,
the RT-AX59U has more than enough
bandwidth for rock-solid video calls
and file transfers, while family
members can freely stream and game
in other rooms. If you need to cover a
wider area, the router also supports
Asus’ AiMesh protocol, so you can
simply buy a second unit and stick it
RECOMMENDED
halfway across your house to extend
the network – or you could opt for the
Asus Zen WiFi XD5 (see issue 349,
p64), which offers many of the same
features in a compact mesh format.
The Asus RT-AX59U is far from the
cheapest Wi-Fi 6 router
“Since the RT-AX59U runs around: if budget is your
the same firmware as Asus’ top priority then the
Eagle Pro AI R15
most expensive routers, it D-Link
(see issue 334, p64) does a
has an impressive wealth of serviceable job with basic
features for just £55. But if
software capabilities”
you’re looking for
something with a little more oomph,
this smart little router is a highly
persuasive option. It has enough
performance to satisfy any typical
household, while the feature set
goes well beyond expectations – for a
price that’s very hard to complain
about. DARIEN GRAHAM-SMITH

LEFT The router
comes with two USB-A
ports and four gigabit
Ethernet sockets

SPECIFICATIONS
Dual-band 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi 6 router 6 x
internal antennas 4 x gigabit Ethernet 2 x
USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 2GHz quad-core processor
61 x 152 x 204mm (WDH) 1yr warranty
57

Reviews

@PCPRO

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Canon Maxify GX6550

A compact design, highquality output and efficient
page yields make this ink
tank printer stand out
SCORE
PRICE £392 (£470 inc VAT)
from canon.co.uk

H

ere’s a departure from the usual
all-in-one (AIO) form factor.
How about an automatic
document feed (ADF) that loads from
the front rather than the top? Or a
scanner that specialises in copying
passports and ID cards? The advantage
is that you can install this AIO under a
counter or on a shelf, and copy
documents without having to lift the
scanner lid more than a few inches.
The GX6550 slots into the middle of
Canon’s GX line of office-oriented A4
Maxify inkjets, with the Maxify
indicating refillable ink tanks. It
includes all the essential business
features – duplex printing, colour
copying, a high duty cycle – while
eschewing the fax modem and
additional paper tray of premium
Maxify printers such as the £600
GX7050. Wi-Fi with AirPrint
compatibility is built in, with
Ethernet and USB both covered, too.
The Maxify GX6550 looks much
like its siblings, with off-white panels
and a tasteful design. It feels robust
and is surprisingly compact given its
high capacity for paper and ink:
there’s room for 350 sheets of A4
paper, 170ml of black ink and 135ml in
each of the C/M/Y reservoirs.
According to Canon, that’s enough for
6,000 mono prints and 14,000
colour prints in normal
mode. Want more?
Switching to Economy
mode increases those
figures to 9,000 and
21,000 respectively.
This printer is
easy to use, too,
thanks to a tilting
touchscreen (but no
built-in NFC
module). The panel is
rather small at 2.7in, but
it’s sensitive and easy to use.
There’s also a USB port at the front
for printing from a thumb drive, while
the output tray is made of translucent
plastic so it’s obvious when your print
job is complete, especially when the
printer is under a desk, where it’s
darker. Also, the ink levels are always
reassuringly visible .
58

As the photo
indicates, you
load multi-page
documents that you need
copied into a slot at the front. To
enable you to use the flatbed scanner
when the printer is under your desk,
the scanner bed is shaped so that you
can copy smaller documents such as
passports and business cards without
opening the scanner lid right up.
Surprisingly, the scanner glass is
smaller than A4, so larger documents
have to be copied via the ADF. That’s
fine until you need to duplicate a
card-based certificate or something
that won’t fit through the rollers of
the feeder.
The other problem I have with this
front-loading design is the rear tray.
It can hold up to 100 sheets of paper,
but you can’t get to it when the
printer is on a shelf or under the
counter. So you find yourself reliant
on the main paper tray; this can hold
250 sheets of A4 paper.
The GX6550 is compatible with a
broad range of paper stock, from
envelopes and greetings cards to
glossy photo paper. It’s quick, too,
printing at a maximum rate of 24
images per minute (ipm) in both
monochrome text documents
and full-colour test pages
on plain paper. It
doesn’t slow down
much in auto
duplex mode,
either, and also
prints quietly.
Canon’s Maxify
printers use
pigment-based inks
rather than watersoluble inks, which
means robust prints that
won’t smudge or fade. The
black ink is particularly dark,
producing bold characters even in
draft mode. It’s not quite as fine as a
laser printer can manage, but the ink
remained well contained and crisply
delineated at very small point sizes.
The cyan, magenta and yellow
pigment inks aren’t as vivid as

Canon’s dyebased inks but
they’re bright
enough to create
satisfyingly colourful
images and documents. And
while they’re not so good at
ABOVE
bonding with coated photo paper
Documents are
as water-based inks – images are
loaded into a slot at
flatter than Canon’s Pixma range – the
the front of the printer
GX6550 still produces capable photos.
The ADF copied all of my multipage
test documents without a hitch, and
loading them into the front of the
printer meant I didn’t have to stand
up to do it. It doesn’t have a singlepass duplex scan, though. I was able
to photocopy my passport and
business card samples without having
to fully lift the lid, as promised, but
don’t get too excited: there were
plenty of times during my tests when I
had to use the rear tray.
This all-in-one’s innovative
changes are an undoubted
“By moving the ADF opening improvement on the
already excellent design of
from the top to the front,
Canon’s Maxify GX models.
Canon’s latest inkjet
Still, you might end up
printer can be installed on a moving the GX6550 to a
shelf or under the counter” more typical position if you
frequently need access to
the rear paper tray.
Most importantly, the GX6550 put
in a strong performance throughout
our tests. It’s also well built and
painless to operate thanks to the
touchscreen and clear ink tank
windows. The final killer advantage,
as ever, is the low cost-per-page,
beating cartridge inkjets and lasers by
LEFT A tilting
up to 90%. I have no reservations in
touchscreen makes
recommending it for use in a busy
the Maxify GX6550
office. JIM HILL
easy to use
SPECIFICATIONS
Four-colour 600 x 1,200dpi A4 inkjet MFP
refillable ink tanks 1,200dpi colour flatbed
A4 scanner 2.7in colour touchscreen Wi-Fi
5 USB-A 10/100 Ethernet automatic
duplex printing 250-sheet A4 cassette
100-sheet rear tray 399 x 410 x 254mm
(WDH) 11.5kg 1yr RTB warranty

@PCPRO

Reviews

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

NEC MultiSync E274FL

A versatile 27in 1080p
docking monitor that
includes wired networking
and a high-quality panel
SCORE
PRICE £208 (£250 inc VAT)
from NEC resellers

W

e hoped to include the
MultiSync E274FL in our
annual group test of
“everyday” monitors (see issue 344,
p76), but NEC has kept us waiting for
this enterprise-friendly screen.
Especially friendly when the E274FL
combines three alluring properties: a
low price, USB-C docking and
integrated wired networking.
As immediately became clear when
I put it on my desk, it also produces
excellent whites. It’s this, rather than
a huge colour gamut, that’s most
important to office workers after all.
The panel’s evident quality was backed
up in our tests, where it covered 95%
of the sRGB gamut with an average
Delta-E of 1.08 and maximum of 3.03.
Those are strong figures, even if film
lovers won’t be wowed by
DCI-P3 coverage
of 75%, or print
designers by 70%
of the Adobe RGB
gamut.
A measured
contrast ratio of
3,493:1 also
confirms that this
is an MVA panel
rather than IPS.
MVA stands for
multidomain vertical
alignment, and it’s far more
commonly found in curved, gaming
monitors than monitors aimed at
enterprises. Its use here shows that
Sharp (maker of the panel and
co-owner of the NEC brand) has
matured the technology enough to
rival IPS. For instance, the faint
yellow bias that used to be seen in
MVA screens isn’t visible here.
I’m also used to seeing high refresh
rates and low response rates on MVA
panels, but the E274FL’s 60Hz and
6ms are bog-standard times. Office
workers hoping for a speed advantage
in after-hours gaming sessions will be
out of luck.
IT departments, on the other hand,
will be delighted. While the RJ-45 port
gives users fast and secure access to the
office network, it gives administrators
a way to track their assets and even

RECOMMENDED

take control of the OSD without
needing to touch the device itself. For
example, they may decide that rather
than allow the screens to hit their
peak brightness – stated as 250cd/m2,
but 297cd/m2 in our unit’s case – that
the monitor stays in one of its two Eco
modes. These lock it to either 30% or
70% brightness, and while the former
is dim I found the latter mode to be
more than bright enough.
End users
should find the
OSD relatively
easy to navigate.
It uses a joystick,
with its one quirk
being that you
need to press
right to select an
option rather
than pressing
down as people may be
used to. But I don’t expect
many calls to the support team
to check; trial and error is your friend,
and the OSD is extremely quick to
respond to commands.
Naturally, this monitor ticks all
the ergonomic boxes. There’s a low
blue light mode, TCO certification
and superb flexibility: 120mm of
height adjustment, 170° of easy
swivel in both directions, and a
pivot mode. Often the latter is
pointless owing to a lack of contrast
and viewing angles in a vertical
orientation, but that definitely
doesn’t apply to the E274FL.
I mentioned right at the top that
this is a docking monitor, and if you
connect over USB-C then it
supplies 60W of power to
connected laptops; plenty for all
the machines in our Labs this
month (see p74), but I would

have liked to see 100W to feed more
powerful MacBooks. There are three
USB-A ports, and it’s reassuring to see
a USB-B port as well; this means you
can share peripherals between a
laptop on USB-C and a PC that uses the
HDMI or DisplayPort inputs.
NEC also provides a
“This monitor ticks all
pair of reasonable 1W
speakers. As their power
the ergonomic boxes.
output suggests, these
There’s a low blue light
aren’t going to rock your
mode, TCO certification
world, but they’re fine for
and superb flexibility”
the occasional YouTube
clip and video calls.
Before you buy, there’s one final
thing to consider. This is a 1,920 x
1,080 panel, and across a 27in diagonal
LEFT Connect over
that means text isn’t crisp. There’s a
USB-C and the display
supplies 60W of power fuzziness to character edges in Word
and Excel. This may not have a
tangible effect on most workers’
productivity, but a new generation of
employees used to pixel-sharp
BELOW With height
displays on their phones and tablets
adjustment, swivel
may not be impressed.
and pivot, the E274FL
Still, that resolution is reflected in
is supremely flexible
the price. A price that includes a
three-year warranty, which covers
backlight failures too. If the MultiSync
E274FL had arrived in time for our
group test, it would have blown away
the similarly priced competition for
its quality and its connectivity –
which is why it walks away with a
Recommended award. TIM DANTON

ABOVE The E274FL is
an excellent choice for
business rollouts

SPECIFICATIONS
27in 1,920 x 1,080 MVA panel up to 60Hz
8-bit panel (16.7 million colours) 6ms
response time (grey-to-grey) DisplayPort 1.2
HDMI 1.4 RJ-45 USB-C USB-B 3 x
USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 2 x 1W speakers pivot
-170° to 170° swivel -5° to 25° tilt 120mm
height adjustment 610 x 282 x 377-497mm
(WDH) 6.6kg 3yr warranty inc backlight
61

Asus ZenScreen
MB16QHG

This 120Hz, colour-rich, 16in
portable display hits the
sweet spot between 1080p
and 4K – but the price is high
SCORE
PRICE £333 (£399 inc VAT)
from asus.com/uk

W

ith 16in laptops all the rage,
it’s hardly shocking to see
that size class invade the
portable monitor space. Nor is it a
surprise to see Asus leading the
charge, with its ZenScreen MB16QHG
priced at a heavyweight £399.
That’s four times the cost of a
15.6in 1080p monitor you’d find on
Amazon, but the ZenScreen not only
features a 2,560 x 1,600 IPS panel but
also offers a 120Hz refresh rate. Throw
in strong colour performance, a robust
stand and one of the brightest panels
we’ve seen in a portable display, and
the MB16QHG has a lot going for it.
Asus opts for a hinged base rather
than a kickstand or detachable/
magnetic stand. This makes the unit
heavier, but it’s a solid design that
provides easy access to the ports. I
also like the fact that the cables
connect low down at desktop level
and behind the screen. So, while most
portable monitors have ugly cables
protruding from the side, here they’re
far less obvious.
The display’s hinge allows it to sit
completely vertical or lay flat against
the base (and any angle in between).
Asus also integrates a tripod socket
into the bottom of the base, adding yet
more flexibiliity.
Speaking of the base, you’ll find
a single full-size HDMI port and a
full-function USB-C port on the right.
The left side is home to a second
USB-C port and a 3.5mm headphone
jack. I used the included USB-C cable
for my testing, as it’s a simple
one-cable affair for power, video

and audio. The
OSD joystick and a power button
are located on the back of the monitor.
Build quality matches other
members of the ZenScreen family,
meaning it’s primarily constructed
of plastic to keep costs in check and
weight down. However, it doesn’t feel
cheap thanks to a stylish grain effect.
I’m less convinced by the backlit Asus
logo in the centre of the bottom bezel,
as it’s almost too eye-catching.
Fortunately, the quality and
resolution of the screen distracted me.
For example, I used the monitor to
edit Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and
greatly appreciated the 2,560 x 1,600
resolution. And while the 120Hz
refresh rate is there to attract gamers,
I also appreciated it for mundane
tasks such fast-scrolling in Edge;
text and images stayed crisp as
they whirled by. Gamers should
note that this screen isn’t
Adaptive Sync compliant,
so there’s no AMD
FreeSync or Nvidia
G-Sync support.
The MB16QHG stood out in
our brightness testing, delivering
417cd/m2 compared to the typical
250cd/m2 of a standard portable
monitor (albeit short of the 500cd/m2
that Asus claims). To achieve 100%
brightness, plug the monitor in with
the included wall adapter. Relying on
a single USB-C cable to handle all the
heavy lifting for power and video
limits you to a 60% brightness.
The ZenScreen covered 116%

ABOVE
The MB16QHG has
one of the brightest
panels we’ve seen in a
portable display

of the DCI-P3 colour gamut and 163% of
sRGB, which is excellent for an IPS
panel. Panel uniformity was good,
with no obvious backlight bleeding.
The only area it fell behind OLED was
when I watched Incredibles 2, with
blacks appearing more
“The ZenScreen covered
like a dark grey.
As usual with Asus,
116% of the DCI-P3 colour
there are many picture
gamut and 163% of sRGB,
modes to choose from via
which is excellent for an
the OSD. Navigation is
IPS panel”
intuitive via a joystick,
which is much quicker
than the norm of up/down/select
buttons found on lesser portable
monitors.
The Asus ZenScreen MB16QHG
is a great all-around portable
monitor. Not only does
the 2,560 x 1,600
resolution offer extra
detail over FHD panels,
but its 16in diagonal is
the perfect match for the
growing army of 16in laptops.
With high brightness levels and
strong colour coverage, it could even
attract photographers (that’s where
the tripod mount comes in handy).
ABOVE The hinged
Admittedly, the MB16QHG doesn’t
base makes it easy to
come cheap. You can buy 15.6in OLED
access the ports
portable monitors (including one
from Asus) for this money. However,
that’s a Full HD panel, and if you’re
looking for additional resolution, and
bumping up to 4K resolution is
overkill, the MB16QHG is well worth
LEFT The 16in
considering despite its high price.
MB16QHG is the
BRANDON HILL
perfect match
for a 16in laptop

62

SPECIFICATIONS
16in 2,560 x 1,600 IPS panel up to 120Hz
8-bit panel (16.7 million colours) VESA
DisplayHDR 400 HDR10 5ms response
time (grey-to-grey) 2 x USB-C (DisplayPort
1.2 Alt mode with 15W power delivery) HDMI
360 x 247 x 7-20.6mm (WDH) 1.2kg
protective sleeve 2yr limited warranty

@PCPRO

KingstonXS1000

Nohardwareencryption,but
afive-yearwarranty,solid
performanceandlowpriceper-gigabyteareinitsfavour
SCORE
PRICE 1TB, £48 (£58 inc VAT)
from kingston.com

T

Reviews

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

he XS1000 is a tiny external USB
SSD, measuring only 7cm long
and weighing less than 30g. It’s
perfectly pocketable, and it will work
with any computer or mobile device
with a USB-C port.
The big difference between the
XS1000 and Kingston’s XS2000 (see
issue 329, p60) is speed: where the
XS2000 supported USB 3.2 Gen 2x2
transfer rates of up to 20Gbits/sec, the
XS1000 has a maximum connection
speed of 10Gbits/sec.
To be fair, that’s more than fast
enough for everyday use, and it helps
keep the price down. As few host
devices support 20Gbits/sec over USB,
in many cases the faster drive would
be a waste of money anyway.

And the XS1000 lives up
to its performance claims.
In our tests with the
CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4
benchmark, the XS1000
delivered pretty much
the full advertised speed,
averaging a read speed of
1,054MB/sec and a write
speed of 970MB/sec.
Real-world performance
clocked in at around 900MB/sec
and 820MB/sec respectively.
The XS1000 does have a few
weaknesses, however. It doesn’t come
with the ruggedised sleeve of the
XS2000, so it’s not so well protected
from drops in transit, and it doesn’t
match the premium model’s IP55
certification. Capacity options are
limited to 1TB or 2TB, while plenty of
competitors offer 4TB models.
Like its stablemate, the XS1000
lacks hardware encryption. You can

ABOVE Mini marvel:
the tiny XS1000 is
only 7cm long

BELOW The SSD isn’t
particularly rugged,
but it does come with a
five-year warranty

use a software encryption
solution such as Microsoft
BitLocker to protect your
data, but that requires the
software to be installed on
all the machines you want
to use the drive with.
Crucial’s X9 and X10 Pro
both offer hardware
encryption, as does the
SanDisk Extreme Pro line.
Finally, there’s a distinct
shortage of bundled software
compared to what other brands
provide. You get the Kingston SSD
Manager, which monitors the wear
and error level of the drive and helps
you install firmware patches, but
there’s no handy backup software as
provided by Crucial and WD.
In all, the XS1000 is a pretty basic
package, but it’s not bad value. At under
£60 for a full terabyte of storage, it’s
competitive with rivals such as the
Crucial X8. Its design has a certain
charm, and Kingston supplies a
generous five-year warranty, which
makes the XS1000 worth checking if
you’re after a portable data device for
the long term. MARK PICKAVANCE
SPECIFICATIONS
1TB/2TB external PCI-E Gen 3 SSD USB-C 3.2
Gen 2 interface USB-C to USB-A cable 33 x
70 x 13.5mm (WDH) 29g 5yr limited warranty

63

Asus ROG Phone 7
Ultimate

If you love to game on your
phone – and enjoy Asus’
quirks and weird options –
this is the phone for you
SCORE
PRICE £1,000 (£1,200 inc VAT)
from rog.asus.com/uk

M

obile gaming is a growing
market, and the Asus ROG
Phone 7 Ultimate is aimed at
those who demand the best possible
gaming performance on their phone.
Predictably, that makes it one of the
most expensive (non-folding) phones
you can buy – but you get superlative
hardware in return.
As the name implies, it’s a maxedout version of the Asus ROG Phone 7,
with a 6.8in screen, a Snapdragon 8
Gen 2 processor, a huge 16GB of RAM
and 512GB of storage. It’s also one of
the first devices we’ve seen that
supports Wi-Fi 7, and it offers not one
but two USB-C ports, including one
that can handle DisplayPort for
big-screen video output.
The display goes up to an
incredible 165Hz – though
the benefits of that are
theoretical as I
couldn’t find any
games that support
such a fast frame
rate – while an
extra LED panel on
the back advertises
your activity to the
world. There’s
serious audio, too,
especially if you snap on
the provided AeroActive
attachment, a combination subwoofer
and fan that provides a bass boost
while blowing air into a vent to help
the CPU keep running at top speed.
Tappable areas around the edge of the
phone simulate the shoulder buttons
on a game console controller; it really
is a unique piece of hardware.
The aesthetics are aggressive, with
spaceship-style lines and detailing.
It’s chunky, at 10.3mm thick, and the
ventilation port is painted black, to
stand out against the “Storm White”
finish of the phone’s body. To be fair, it
isn’t garish: the white colour is mixed
in tasteful tones with stylish electric
blue accents. And despite the venting,
it still earns an IP54 rating, which
means it’s mostly dustproof and can
survive the odd splash of water.
64

The screen is bright,
with a native resolution of
1,080 x 2,448. Call of Duty
Mobile looked spectacular, and the
phone had no trouble with the game’s
Super Resolution experimental mode.
The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (see
issue 343, p68) is even brighter and
sharper, but you’ll get better visuals
from the Asus as it has the power to
provide a stutter-free experience.
And let’s talk about that. The ROG
Phone 7 Ultimate turned in the
fastest benchmark results
we’ve ever seen from an
Android phone. Its
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
SoC is clocked at
3.2GHz, and gaming
performance is
visibly smoother
than rival phones.
For example, when I
play Marvel Snap on
my Galaxy S23 Ultra I
can clearly notice
occasional stuttering and
clipped frames, especially during
transitions; on the ROG Phone 7
Ultimate those are completely gone.
It’s a flawless gaming experience,
perfect for maxing out the detail levels
in Call of Duty or preloading all the
maps in Genshin Impact.
What’s less great about this phone
is its cameras. On paper the 50MP
main sensor ought to pick up huge
amounts of detail, but the
lens has a smaller
aperture than the
Galaxy S23 and other
high-end cameras,
which means it lets in
less light. The result is
photos that look
blurry and washed
out; it can’t handle

astrophotography or moon
shots at all, while selfies look
soft and drab.
Otherwise, the software is
agreeable, with sensible
gaming features such
as options to tweak
graphics settings
to improve
responsiveness. I
expected more options
for customising
RECOMMENDED
Android itself; Asus
provides a few
wallpapers and themes, but
there are no interesting widgets
or cool productivity tools. I also
found it too easy to accidentally
trigger features or change things:
get a swipe from the corner
wrong and you’ll open a control
panel on top of your game. Jiggle
the AeroActive Cooler and it will
lose its connection.
Still, I can’t complain about
battery life. The 6,000mAh
battery saw me through eight
full hours of gaming – frankly,
ABOVE The ROG
the phone lasted longer than I did. In
Phone 7 Ultimate is
normal use, it always held a charge to
indeed the ultimate
the end of the day, even if I played
phone for gaming
games heavily on my train ride home.
To maximise its longevity you can
switch between three different levels
of performance, from the miserly
“Ultra Durable” mode to
“Tappable areas around the the highest performance
edge of the phone simulate option, labelled simply
“X Mode”.
the buttons on a console
If you’re looking for the
controller; it really is a
best gaming phone around
unique piece of hardware” then the Asus ROG Phone
7 Ultimate won’t
disappoint. It’s not slim, or light, and
it’s not the world’s best camera phone
– but that’s hardly the point. This
phone is for gamers in the same way a
Ferrari is for drivers. It has a display
LEFT The AeroActive
subwoofer/fan boosts that is faster than the frame rate of
bass and keeps the
any game you’ll play, a huge battery
CPU cool
and unique features that help justify
the sky-high price. If you want
the fastest gaming phone, and you
relish the quirks and oddities that
come with that title, this is the one to
buy. PHILIP BERNE

BELOW The cameras
are a letdown – but
you’re not buying this
phone to take photos

SPECIFICATIONS
8-core (3.2GHz/2.8GHz/2GHz) Qualcomm
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC 16GB RAM
Adreno 740 graphics 6.8in 165Hz AMOLED
screen, 1,080 x 2,448 resolution 5G 512GB
storage IP54 rating triple
50MP/ 13MP/5MP rear
cameras 32MP front
camera Wi-Fi 7
Bluetooth 5.3 NFC
6,000mAh battery USB-C
3.2 Gen 1 (side) USB-C 2
(bottom) Android 13 77 x
10.3 x 173mm (WDH) 239g
2yr warranty

@PCPRO

Reviews

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

RedMagic8SPro

Where the Asus ROG Phone 7
Ultimate is the best gaming
handset on the market, this
is undoubtedly the best value
SCORE
PRICE 16GB/512GB Aurora, £590 (£709
inc VAT) from uk.redmagic.gg

I

f you’re not quite ready to drop
£1,200 on Asus’ top-tier gaming
phone (see opposite), Nubia’s Red
Magic 8S Pro could be right up your
street. Pricing starts at an affordable
£579 inc VAT for the Matte/Midnight
model, which comes with 12GB of
RAM and 256GB of storage; at £689
the Platinum model offers a lighter
finish, 16GB of RAM and double the
storage, while the Aurora adds a fancy
semi-transparent case and RGB
lighting for an extra £20.
In all cases the design is elegant. In
place of the bloated Transformers-like
design of previous Red Magic phones,
the 8S Pro has a clean, flat-edged look.
Gorilla Glass 5 covers the front and
back, sandwiching an aluminium
frame. It looks great, and on the
partially transparent model you can
see the internal fan whirring away.
It’s not perfectly ergonomic, however:
when gaming for extended periods, you
might find yourself wishing
for a more curved shape.
There’s also plenty
of interest around the
edges. Alongside
two cooling vents
and a power
button, there’s a
pair of mappable
capacitive shoulder
controls and a red
“Game Boost” switch
that kicks the phone
into Game Space mode,
letting you launch games and
tweak settings. On the top you’ll find
a 3.5mm headphone port. To fit all
these accoutrements in, the phone is
on the thick side at 9.5mm, while the
venting means there’s no water- or
dust-resistance, but at 228g it doesn’t
feel heavy in the hand.
The 6.8in AMOLED display has a
native resolution of 1,116 x 2,480 and a
120Hz refresh rate. With a maximum
brightness of 1,300cd/m2 it’s a clear,
sharp and spacious canvas for gaming.
There’s no notch or hole-punch to
interrupt the display, and minimal
bezels translate to an impressive 94%
screen-to-body ratio. Sadly, the tiny
surround makes it easy to accidentally

touch the screen edge
with your hands while
holding the phone.
The main camera uses the same
50MP GN5 image sensor as found in
the Samsung Galaxy S22, and it turns
out bright, detailed images in decent
lighting. Low-light shots aren’t quite
as assured, and aren’t helped by the
lack of OIS; there’s also no optical
telephoto lens, so if you want
to get a closer look at your
subject you’re stuck
with digital zoom.
Selfies also lack
detail, but that’s the
price you pay for a
no-notch display,
as the front camera
literally has to shoot
through the screen.
The Snapdragon 8
Gen 2 chip is clocked at
3.36GHz – matching
Samsung’s Galaxy S23 phones
– while the GPU runs at up to 719MHz.
The vented cooling system helps the
internals sustain their top speeds, and
the result is a phone that’s more than
equal to the demands of any modern
game. I was happily able to max out
the graphical settings in high-end
titles such as console racer
Wreckfest and CoD Mobile
without dropping a single
frame. You can be confident
that you’re getting not only
great gaming performance
now, but for years to come.
The one slightly weak point
here is sound, as the all-screen
frontage leaves no room for

forward-facing speakers. Still,
audio is reasonably clear, if not
massively loud or deep.
The system software is a
familiar Android UI that mostly
works fine. I did notice a few
glitches, though, such as when
the default time and weather
widget lopped off the
top part of the clock
face. There’s a certain
amount of preinstalled
bloatware too: besides
an unasked-for
Booking.com app,
RECOMMENDED
there’s the silliness of
having a third-rate
web browser-cum-news-feed
app featured alongside Chrome
and Google Feed.
One notable software plus, at
least for the target audience, is
Nubia’s Game Space dashboard,
which lets you directly launch
games with optimised hardware
settings, manage peripherals,
access cloud gaming services
and run individual game plugins.
You’ll get plenty of gaming
off a charge, too, thanks to a
6,000mAh battery. Even if
you’re hammering the
hardware this should see you
ABOVE The elegantly
comfortably through a full day. The
designed 8S Pro is a
bundled 65W charger will get you
gaming powerhouse
from empty to 100% in around 40
minutes, although as is common with
gaming phones there’s no wireless
charging – presumably it’s considered
superfluous as you can’t
“I was happily able to max play while your phone’s
out the graphical settings sitting on a pad.
The Red Magic 8S Pro is
in high-end titles such as
an impressive package,
CoD Mobile without
with top-tier gaming
performance, mappable
dropping a single frame”
controls, rapid charging
and epic battery life, all wrapped up in
a striking all-screen design. It does
have its foibles: cluttered software,
mediocre camera performance and
LEFT The AMOLED
one or two poor design decisions all
screen is clear, sharp
contribute to a less than premium feel.
and perfect for games
But when you consider that it delivers
similar gaming performance to the
Asus ROG Phone 7 Ultimate at less
than half the price, there’s no denying
that it’s a fantastic deal for gamers on
BELOW Unusually for
a more limited budget. JON MUNDY
a gaming phone, the
rear cameras are
actually pretty decent

SPECIFICATIONS
8-core (3.36GHz/2.8GHz/2GHz) Qualcomm
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC 12GB
RAM Adreno 740 graphics 6.8in
120Hz AMOLED screen, 1,116 x 2,480
resolution 5G 512GB storage
triple 50MP/8MP/2MP rear
cameras 16MP front camera
Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.3 NFC
6,000mAh battery USB-C 3.2 Gen 1
Android 13 76 x 9.5 x 164mm
(WDH) 228g 2yr warranty
65

Yourbonus
software

Total value
this month

£168

Wescourtheglobetonegotiatethebestsoftwaredealsforourreaders,fromextended
licencestofullprogramsyoudon’tneedtopayapennyfor.Here’sthismonth’slineup

AOMEI
Backupper
Professional7
AOMEI Backupper is a
One-year licence
tool for backing up files,
worth £43
partitions, hard drives
aomeitech.com
or your entire system.
REQUIRES
Its straightforward
Windows 7 or later;
interface should be
10MB hard drive
immediately familiar if
space; online
you’ve previously used a
registration
backup tool, so you can
start securing your
precious data right away – and we’re giving every
reader a one-year licence worth £43.
Getting started is easy. Switch to the Backup
tab, then click Disk Backup, choose the drive you
want to back up, and set your preferred options.
You can choose the level of compression, type of
encryption, how archives are split, where email
notifications should be sent and more. Once you’ve
set the parameters to suit your requirements, it
just takes another click or two to secure your data
in the destination volume of your choice.
AOMEI Backupper Professional also supports
backing up selected files and folders, which you can
select using the familiar Windows file dialog.

Once you’ve defined your backup sets you can
use the flexible scheduler to automatically update
your backups as and when required – one of the
chief benefits of using a dedicated backup tool to
look after your precious data, rather than manually
dragging and dropping copies to external drives.
Options include daily backups, backups at fixed
intervals, on specific days of the week or on a
certain day of the month. If you opt for the last of
these, you can specify a set day, such as the 10th of
every month, or use a more descriptive term, such
as the third Friday. Whatever schedule you select,
you can choose to run a full, incremental or

differential backup. The backup is launched by
Windows Task Scheduler, so you can be confident
that it will kick in as and when required.
When it’s time to restore your data, you can
mount your backup images as virtual drives, where
they’ll behave just like an external hard disk or
network share. This is a boon if you only want to
restore the odd file or two. There’s also a more
extensive Restore option, and you can even create a
bootable rescue disk running Linux or Windows PE,
from which you can restore a system drive after a
serious glitch or corruption, or when upgrading
components in an ageing machine.

ABOVE Backupper’s bold interface is intuitive and
easy to navigate, so you can get up and running
quickly and protect your data with minimal fuss

ABOVE Whether backing up a whole system or
individual files, you can simply select what you
want to back up and where to save it

ABOVE No need to worry about remembering to
refresh your backups: you can set a schedule to
automate the process

66

@PCPRO

Bonus software

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Music Studio 2023
Simplify the task of
building, managing
and sharing your
music collection
Rip tracks from a
CD, record audio
directly from a
microphone or your
sound card, or strip
the soundtrack
from a video file
Normalise audio to
keep a consistent
volume, cut and
trim tracks and
convert between
file formats

PhotoSort 2023

Full product worth £35 ashampoo.com
REQUIRES Windows 8 or later; 200MB hard
drive space; in-application registration

PDF Conversa 3

Import photos
from your phone,
preview them, add
them to categories
and organise them
into albums
Add selected
photos to a list of
favourites to make
your best shots
easier to find
Automatically
rename image files
according to your
own criteria and
sort them into
custom categories

Software Updater 6

Full product worth £20 ascomp.de
REQUIRES Windows 7 or later; 250MB hard
drive space; in-application registration
Easy tool for converting between PDF and
word-processing file formats – and vice versa
Secure your PDFs by adding a digital signature
and optionally prevent them from being edited,
copied or printed unless a password is entered
Picture quality and text compression settings let
you maintain quality or reduce file sizes

One-PC, six-month licence worth £10
iobit.com REQUIRES Windows 7 or later;
100MB hard drive space; online registration
Scans your computer and compares your
installed software against an online database
to find outdated applications
Supports remote work tools including Zoom,
Skype, TeamViewer, GoToMeeting and more
Optimised algorithms accelerate updates by
150% to get you updated sooner

Full product worth £20 abelssoft.de
REQUIRES Windows 7 or later; 75MB hard
drive space; in-application registration

BreachGuard 2023

One-PC, one-year licence worth £40
avast.com REQUIRES Windows 7 or later;
50GB hard drive space; online registration
Get notified of breaches and leaks involving your
data so you can take prompt action to secure
your accounts
Warns you of websites that have been hacked
and databases that have been compromised
Also stops companies collecting information
about you and helps you remove personal data

How to claim your bonus software

1

Visit pcprodownload.co.uk.
First, enter the issue number
(350 this month). Next, enter
your email address and the coupon
code printed on the cover’s spine (or
directly on the front cover of digital
issues of the magazine). We’ll then
send an email to confirm that your
code has been registered. Follow the
instructions in the email to access
the download area.

2

Once you’re in the download
area, you can access this
month’s bonus software by
navigating to the relevant product
page and clicking the red Install
button. For trial software, freeware
and other downloads, click the
Install button below the product
description, or follow the onscreen
instructions (please make sure to
read these carefully).

3

If the software needs
registering, click the purple
Register button, or follow
the instructions on the left of the
product page (again, please read
these carefully). In some cases, you
may need to register for a PC Pro
software store account – if you don’t
already have one – and you might be
prompted to reenter the coupon
code on the spine or cover.

Remembertoclaimyoursoftwareby30November2023*

pcprodownload.co.uk
* Codes are sometimes limited, so please claim early to avoid disappointment

4

Please be sure to install and
register your bonus software
before the date that’s specified
below. After this date, we can’t
guarantee that it will still be possible
to download or register this issue’s
bonus software.

Any problems?
If you need assistance
with the coupon code or
have registration issues,
please contact us at
software@pcpro.co.uk

67

@PCPRO

Labs mini Passwordmanagers

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Labs

PASSWORDMANAGERS
PCPro’ssecurityexpertsconsistentlywarnagainstusingthepassword-savingfeature
ofabrowser–butwhichdedicatedpasswordmanagershouldyouchooseinstead?

CONTENTS

NordPass .................. 70
Bitwarden .................. 71
Keeper ........................72
1Password..................72
Dashlane ....................73
RoboForm ..................73

T

he best password managers make it easy to
stay secure online. The concept is simple: all
of your passwords are stored in an encrypted
online vault, which can only be unlocked
with your private master password. Once you’ve
entered this password, the password manager uses
the appropriate credentials to log you into whichever
site or service you want to access. While most web
browsers have built-in password managers, they’re
not as flexible or secure as a dedicated app.
The password managers on test this month aren’t
just for individual users. Many of these products are

*All prices based on annual subscription rather than monthly billing

RECOMMENDED

1Password

Bitwarden

Dashlane

also offered in business-friendly versions (albeit for
higher prices). With the widespread adoption of
hybrid and remote working, users are increasingly
storing business-sensitive passwords on their devices,
and IT departments should take a hard look at the
security hole this leaves.
On these pages we focus on six of the best premium
password managers, honed down from a longlist of 30
products that have been put through their paces in
terms of security, privacy, storage, compatibility,
synchronisation and – of course – price.
CONTRIBUTOR: Mike Jennings

RECOMMENDED

A LIST

Keeper

NordPass

RoboForm

Overall rating
14-day trial

Yes

Yes (one device)

30-day trial

Yes

Yes

Individual option

Free version

$2.99 per month

Free (Premium,
$10 per year)

$2.75 per month

£2.49 per month

£1.89 per month

$1.99 per month

Family option

$4.99 per month
(five accounts)

$3.33 per month
(six accounts)

$4.99 per month
(ten accounts)

£5.99 per month
(five accounts)

£2.89 per month
(six accounts)

$3.98 per month
(five accounts)

$7.99 per month per user

$3 per month per user

From $2 per month
per user

From £2 per month
per user

£3.59 per month per user

From $3.33 per month
per user

1GB per user

1GB per user (paid only)

Unlimited

Unlimited

Business version

Features
Travel mode
Digital wallet
Storage space
Number of devices

Unlimited (paid only)

10GB (family)

3GB (paid only)

Unlimited

Unlimited (paid only)

Unlimited (paid only)

69

NordPass

A well-balanced password
manager, combining a good
set of features with a very
reasonable price
SCORE

PRICE Individual, £1.89 per month
from nordpass.com

L

ast month NordVPN took the top
spot in our Labs roundup of VPNs
(see issue 349, p78) – and the
company’s password manager is just
as impressive. It boasts all the
important features, including secure
sharing, autofill for passwords, credit
cards and login details, and singleclick saving of new credentials.
Unusually, you can even start
using the service without paying a
penny. Free users can store an
unlimited number of passwords, and
access them from anywhere, but
they’re only allowed one signed-in
session at a time – so if you alternate
between your phone and your
computer, you’ll have to log in again
each time you change device. The free
edition also won’t detect weak or
reused passwords, and it won’t scan
the web for data breaches.
A Premium account turns all of
those features on for £1.89 per month,
based on an annual commitment. It
also lets you allow trusted contacts to
access specific credentials in case of
emergencies. Sadly there’s no option
to bundle NordVPN into the deal – a
missed opportunity in our eyes.
The Family plan, starting at £2.89
per month, gets you six accounts,
with all of the features of the
Premium product. Both plans are also
available as two-year commitments,
so you can save a bit more money if
you’re willing to pay up front.
There’s also a Business tier starting
at £3.59 per user per month, for up to
250 users. As well as all of the features
we’ve mentioned above, this service
includes a security dashboard,
company-wide settings, Google
Workplace SSO and real-time
monitoring. If you want user
provisioning via Active Directory, a
dedicated account manager or
face-to-face onboarding you’ll need
the Enterprise product –contact
NordPass directly to get a quote.
It’s very easy to get started with
NordPass. There are Windows, macOS
and Linux versions of the NordPass
desktop client, plus mobile apps for
Android and iOS; once you’ve
installed one of these, you just need

70

to create an account with a master
password, and you’re good to go. You
can import existing passwords from
any big-name browser, or directly
from a CSV file. The only real thing
missing here is the command line
options you’ll encounter on more
techie software, such as Bitwarden.
Once you’re in, the NordPass
interface is one of the most polished
password manager experiences we’ve
seen. It does a great job of hiding away
in the background and only popping
up discreetly when needed. Native
extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox,
Safari, Opera and Brave take care of
automatically pasting passwords into
your chosen browser, and we like
the way you can switch seamlessly
between different NordPass accounts,
to help manage your work and
personal life separately.
At the bottom-right of the app
you’ll find a few extra features,
including a customisable password
generator, a password health
assessment module and a data breach
scanner. For ease of management you
can sort your credentials into separate
categories, such as social media,
online shopping and banking. There’s

a dedicated area for payment details,
too, though it would be nice to see a
similar section for documents such as
driving licences and passports.
A final notable feature of NordPass
is its support for passkeys. These are
saved in a separate location from
regular passwords, and chances are
you’ll still have a vault full of
passwords for a long time to come,
but it’s great to have the option of
embracing passkeys as soon as your
sites and services are ready.
Can you trust NordPass’ security?
Well, as you’d expect from a VPN
developer, NordPass
“We like the way you can
operates on a zeroswitch seamlessly between knowledge model, with
encryption
different accounts, to help end-to-end
for your passwords and
manage your work and
data syncing – so not
even the NordPass team
personal life separately”
can see your data,
Credentials are protected with the
XChaCha20 encryption algorithm,
which is also a favourite of companies
such as Google and Cloudflare. And
on the client side, biometric security
BELOW NordPass has
can be added where supported by the
mobile apps for both
device. Two-factor authentication is
Android and iOS
also supported for your NordPass
account, optionally using an OTP
generator or USB flash drive.
One area where NordPass doesn’t
quite excel is customer support: you
get round-the-clock email support,
but there’s no way to call directly, and
live chat agents can only help with
sales questions, not technical queries.
Overall, though, NordPass is a
great choice for individuals and SMBs,
with a clean design, plenty of useful
features and strong security. It lacks a
few advanced tools such as Wi-Fi
syncing, but unless you’re looking for
a password manager with every
possible feature, that shouldn’t put
you off – for most people NordPass
will do a great, hassle-free job.
ABOVE Setting up a
NordPass account is
simplicity itself

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Labs mini Passwordmanagers

Bitwarden

This open-source tool is
highly secure and packed
with features – and, best of
all, it’s free for everyday use
SCORE

PRICE Individual, free
from bitwarden.com

B

itwarden is unlike any other
password manager on test this
month: it’s offered under an
open-source licence, which means
anyone can review, access and
contribute to its code. While most of
us may be happy to leave that to
developers, it’s a reassuring degree
of transparency.
What’s more, like most opensource projects, Bitwarden can be
used completely free of charge. And
this isn’t a strictly limited service like
other password managers offer,
either: free users can store as many
passwords as they like, and sync
them across any number of devices.
You can even share passwords with
other Bitwarden users, and make
use of a built-in password generator
and email aliases.
If you want more, the paid-for
Premium plan adds advanced 2FA,
emergency access, security reporting
and priority customer support – and
at £10 a year it’s still far cheaper than
rival services.
There’s also a family plan, which
costs £40 per year and allows
unlimited sharing and collections for
up to six users, with improved storage
organisation, which makes it easier to
manage all of the passwords
associated with busy households.
Finally, Bitwarden offers two
corporate plans. A Bitwarden Teams
subscription costs £3 per user per
month and adds numerous businessfriendly features such as user groups,
API access, unlimited sharing and
better logging. Or, for £5 per user per
month, the Enterprise plan adds
custom roles, SSO integration, extra
administrative features and extensive
self-hosting options.
Getting started with Bitwarden
could hardly be simpler. Don’t be put
off by the fact that it’s open source:
you just need to download and install
the app, as you would with any
password manager, then set up an
account and master password.
Platform support is superb: there
are desktop clients for Windows,
macOS and Linux, with browser
extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox

and Safari, plus more obscure options
such as Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and
even the Tor Browser. For mobile
users, there are dedicated apps for
both Android and iOS, the latter of
which partners with a watchOS app
for even more convenience. And if
you don’t have access to the app at all,
you can log into your password vault
and access all of Bitwarden’s features
via a secure web interface.
Not that you’ll often need to
interact directly with the app. Most of
the time you can just let Bitwarden
automatically save your passwords as
you enter them into the browser, and
then automatically refill them the
next time you visit the relevant sites.
The web extension even includes a
built-in password generator.
However, if you want to delve in
more deeply, the straightforward app
interface allows you to quickly access
and edit your passwords and secure
data. Manually adding a new item is
as easy as filling in a simple form, and
you can attach notes and custom
fields to each entry. The app also tests
your passwords for strength levels
and, like many other apps, it monitors
your password vault and lets you

know if your information has been
exposed in a security breach. It’s not
as slick-looking as some other tools,
but it works just as well.
One of the few features that
Bitwarden notably lacks is identitytheft protection. Pay the extra for
rival Dashlane (see p73) and you’ll
get credit monitoring, identity
restoration support and insurance
up to the value of $1 million. There’s
RECOMMENDED
nothing like that here.
The other thing that’s currently
missing from Bitwarden is passkey
support, but the
developer assures us that
“Getting started with
this is coming very soon.
Bitwarden could hardly
Users will shortly be able
be simpler. Don’t be put
to set up a passkey for
off by the fact that it’s
their Bitwarden account,
to skip entering the
open source”
master password, while
third-party passkeys can be added to
your vault for instant logins.
As for security, your Bitwarden
vault is secured with AES-256
encryption and the master password
is never sent to Bitwarden, so
BELOW Bitwarden
there’s no chance of a breach from
offers superb
Bitwarden’s side of things. And while
platform support
open-source software is sometimes
associated with dodgy support,
Bitwarden has an active online
community, plus extensive tutorials,
a knowledge base and forums. You
can even email the developers for
direct assistance. The only thing
lacking here is phone support – that
would have been a welcome addition,
especially for business customers.
Still, there’s plenty to like about
Bitwarden. It has rock-solid security
credentials, it works with virtually
every device and browser you could
think of, and it ticks almost every box
in terms of features. More to the
point, it’s fantastic value, whether
you go for the free service or the very
reasonably priced paid options.

ABOVE Two corporate
plans add a host of
additional features

71

Keeper

Industry-leading security
with a zero-knowledge
policy to keep your
company’s passwords safe
SCORE

PRICE Business, from £2 per user
per month from keepersecurity.com

S

ecurity is job one at Keeper.
The company undergoes
regular auditing to ensure its
zero-knowledge security model is
strictly observed, and that it complies
with US and EU data-protection
directives. Its software also offers
powerful admin tools, great sharing
options and remote access, so it’s a
top-notch option for SMBs.
The Keeper Business plan costs £4
per user per month and offers user
management and extensive policy
enforcement. For smaller companies
the Business Starter plan costs £2 per
user per month for teams of between
five and ten, while Enterprise plans
add SSO, team management and
advanced provisioning.

Unusually, you can also add
custom modules with extra features:
the compliance reporting module
costs an extra £10 per user per year,
while secure messaging costs £20 per
user per year, and file storage and
sharing starts at £110 per year.
Keeper isn’t just for businesses,
though. The Personal plan costs £3 a
month, allowing an individual to
store unlimited passwords and access
them from an unlimited number of
devices. There’s no free option, but
students can get 50% off Keeper,
while military and medical
professionals get a 30% discount.
Keeper is easy to deploy: you can
use the regular graphical installer, or
a command-line installation routine

ABOVE Keeper is a
great option for SMBs

RECOMMENDED

1Password

Broad platform support
together with a clean design
and affordable price make
1Password a solid choice

SCORE
PRICE $2.99 per month
from 1password.com

1

Password has a top-notch
business pedigree, with
companies including IBM, GitLab
and Slack trusting it to keep their
passwords secure. It’s also available
for individuals, with subscriptions
starting at $36 a year; that includes
unlimited password access, with full
support for passkeys, plus 1GB of
online storage and the ability to
restore deleted passwords for up to a
year. If you pay $60 a year for the
five-user family deal, you also get
management features, account
recovery and guest accounts.
For businesses, the Teams Starter
Pack costs $20 per month and covers
ten users, each of whom gets 1GB of
storage and unlimited shared vaults.

72

Move up to the $8 business plan and
you’ll receive VIP support, 5GB of
storage per user, custom security
controls and other advanced features.
Large businesses can apply for a
custom quote for an Enterprise
subscription, which includes a
dedicated account manager, setup
training and an onboarding engineer.
All plans include 24/7 email
support, and enable you to sync your
passwords across virtually all types of
device. Alongside mobile apps for iOS
and Android, 1Password provides
desktop apps for macOS, Windows,
and Linux, plus a command-line tool
and extensions for popular browsers
including Chrome, Edge, Firefox,
Safari and Brave.

ABOVE You can sync
passwords across
most types of device

on Windows. Credentials can be
easily imported, and businesses can
also bulk-import users.
All the password management
basics are here. You get a password
generator, identity management and
payment information, access to
shared passwords and good support
for passkeys. Both the app interface
and the admin console are clear and
agreeable to use, giving you a quick
overview of activity and any security
issues – and alongside desktop and
mobile apps, Keeper can run directly
in your browser.
On the administrative side, users
can be assigned roles and divided into
teams; passwords and folders can be
shared with users, teams or roles;
while policies ensure everybody is
using strong passwords.
Live chat support is available
24/7, which is great for businesses,
while phone support is available
10am–5pm CST. Personal users don’t
get email or phone support, though:
they need to go through the support
portal or use the self-support
resources on the website.
Keeper offers industry-leading
security that businesses in particular
will appreciate, and it starts at a good
price – although its various additional
features can significantly increase the
yearly invoice.

The desktop apps are quite
intuitive, with a handy main view
for browsing your vault and a
“Watchtower” tab that tracks security
breaches. Passwords can be filed
under more than two dozen
categories, which offer different data
fields to suit the type of information
you’re storing. However, logging in
online is more complicated than with
other password managers: you still
use your master password to get in,
but you also need to authorise it by
copying and pasting a “secret key” to
verify it’s you.
That reflect a general focus on
security. Since your master password
is never shared with 1Password or any
third parties, the software prompts
you during setup to create an
emergency PDF with the information
needed to recover your account if you
get locked out – a reassuring touch.
The app also supports 2FA with Authy
and Microsoft Authenticator, and
comes with security breach alerts,
protection against keyloggers and
AES 256-bit encryption.
In all, there’s everything here that
individuals and businesses need to
safely store and share passwords and
other sensitive pieces of information
– and the range of pricing options
means it can be a low-cost way to
keep your data safe.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Labs mini Passwordmanagers

Dashlane

ABOVE The Dashlane
interface is clean,
logical and easy to use

download an app – it’s
all handled via browser
extensions or a web
interface that’s packed
with features. As well
as passkey support and
personalised security
alerts, there’s a bulk
password-changing
function, and for
businesses, the
software can provide
bespoke security
ratings for individual
team members, and
security policy
management via the admin console.
As for security, Dashlane uses a
zero-knowledge master password,
and businesses can use custom
policies to create a tailored secure
environment. To minimise the risk
of security flaws, Dashlane has a
bug bounty programme with
rewards of up to $5,000.
Live chat support is available in
English during working hours on
weekdays, but the simplicity of
Dashlane’s interface means even
first-time users can hit the ground
running. Its popularity is easy to
understand, but we will say that some
of Dashlane’s business products are
quite expensive when compared to
other password manager tools.

ABOVE The interface
is far from glamorous,
but is easy to navigate

works for you. Password sharing is
also handled well on the business
side, enabling users to securely share
credentials with other users within
their company.
Another strength of RoboForm
is its high degree of security and
account control. Access is protected
by lots of authentication options,
including PINs, master passwords and
biometrics, and 2FA is available on
business accounts, too, with support
for third-party authentication apps.
It’s worth noting that RoboForm
doesn’t include any extras such as a
VPN, and it also doesn’t currently
support passkeys. If you want a
password manager that will handle
passwordless logins, you’ll need to
look elsewhere. On the plus side,
there’s telephone support for all
users, although since this is US-based
the call might be a little pricey.
RoboForm can be comparatively
expensive, especially if you want
to equip a medium-sized team. For
basic password management services
there are plenty of cheaper solutions,
including the free Bitwarden service.
However, RoboForm’s administrative
controls and security credentials are a
definite strength, making it a strong
choice for companies that are willing
to invest in a powerful password
management solution.

An advanced password
manager that’s great for
businesses, the only
drawback being the price
SCORE

PRICE Business, £8 per user per month
from dashlane.com

D

ashlane boasts that more than
2.5 billion credentials have
been saved on it, by customers
including Wayfair and PepsiCo. You
can try it yourself with the free plan,
which lets you store unlimited
passwords and passkeys on one
device, and includes a password
generator, 2FA and personal alerts.
If you want more, £3.49 a month
gets you an Advanced subscription,
which supports unlimited devices
and adds dark web monitoring to
make sure your credentials haven’t
leaked. The £3.99 Premium plan
includes the Hotspot Shield VPN
(which normally costs £10.99 on its
own), while the Friends & Family plan
costs £5.99 a month for up to ten

users, with all Premium features plus
a dashboard for easy management.
There are three business plans too:
the Starter plan offers basic password
functions at £20 per month for ten
seats; the Team plan adds the VPN and
supports more users; and the full-fat
Business plan costs £8 per user per
month and adds SSO integration,
SCIM provisioning and phone support
– something you don’t get with many
rival services.
The setup process guides you
effortlessly through the process of
storing your first passwords via the
browser extension, and once you’ve
done this, Dashlane is beautifully easy
to use. The interface is clean and
logical, and you don’t even have to

RoboForm

A powerful form-filling tool
for demanding businesses
and individuals, although not
overloaded with features

SCORE
PRICE Business, 1-10 users, from $3.49
per user per month from roboform.com

O

riginally devised as a business
product, RoboForm now
caters to both organisations
and individuals. There’s even a free
personal service that lets you store
any number of passwords and warns
you of data breaches, but you can only
use it on a single device. To fully
unlock the software costs $24 per
year, or $48 for up to five users. As
well as unlimited devices, that adds
web access and password sharing.
For businesses, RoboForm costs a
flat rate of $40 per person per year,
with discounts of 15% and 25%
respectively on three- and five-year
deals. The business tier includes some
advanced administrator controls,
such as enforced minimum master

password standards and periodic
password changes; businesses can
also make use of public-private key
cryptography, to share encrypted
information with employees without
exposing the contents.
RoboForm can be used via native
desktop or mobile apps, using a
browser extension, or directly on the
RoboForm website. While the
interface isn’t exactly glamorous, it’s
easy to navigate and has all the key
features, including one-click login,
cross-platform password syncing and
a strong password generator.
RoboForm is great when it comes
to organising your information, with
a flexible folder model that lets you
arrange passwords in whatever way

73

PRO
LAPTOPS
from£430
Looking to update your fleet of business

L

aptops designed for work
used to be boring. If you
worked in sales in the
early 2000s, chances are
you had to cart around a
3kg grey slab that packed all the visual
appeal of a self-storage warehouse.
This latest haul of “business laptops”
couldn’t be more different. Not only do
you have variety, but in one or two
cases you actually have beauty.
Not that we’re suggesting you
choose your next work laptop purely
on the basis of aesthetics, merely that
it’s one of the buying factors to
consider (see our full buyers’ guide on
p78). But we do think the decisions to
make when choosing a laptop are
changing; for instance, we would
argue that power is less important
than screen quality, battery life and
portability for most people.
It may also be time to give some of
the challenger brands a look. Let’s say
you’ve used Dell, HP and Lenovo
forever. They’re all still producing

74

laptops, dabble with 2-in-1s or buy one or
two powerful machines for individuals?
We test 13 of the latest offerings
great laptops – there’s a reason the X1
Carbon is our Labs Winner – but both
Acer and Asus have stepped up their
business game in the past couple of
years. They don’t have the same level
of enterprise support as their rivals,
but are a viable choice for SMBs.
Then we have the UK brands,
spearheaded here by Chilllblast and
PCSpecialist. These companies are
focusing on value for money, but don’t
ignore their local support.
And if you really do need power,
allow us to humbly point out that the
16in Huawei MateBook 16s 2023
includes a Core i9 for £1,100.
All of which means it may be time
to change your perceptions of what a
work laptop actually means.
CONTRIBUTOR: Tim Danton

CONTENTS

Acer TravelMate P6 ........................................... 80
Asus ExpertBook B9 OLED................................. 81
Dell Latitude 7340................................................82
Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1..............................................83
Huawei MateBook 16s 2023 ..............................84
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11...................85
Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360.......................86
Acer TravelMate Spin P4....................................87
Asus ExpertBook B1............................................. 87
Chillblast Prestige 15.6in ....................................88
HP ZBook Firefly G9.............................................88
Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 4................................89
PCSpecialist Fusion Studio ................................89
Feature table ........................................................ 76
How to choose a business laptop in 2023 ....... 78
How we test ......................................................... 90
Benchmark results.............................................. 91
View from the Labs..............................................92

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Labs Laptopsforwork

75

RECOMMENDED

RECOMMENDED

Acer TravelMate Spin
P4 TMP414RN-52

Acer TravelMate P6
TMP614-53

Asus ExpertBook B1
B1502

RECOMMENDED

Price of model tested 1

£804 (£965 inc VAT)

£1,249 (£1,499 inc VAT)

£358 (£430 inc VAT)

£1,833 (£2,200 inc VAT)

£542 (£650 inc VAT)

£1,139 (£1,377 inc VAT)

Supplier

business.currys.co.uk

acer.co.uk

asus.com/uk

asus.com/uk

chillblast.com

dell.co.uk

Part code

NX.VX2EK.001

Not yet confirmed

B1502CBA-BQi711X

B9403CV (built to order)

N/A

s046l734013ukie_vp

Dimensions (WDH)

320 x 230 x 18mm

312 x 226 x 16.8mm

362 x 233 x 20mm

311 x 215 x 15.7mm

358 x 241 x 18mm

299 x 213 x 16.7-17.6mm

Weight 2

1.6kg

1.2kg

1.7kg

1kg

1.9kg

1.1kg

Warranty 3

1yr RTB

3yr RTB

1yr C&R

1yr C&R

5yr (2yr C&R parts and labour,
3yr RTB labour only)

3yr on-site

Manufacturer support/
reliability score 4

81% / 86%

81% / 86%

80% / 87%

80% / 87%

N/A

80% / 87%

Not stated

12.6%

Asus ExpertBook B9
OLED

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in Business Laptop

Dell Latitude 7340

Overall rating
Purchase information

Service & support

Sustainability
TCO certification

(level 9)

(level 9)

(level 9)

(level 9)

Recycled plastic

39.3%

2.7%

11%

0%

EPEAT certification

EPEAT Gold

EPEAT Gold

EPEAT Gold

EPEAT Gold

Upgradable RAM/SSD

/

/

/

(level 9)
EPEAT Gold

/

/

/

1
Mainland UK only. C&R stands for collect and return. NBD stands for next business day. 2 As measured by PC Pro. Power supply includes lead and power unit. 3 Parts and labour, UK mainland, unless
otherwise stated. 4 Laptop support/reliability rating in reader-voted PC Pro Excellence Awards 2022. Where N/A, companies didn’t receive enough feedback to be rated. See issue 338, p26.

Core components
Processor

Intel Core i5-1240P

Intel Core i7-1365U

Intel Core i7-1255U

Intel Core i7-1365U

Intel Core i3-1315U

Intel Core i5-1345U vPro

Cores

4 P-cores, 8 E-cores

2 P-cores, 8 E-cores

2 P-cores, 8 E-cores

2 P-cores, 8 E-cores

2 P-cores, 4 E-cores

2 P-cores, 8 E-cores

Threads

16

12

12

12

8

12

Max CPU speed

4.5GHz

5.2GHz

4.7GHz

5.2GHz

4.5GHz

4.7GHz

Supplied RAM

8GB DDR4

16GB LPDDR5

16GB DDR4

64GB LPDDR5

16GB DDR4

16GB LPDDR5

Intel Iris Xe Graphics

Intel Iris Xe Graphics

Intel UHD Graphics

Intel Iris Xe Graphics

Intel UHD Graphics

Soldered RAM?
RAM socket
Primary GPU

(2)

(1)

(2)
Intel Iris Xe Graphics

Display
Size and technology

14in IPS

14in OLED

15.6in IPS

14in OLED

15.6in IPS

13.3in IPS

Resolution

1,920 x 1,200

2,880 x 1,800

1,920 x 1,080

2,880 x 1,800

1,920 x 1,080

1,920 x 1,200

Pixel density

162ppi

242ppi

141ppi

242ppi

141ppi

170ppi

Frequency

60Hz

60Hz

60Hz

90Hz

60Hz

60Hz

Matte

Glossy

Matte

Glossy

Matte

Matte

Model

Micron 2450

2 x Micron 3400

Micron 2400

Samsung PM9A1

SolidIGM P44 Pro

Kioxia KBG50ZNS512G

PCI Generation

Gen 4

Gen 4

Gen 4

Gen 4

Gen 4

Gen 4

Capacity

512GB

1TB (2 x 512GB)

1TB

2TB

512GB

512GB

Touchscreen
Glossy or matte?
Storage

Empty SSD socket
Battery & charger
Battery capacity

56Wh

65Wh

42Wh

63Wh

55Wh

57Wh

Charger wattage

65W

65W

65W

65W

45W

65W

Charger weight 2

340g

335g

340g

360g

220g

300g

Charging options

DC, USB-C

USB-C

USB-C

USB-C

DC, USB-C

USB-C

1080p

1080p

720p

1080p

720p

1080p

Wireless standard

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 5

Wi-Fi 6E

Bluetooth

Bluetooth 5.2

Bluetooth 5.3

Bluetooth 5.3

Bluetooth 5.3

Bluetooth 5.1

Bluetooth 5.3

Webcam
Maximum video
Privacy cover
Windows Hello?
Ports & connectivity

RJ-45 (speed)
HDMI (version)

(gigabit)

(gigabit)

(not stated)

(1.4)

Via micro-HDMI to Ethernet
(2.1)

(not stated)

(2.0)

USB-C

2 x Thunderbolt 4/USB 4

2 x Thunderbolt 4/USB 4

2 (1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1 x USB 3.2
Gen 1)

2 x Thunderbolt 4/USB 4

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

2 x Thunderbolt 4/USB 4

USB-A

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

2 (1 x USB 2, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1)

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

3 (2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1, 1 x USB 2)

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

microSD card reader
3.5mm audio jack
Other

y
Docked stylus

Other features
Backlit keyboard
(brightness levels)
Touchpad dimensions (WH)

(2)

(2)

(1)

(1)

(2)

(2)

126 x 78mm

126 x 78mm

105 x 73mm

129 x 82mm

140 x 94mm

125 x 67mm

Windows 11 Pro

Windows 11 Pro

Windows 11 Pro

Windows 11 Pro

Windows 11 Pro

Windows 11 Pro

Fingerprint reader
Other
Supplied OS

76

@PCPRO

Labs Laptopsforwork

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

RECOMMENDED

LABS WINNER

RECOMMENDED

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

HP ZBook Firefly G9

Huawei MateBook 16s
2023

Lenovo ThinkPad E14
Gen 4

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon Gen 11

PCSpecialist Fusion
Studio

Samsung Galaxy Book3
Pro 360

£1,446 (£1,736 inc VAT)

£1,030 (£1,236 inc VAT)

£917 (£1,100 inc VAT)

£922 (£1,106 inc VAT)

£1,597 (£1,916 inc VAT)

£816 (£979 inc VAT)

£1,541 (£1,849 inc VAT)

dell.co.uk

hp.com/uk

consumer.huawei.com

uk.insight.com

lenovo.com/uk

pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews

samsung.com/uk

cn93603

69Q68EA#ABU

N/A

21E30065UK

Configurable via website

N/A

N/A

293 x 201 x 7.4mm (tablet only)

316 x 224 x 19.9mm

351 x 255 x 17.8mm

324 x 221 x 17.9mm

316 x 223 x 15.4mm

309 x 215 x 15mm

355 x 252 x 12.8mm

740g (1.3kg with keyboard)

1.5kg

2kg

1.6kg

1.1kg

1.3kg

1.7kg

1yr Premium Support with
Advanced Exchanged

3yr RTB

1yr RTB

1yr on-site

3yr C&R

3yr (1mth C&R, 1yr parts, 3yr
labour)

1yr RTB

80% / 87%

76% / 86%

76% / 95%

77% / 86%

77% / 86%

N/A

83% / 87%

Not stated

66.4%

Not stated

11.5%

29%

Not stated

5.9%

EPEAT Gold

EPEAT Gold

EPEAT Gold

EPEAT Gold

(level 9)

/

/

(level 9)

/

(level 9)

(level 9)
EPEAT Silver

/

/

/

/

Intel Core i7-1250U

Intel Core i7-1265U

Intel Core i9-13900H

Intel Core i7-1255U

Intel Core i5-1345U vPro

Intel Core i5-13500H

Intel Core i7-1360P

2 P-cores, 8 E-cores

2 P-cores, 8 E-cores

6 P-cores, 8 E-cores

2 P-cores, 8 E-cores

2 P-cores, 8 E-cores

4 P-cores, 8 E-cores

4 P-cores, 8 E-cores

12

12

20

12

12

16

16

4.7GHz

4.8GHz

5.4GHz

4.7GHz

4.7GHz

4.7GHz

5GHz

16GB LPDDR4x

16GB DDR5

16GB LPDDR5

8GB DDR4

16GB LPDDR5

16GB DDR5

16GB LPDDR5

Intel Iris Xe Graphics

Nvidia T550 4GB

Intel Iris Xe Graphics

Intel UHD Graphics

Intel Iris Xe Graphics

Intel Iris Xe Graphics

Intel Iris Xe Graphics

13in

14in IPS

16in IPS

14in IPS

14in IPS

14in IPS

16in AMOLED

2,880 x 1,920

1,920 x 1,200

2,520 x 1,680

1,920 x 1,080

1,920 x 1,200

2,800 x 1,800

2,880 x 1,800

266ppi

162ppi

189ppi

157ppi

162ppi

243ppi

212ppi

60Hz

60Hz

60Hz

60Hz

60Hz

90Hz

120Hz

Glossy

Matte

Glossy

Matte

Matte (ePrivacy Filter)

Matte

Glossy

WD SN740

SK hynix BC711

321JN1024GB-TX01

SSSTC CL4-4D1024-Q79

UMIS RPETJ256MKP1MDQ

SolidIGM P41+

Samsung PM9A1

Gen 4

Gen 3

Gen 4

Gen 4

Gen 4

Gen 4

Gen 4

512GB

512GB

1TB

1TB

256GB

1TB

512GB

74Wh

(2)

(1)

(2)

(1)
49Wh

51Wh

84Wh

57Wh

57Wh

99Wh

45W

65W

135W

65W

65W

120W

65W

255g

345g

500g

355g

285g

445g

175g

USB-C

USB-C

USB-C

USB-C

USB-C

DC, USB-C

USB-C

1440p

1440p

1080p

1080p

1080p

1080p

1080p

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6E

Bluetooth 5.3

Bluetooth 5.3

Bluetooth 5.2

Bluetooth 5.1

Bluetooth 5.1

Bluetooth 5.3

Bluetooth 5.1

(gigabit)
(2.0b)

(not stated)

(2.1)

(2.1)

(2.0b)

(not stated)

2 x Thunderbolt 4/USB 4

2 x Thunderbolt 4/USB 4

2 (1 x Thunderbolt 4, 1 x USB 3.2
Gen 1)

1 x Thunderbolt 4/USB 4

2 x Thunderbolt 4/USB 4

2 (1 x Thunderbolt 4,
1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2)

2 x Thunderbolt 4

Via adapter

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

2 (1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1, 1 x USB 2)

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

Via adapter

(full size)
Smart card reader

(2)
114 x 74mm

(2)
120 x 80mm

(2)
140 x 90mm

(2)
100 x 56mm

(2)
110 x 58mm

(2)
131 x 81mm

y (3)
151 x 108mm

(2)
USB-C to USB-A adapter,
USB-C to 3.5mm jack adapter

HP Wolf Pro Security Edition

Windows 11 Pro

Windows 11 Pro

S Pen
Windows 11 Home

Windows 11 Pro

Windows 11 Pro

Windows 11 Pro

Windows 11 Home

77

10decisionstomakewhen
buyingalaptopforwork
With any luck, one of the 13 laptops on test will be your perfect work machine. But even if
that isn’t the case, use these principles to find your ideal partner
1IA CORE CHOICE

Raw performance isn’t what it used to
be. If you buy a laptop with a 12th or
13th generation Core processor inside
then it’s likely to be fast enough to last
you for years. (You can tell that it’s
one of the more recent Intel chips
through its name; for example, a Core
i7-1165U is an 11th generation chip, a
Core i7-1265U is a 12th gen chip.)
Although we didn’t see a single
AMD-powered laptop computer in
this test, don’t be put off from an
AMD laptop that hits all your other
key buying points. AMD’s recent
Ryzen mobile chips are fast and
power-efficient, and you’ll find them
in many machines – often for better
prices than their Intel equivalents.
If you need more power, choose a
Ryzen 7, Core i7 or Core i9 with as
many performance cores (P-cores in
Intel’s case) as possible. Our feature
table provides a detailed breakdown
of how the processors in each our
tested laptops compare.
One final note. Two computers
with the same chip won’t necessarily
perform identically. CPUs need to
be kept cool to achieve their top
performance, so a laptop with a
spacious case and powerful internal
fans will tend to run faster than one
that’s designed to be as thin and
light as possible.

78

ABOVE Repairability
and the ability to
upgrade the RAM are
worth seeking out

BELOW Ensure you
choose a high-quality
screen from the outset

2IRAM AND STORAGE

While more RAM is always welcome,
most people will find that 8GB is
plenty to keep Windows 11 running
smoothly. More demanding users will
benefit from 16GB of RAM, but there
are few people who push their laptops
so hard that 32GB of RAM is necessary.
We mention in the feature table if a
laptop has the RAM soldered onto the
motherboard. If it does, a chip failure
after a few years will be enough to
consign the laptop to landfill (we
cover this more in the sustainability
section). That’s why we prefer to have
upgradable RAM. Some laptops also
include a spare RAM socket, which is
handy for upgrades, but see our
comment about graphics, below.
For a business laptop, you may well
find that 256GB of storage is enough.
After all, you’re likely accessing data
from the cloud these days, with a
limited number of files synced to your
local machine. Still, having 512GB of
storage gives you that much more
room for media.
While all modern laptops include
SSDs, they operate at very different
speeds. Take a look at our SSD test
results on p90 to see what we mean.
Choosing a Gen 4 rather than Gen 3
SSD is a good rule of thumb, but
isn’t necessarily a guarantee of
speed. All that said, the SSD is

unlikely to be a bottleneck, so we
would lean towards a larger capacity
over blazing benchmark results.

3IGRAPHICAL PUNCH

If you want to play games, or use apps
that take advantage of Nvidia’s CUDA
cores, then a discrete card will make a
huge difference. There’s a reason why
the HP ZBook Firefly includes a Nvidia
T550 with 4GB of RAM, for instance:
not for games, but for 3D acceleration
in professional apps that are tuned to
support such hardware.
You can also get acceleration
from Nvidia’s RTX range of chips,
although none is included here.
The same is true of AMD’s discrete
Radeon offerings, which again offer
dedicated cores to help with
professional 3D tasks as well as
providing a boost in games.
The integrated graphics built into
these laptops are fine for older, less
demanding games and can again help
in certain applications. Look out for
laptops with Intel’s Iris Xe graphics
inside rather than UHD graphics, as
this makes a notable difference – as a
rule of thumb, Iris Xe is roughly 50%
faster than Intel’s UHD graphics. Odd
as it sounds, you can often upgrade
from UHD to Iris Xe by filling an
empty RAM slot, as this “unlocks” the
required memory bandwidth.

@PCPRO

Labs Laptopsforwork

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

4ISCREEN QUALITY

Don’t neglect the screen. A high native
resolution makes text and images look
crisp and sharp, while a panel with a
wide colour gamut helps to ensure
that images and films look like their
creators intended.
In the graphs on p91 you’ll see that
we rate each one for sRGB and DCI-P3
colour coverage. This is shown as a
percentage, and the closer to 100% the
better. If the laptop you’re interested
in isn’t featured here, you can usually
get an idea of what this result will be
from its product page. For example,
Dell says the Latitude 3340 has “NTSC
45%”. NTSC stands for National
Television Standards Committee, and
is a good proxy for sRGB coverage.
It’s also a good proxy for quality
overall. From our testing over the
years, we see a clear line between
NTSC/sRGB coverage and screen
quality, so if a company claims 90% or
higher then you can be confident.
Likewise, higher brightness suggests
(but is no guarantee of) a betterquality panel. And by better quality,
we also mean its colour coverage is
more accurate, so everything will look
more realistic in images and videos.

5I TOUCH AND TABLETS

For most practical purposes you don’t
need a touchscreen, but it’s still a
welcome addition. Stylus support can
be helpful, too, if you want to
annotate documents; the Samsung
Galaxy Book3 360 Pro even comes
with a stylus in the box.
As the 360 in that laptop’s name
suggests, its screen can rotate 360° to
create a gigantic tablet. Likewise the
Acer TravelMate Spin P4. This also
means you can use the laptops in “tent
mode”, which can be useful for
presentations and watching films.
But both those laptops are too heavy
to hold single-handed for long, in
contrast to the tablet-first design of
the Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1. While big
question marks remain over the use of
Windows 11 as a tablet OS, mix in a
pen and it undoubtedly offers
something extra compared to rivals.
The downside of touchscreens is
that they’re one more thing to go
wrong. Nor are they easy to repair.
And some people rarely use them,
except to occasionally prod items on
the screen. It’s by no means a
must-have for most users.

card slots and a physical Ethernet
connection. Some cheaper laptops
still rely on Wi-Fi 5 rather than Wi-Fi
6, while the faster and more reliable
Wi-Fi 6E is now commonplace on
high-end machines.

8IWHICH OS?

ABOVE Tent mode can
be useful for watching
filmsandpresentations

6I PORTABILITY AND
BATTERY LIFE

Portability normally comes at the
expense of something. If you want a
laptop with a tiny chassis, that limits
how big the screen and keyboard can
be. If you want one that’s as thin as
possible, that’s liable to affect
performance, for reasons we’ve noted
above. It’s a game of trade-offs.
The good news is that as components
have become more power-efficient,
the battery life of all laptops has
gradually increased. It’s striking to see
that both the Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon and Dell Latitude 7340 lasted
for over 15 hours in one of
The good news is that as
our battery tests (see the
components have become graphs on p91).
Battery life will slowly
more power-efficient, the deteriorate
over time, so
battery life of all laptops look out for machines that
has gradually increased
have replaceable batteries,
even if that means you have
to work out how to remove the base.

7 IPORTS AND
CONNECTIVITY

BELOW A slim chassis
is great for portability
but can affect a
laptop’s performance

Over time, one connector has come to
rule them all: USB-C. This will support
a certain standard of USB, with USB 4
the fastest (40Gbits/sec), followed by
the rarer USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20Gbits/sec),
USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbits/sec), USB 3.2
Gen 1 (5Gbits/sec) and old USB 2
(480Mbits/sec). Some USB-C ports
support Thunderbolt 4 (40Gbits/sec)
as well. Aside from data transfer, most
USB-C ports also support power
delivery and connect to a monitor.
However, it’s still useful to have at
least one USB-A port. Likewise, we
appreciate HDMI outputs, microSD

When you switch on your laptop,
you could be offered the choice of
Windows 10 or Windows 11. Support
for Windows 10 ends in 2025 so our
strong recommendation – as discussed
in our feature from p26 – is to head
straight to Windows 11. Few of the
laptops featured here include
Windows 10 as an option.
You also need to decide between
Home and Professional editions. If
you’re buying for personal use you
might well decide to save some money
and stick with the Home edition, but
Professional does have some notable
benefits. For one, it includes
BitLocker, which allows you to fully
encrypt your device, as well as the
Hyper-V virtualisation engine.

9ISUPPORT AND
RELIABILITY

When managing a fleet of laptops, it
isn’t a question of if laptops go wrong,
but when. That’s why we place
particular emphasis on repairability
in this month’s group test: we want a
machine where it’s easy for an IT team
to rip off the rear of the chassis and
then replace the RAM or storage if
required. This isn’t something we can
easily put in a feature table, so we
cover it in reviews wherever we can.
We’ve included reliability and
support scores for the big laptop
manufacturers. This is based on
feedback from thousands of PC Pro
readers in our annual survey. You can
see a summary of the results in the
feature table on p76 and view the full
details in issue 338, p26.

10ISUSTAINABILITY

Most (but not all) laptops from
big-name manufacturers have an
EPEAT (epeat.net) rating to indicate
their sustainability, based upon
criteria such as use of recycled
plastics, avoidance of certain elements
and their carbon footprint. We print
the ratings in the feature table. In
addition, we indicate if manufacturers
have gained the far harder TCO
certification (tcocertified.com).

79

Acer TravelMate P6
TMP614-53

A high-quality business
laptop that should persuade
some businesses to choose
Acer over corporate rivals
SCORE

PRICE £1,249 (£1,499 inc VAT)
from acer.co.uk

I

f you only associate Acer with
affordable consumer laptops,
the Acer TravelMate P6 should
change your mind. This is a premium
14in business laptop, and one that
SMBs should take note of.
We should emphasise that we’re
testing the latest version, with a
TMP614-53 suffix rather than last
year’s TMP614-52. As we went to
press, it wasn’t even available to buy,
but Acer assured us that the range
will be on sale from its normal
suppliers in October.
The 53 suffix coincides with a 13th
generation Core processor, in this
case the i7-1365U. As with all U-series
chips, it blends power efficiency with
power; most notably, it packs two
performance P-cores rather
than the four you’ll find in
P-series chips such as
the i7-1360P in the
Samsung Galaxy
Book3. But it’s still
fast, falling only a
whisker behind
the Samsung in
PCMark 10. It’s in
multicore tasks
alone that the extra
two P-cores (and four
threads) made a
notable difference.
Acer has made another big change
between the 53 and 52 vintages of the
TravelMate P6: some models will ship
with OLED rather than IPS screens.
That means perfect levels of contrast,
a wide gamut and, in our sample at
least, excellent colour accuracy. As
with the Asus ExpertBook B9, it
didn’t merely average a Delta-E of
less than one but a maximum of less
than one. It’s bright, too, hitting a
peak of 497cd/m2 in our tests. That
ensured it was readable outdoors in
bright sunlight, with a bigger
problem stemming from the
reflectivity of the glossy screen.
Films look superb on this panel, so
it’s a shame Acer doesn’t back it up
with a better pair of speakers. They
lack definition and bass, which would
80

make us reluctant to listen to music
on the P6. Acer would also do well to
invest in a higher-spec webcam, as its
offering ticks the 1080p box but –
together with an average pair of mics
– won’t wow anyone joining you on
web calls.
There are a couple of nice
software-based extras,
however. Along with
the usual support for
Windows Hello via an
IR sensor, you can
activate “User
Sensing” to log you
off when you aren’t
sitting in front of
the machine, and
log you back in
when you reappear.
There are also options
to remind you to take
breaks and if you’re
moving too close to the screen.
Acer packs in a couple of other
nifty extras. After every six hours of
use, its Dust Defender technology
will blow out any accumulated dust.
That should help its longevity, as
should its
magnesium alloy
chassis and
“reinforced I/O ports”
for people who
frequently plug
devices in. We expect
the single USB-A port
to be in active service
for years to come,
with two USB-C
ports (which support
Thunderbolt 4 and
USB 4), an HDMI
output, 3.5mm jack

ABOVE The 14in OLED
screen offers perfect
contrast levels

RECOMMENDED

LEFT The TravelMate
P6 is a premium
business laptop

BELOW The large
touchpad is protected
by Gorilla Glass

and microSD card slot completing
the connectivity lineup.
There’s also extra protection for
the generously sized touchpad
courtesy of Gorilla Glass, which has
the extra merit of making it smooth to
touch. Acer claims that this iteration
of the TravelMate also includes a
keyboard with quieter clicks, along
with a solid 1.55mm of key travel, yet
we didn’t find ourselves enamoured
with the typing experience. It’s by no
means bad, but people who bang out
lots of reports would probably enjoy a
more cushioned feel and a doubleheight Enter key.
But what robs the TravelMate P6 of
a potential five stars is battery life.
Again, it isn’t awful, but it didn’t reach
eight hours in either of PCMark’s
light-use tests and was some distance
behind its slim and light rivals in the
Idle test, despite lasting 10hrs 54mins.
There is one other change between
this year’s TravelMate P6 and last: a
three-year warranty rather than a
single year. It isn’t on-site like some
rivals, but that upgrade is great to see.
Despite our niggles, have no
doubt: this is a
high-quality
laptop. And its
price is also a reflection
of its 1TB of storage,
which actually comes
courtesy of two 512GB
SSDs (both of which are
replaceable, unlike the
soldered on RAM). We
hope to see lesser specs
closer to the £1,200
mark, and if that
happens the new P6
could prove irresistible.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Labs Laptopsforwork

Asus ExpertBook B9
OLED

A classy business laptop
that’s packed with quality,
so it’s a shame that it’s only
available to order
SCORE

PRICE £1,833 (£2,200 inc VAT)
from asus.com/uk

A

sus might not be the first name
you think of when shortlisting
laptops for work, but ignore
the B9 OLED at your peril. This
built-to-order laptop provides a
superb balance between portability
and power, all wrapped up in an
understated yet stylish chassis.
Its first trick is to squeeze a
14in panel into a chassis so compact
and light. At 1kg, and measuring
15.7mm at its thickest, you can chuck
this magnesium-lithium machine into
a bag and barely notice its presence.
And while we’re always cynical when
companies claim “MIL-STD
810H” testing, we can
believe this wellbuilt machine will
survive life on the
road far beyond
the single year of
its warranty.
Keep the OLED
screen at a
decent level of
brightness and
you probably won’t
need to bring the charger
with you, either. It kept going
for over nine hours in both the
light-use and video-rundown tests,
and lasted a solid 11hrs 32mins in
PCMark’s Idle test. The battery is also
replaceable when the time comes.
It also packs enough power to last
for years. Our test system has an Intel
Core i7-1365U processor, with two
P-cores and eight E-cores at the ready.
It’s the same chip found in the Acer
TravelMate P6, but Acer’s cooling
system proved more efficient when
the chip was under duress in
Cinebench R23’s ten-minute tests. We
aren’t too concerned by this, though,
as the B9 is designed for office tasks.
Curiously, our machine included
64GB of RAM, and all of it embedded
on the motherboard. That’s overkill
for an executive business laptop such
as this, likewise the 2TB SSD. The
latter is a slimline M.2 2280 Gen 4
drive that you can repair and replace
yourself, but it won’t be due to a lack

of speed: read speeds of 6,610MB/sec
and writes of 4,938MB/sec placed it in
the top three of a competitive field.
The quality of the screen also lifted
it above the opposition. Not merely for
colour coverage, with the excellent
results we expect from an OLED panel,
but also with superb accuracy.
Overall, it’s the most
accurate screen here,
with superb whites to
boot. And while it
peaks at a relatively
modest 409cd/m2,
the perfect contrast
of OLED ensured it
was readable
outside; our only
issue in sunlight was
due to the reflectivity of
the glossy screen.
Navigation is via the large
glass-coated touchpad – the screen
doesn’t support touch – which has a
secret talent. Press firmly on the top
right and a number pad appears,
which is a tad gimmicky but comes in
useful for data entry. Asus could have
made more use of the chassis’ 311mm
width to make the keyboard larger,
but the main keys are well separated
and easy to hit with
a firm, quiet action.
We’re less
enamoured by Asus
placing the tiny power
button on the right-hand
side of the chassis,
especially as this doubles
as the fingerprint reader.
It works fine, but you
need to look to make sure
you’re putting your finger
in the right place. Perhaps
you’ll instead choose to
use the 1080p IR webcam

ABOVE The display is
the most accurate of
all those on test

LEFT The ExpertBook
B9 OLED is stylish and
well built

BELOW Press firmly
on the top of the
touchpad and a
number pad appears

to log in, but that’s arguably its best
use: its results were fuzzy, almost
cartoon-like, and while it’s passable
for video calls it falls a long way
behind the best here. We suspect
over-keen software enhancements
rather than an issue with the
hardware, so hopefully a fix will
appear in the future.
We have no complaints about the
mics or the speakers, both of which
meet our expectations for a premium
business laptop. Stick to low volumes
and you should be quite happy
listening to music while working.
Despite the slim dimensions, Asus
packs in all the connectivity most
people will need. Two USB-C ports sit
on the left, both of which support
Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4, alongside a
full-size HDMI 2.1 port, a 3.5mm jack
and a connector for the bundled (but
easy to lose) micro-HDMI to RJ-45
cable. With much of the right-hand
side dedicated to an air vent, there’s
only room for a single USB-A 3.2 Gen 2
port (10Gbits/sec) and a power button.
So to the big question: is it worth
contacting Asus’ B2B sales team and
seeing if this laptop is right for your
business? If you’re after an executivelevel laptop that
packs a glorious
screen, then yes.
The £2,200 price
Asus quoted us for this
machine can surely be
negotiated down if
you drop the specs and
buy multiple units,
and while this will
never be a mainstream
system that’s arguably
to its credit. The Asus
ExpertBook B9 OLED
is a little special.
81

Dell Latitude 7340

It may not top the speed
charts, but this well-built
and subtly stylish machine
is packed with quality
SCORE

PRICE £1,139 (£1,377 inc VAT)
from dell.co.uk

Y

ou can see the lineage between
this 13in corporate laptop and
its XPS 13 forbears. It’s by no
means sexy, but the almost rubberised
finish to the aluminium alloy frame,
coupled with its compact footprint,
ensure it makes a fine first impression.
If you carry this laptop into a meeting,
you’re to be taken seriously.
It makes an even better second
impression thanks to the keyboard.
We love the quietness of the keys, but
also their tactile feel, deep travel and
sensible spacing to minimise typos.
There’s nothing fancy about the
trackpad, but a glass coating ensures
it’s smooth to the touch while being
both big and responsive.
Like Lenovo, Dell opts for IPS
panels rather than OLED. They only
have a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200, but
across a 13.3in diagonal that works
out as 170ppi and text is
sharp. Our test system
included the non-touch
version with a stated
peak of 400cd/m2
(our sample hit
471cd/m2), but
buyer beware
because you may
find that you’re
pushed to the
cheaper panel
with a 250cd/m2
peak. From experience, we
know this won’t be as high
quality, so upgrade to our tested panel
if you can; we were very happy with
the quality of its whites, colour
coverage and overall accuracy.
Dell also mentions that this panel
uses less power than its counterparts,
which would have played a small part
in its stunning results in our rundown
tests. It topped the table when idling,
with a staggering 20hrs 45mins, and
kept playing a 1080p video for 13hrs
22mins. Only the ThinkPad X1 Carbon
offered comparable life.
This isn’t a laptop built for
demanding workloads, but the
supplied Core i5-1345U vPro chip will
ensure it remains in active duty for
years to come. Turn to the speed
graphs on p90 and you’ll see that it
82

was always in the lower half of the
table, but if your workloads lean more
towards Word and Excel than
Photoshop and DaVinci Resolve then
it will be more than up to the job.
Nor are we concerned by the 512GB
SSD sitting at the bottom of the speed
table, as sequential transfer rates of
around 3,000MB/sec aren’t
going to slow most people
down. The supplied
drive is easy to
replace as only eight
crosshead screws
secure the bottom
casing, which is
simple to remove
(this isn’t
always the
case). Sadly, the
16GB of LPDDR5 RAM
is soldered onto the board,
but the battery is replaceable.
Only 11.3% of the Latitude is
post-consumer recycled plastic, but
that’s because this is a predominantly
aluminium chassis. At 1.1kg it’s
supremely portable
and while not the
slimmest – 17.6mm at
the rear – that leaves
room for a good number of
ports. The right holds a
USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port,
3.5mm jack and (an
optional extra for custom
builds with mobile
broadband) a SIM drawer.
The left offers two USB-C
ports, both of which
support Thunderbolt 4 and
USB 4, plus an HDMI output.

ABOVE The aluminium
alloy frame looks
suitably business-like

RECOMMENDED

LEFT There’sagood
selectionofconnectors
onoffer,albeitno
Ethernetport

BELOW The superb
keyboard has tactile,
well-spaced keys

You’ll search for an Ethernet port in
vain, with Dell expecting you to use
Wi-Fi 6E networking or buy its 7-in-1
USB-C Multiport Adapter for £120.
Dell provides one of the better
webcams on test, with the option of
1440p for greater sharpness over the
standard 1080p. It’s ideal for Teams
calls thanks to a field of view that puts
you front and centre of the image, and
its dual mics capture voices with clarity.
The speakers are up there with the best
so long as you keep volumes sensible,
with a fair amount of bass and good
detail on, say, guitar chords. But
things get mushy in busier tracks.
All the security and privacy check
boxes are ticked. A simple privacy
cover sits over the webcam, while a
white LED shines to show that the
camera is active. The webcam supports
Windows Hello, and the fingerprint
reader embedded into the power
button is there if you need it. As the
vPro in the processor name indicates,
this laptop is designed for easy remote
management by IT teams, and it comes
with a range of Dell
ProDeploy options to
assist in rollouts. And
the standard three-year
warranty can be upgraded
to four years of on-site
cover for £130.
It’s this level of support,
together with the excellent
hardware, that pushes the
Latitude 7340 to the
forefront of this Labs. With
our caveat about choosing
the right screen in place, it’s
a brilliant business laptop.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Labs Laptopsforwork

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

A classy alternative to
Microsoft’s Surface Pro for
business, in part due to a
range of warranty options
SCORE

PRICE £1,446 (£1,736 inc VAT)
from dell.co.uk

I

n the absence of an updated
Microsoft Surface Pro (see issue
342, p81), it falls to Dell to
promote the tablet form factor as a
business laptop. For, like the Surface
Pro, it only takes the addition of a
keyboard to transform it from one to
the other. Indeed, to look at, you’d
find it hard to tell the difference.
But there are differences. Most
obviously, the XPS doesn’t have a
kickstand. Instead, Dell uses magnets
built into the top flap of the folding
keyboard to lock the screen into
place. It’s highly effective, allowing
you to position the screen at just
about any angle you like.
The keyboard is pleasant to type
on, with generously sized flat keys
that offer satisfying resistance
to the touch and don’t
make much noise. You
also benefit from
two levels of
backlighting, and a
touchpad that’s
large enough for
easy navigation.
Then we come to
the screen, which
again could have
been ripped out of a
Surface Pro. It’s very
sharp thanks to squeezing 2,880
x 1,920 pixels into a 13in diagonal,
and it’s well matched to the sRGB
colour space (95% coverage with
excellent colour accuracy). Our only
criticism is that it’s sensitive to
viewing angles: colours shift if you
move your head away from the
middle position. Some people won’t
like its glossy finish, either, although
it copes well with reflections.
Dell opts for a 12th generation Intel
Core i7-1250U in our test unit, but you
can save £400 by buying the Core
i5-1230U. We’d humbly suggest that
it’s a saving worth making. Turn to
p90 and you’ll see that this machine is
near the bottom of the table in most
tests, which isn’t surprising: the
1250U has only two “performance”
P-cores, along with the usual eight
E-cores, so it’s built for efficiency
rather than souped-up power. The

1230U has the same mix of cores, but
peaks at slightly lower frequencies.
From our previous testing of a Dell
XPS 13 with a Core i5-1230U inside,
we anticipate that it would be
roughly 10% slower in benchmarks.
To which we say, does
that really matter? Is
anyone really going
to be using this tablet
for intensive tasks?
We think not, and
day to day you’ll
rarely notice a
difference. This is
a nippy laptop
and we would
expect it to last for
years to come.
That does bring us
to its weakness: sustainability.
If something goes wrong with this
machine, there’s no easy way to
repair it. Even if you get out a
hairdryer to weaken the glue, then
suck off the back, you’ll discover that
the 16GB of memory is embedded
onto the motherboard; the 512GB
SSD is replaceable, but that’s a job
best left to Dell engineers.
This makes the warranty
particularly important. As standard,
you get one year of Premium Support,
which includes Advanced Exchange
(where Dell sends you a
replacement before you send your
broken unit back) and
international travel cover.
Consider upgrading this to

ABOVE The XPS is
comfortable to type
on and provides a
large trackpad

LEFT Detach the
keyboard and the XPS
9315 is transformed
into a tablet

BELOW Magnets in the
stand let you position
the screen at just about
any angle you like

three years for an extra £238, and
adding accidental damage protection
for £20 more per year of cover.
It’s arguably worth the expense, as
this is a device designed for travel.
Battery life isn’t stunning – and will
inevitably deteriorate over time (the
battery is replaceable, but not by you)
– but passing eight hours in our
typical-use benchmarks suggests it
should get through a working day.
Not that the compact 45W charger
will add much to your baggage.
There are only two USB-C ports,
both of which support Thunderbolt 4
and USB 4, with a couple of easy-tolose adapters in the box. (Fortunately,
cheap USB-C travel adapters are easy
to find.) Dell sticks to the cutting edge
for wireless, too, with Wi-Fi 6E and
Bluetooth 5.3 both ready for use.
To round things off, Dell provides
an exceptional front-facing 1440p
webcam, microphones that capture
voices clearly and a solid pair of
stereo speakers (good enough to
listen to music on, if not exactly
whacking you with bass).
Despite our reservations about its
sustainability, when you can buy
the Core i5 version for around
£1,000 – at the time of going to
press, this was possible by using
the coupon SAVE250 at the time of
purchase, which also drops the
Core i7 machine’s price by £250 and
appears to be a semi-permanent
promotion – it’s hard to argue
about this versatile machine’s
value for money. Especially as
that price includes the keyboard,
massively undercutting the
equivalent Surface Pro.
83

Huawei MateBook
16s 2023

It lacks corporate-friendly
features, but if power on a
budget is your priority then
there’s nothing better
SCORE

PRICE £917 (£1,100 inc VAT)
from consumer.huawei.com

I

f this group test was a party, the
MateBook 16s 2023 would be
standing in the corner having a
haltering conversation with the
Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360. Both
these laptops stand out from the
corporate crowd, emphasised by the
inclusion of Windows 11 Home rather
than Pro (although the latter is an £80
upgrade from store.pcpro.co.uk).
Both laptops include striking 16in
screens, but the MateBook sticks with
IPS technology rather than OLED.
That means you miss out on perfect
contrast and rich blacks, but with 95%
coverage of the sRGB gamut the
Huawei can still cover a strong range
of colours. With good accuracy, too.
It also benefits from a 2,520 x 1,680
resolution to ensure that text looks
sharp, while a peak brightness of over
500cd/m2 is up there with the
best. It’s a glossy screen,
but Huawei adds
an anti-glare
cover so we didn’t
find overhead lights
to be an issue. One
more plus: this is a
touchscreen, which
comes in
handy on
occasion.
Having such a huge
screen has obvious
benefits for people who use
their laptops to watch Netflix and its
ilk, so it was a relief to hear the quality
emanating from the speakers. You
shouldn’t expect high fidelity, but
there’s enough bass to make film
effects sound suitably immersive.
But this laptop’s real skill is down
to the power inside. It’s the fastest
system here by far, with Intel’s Core
i9-13900H chip packing six P-cores
and eight E-cores, giving 20 threads to
throw at demanding tasks. That’s why
it was such a clear leader in Cinebench
R23 and Geekbench 6’s multicore tests.
That power also allows Huawei
to extract the most from Intel’s
embedded Iris Xe graphics, giving this
laptop more gaming potential than its

84

rivals, along with extra power in apps
that take advantage. All that was as
expected; what we didn’t expect was
for this machine to survive over 14
hours in PCMark’s idle test, and very
nearly 12 hours in the light-use
Modern Office benchmark.
How much you’ll want to drag this
laptop around with you is open to
question. At 2kg you’ll feel it in a bag,
and a footprint of 351 x 255mm begs
the adjective “bulky”. Huawei
keeps the MateBook
relatively slim at
17.8mm, but the
Galaxy Book3 Pro
has the advantage
here at 12.8mm.
We feel Huawei
could have
been more
generous
with its port
selection. It’s always
good to see two USB-C
ports, likewise HDMI and two
USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports. However, a
microSD card slot would have been
ideal for a photographer-friendly
system such as this,
while only one of the
USB-C ports supports
Thunderbolt 4 (and thus
40Gbits/sec transfers).
The other is restricted to
USB 3.2 Gen 1 and its lowly
5Gbits/sec maximum, like
the USB-A ports.
An RJ-45 port is asking
too much for a consumertargeted laptop such as this,
but Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth
5.2 are both present. As is
NFC via a touchpad, and if

ABOVE The MateBook
16s 2023 is by far the
fastest system on test

RECOMMENDED

LEFT Only one of the
USB-C ports supports
Thunderbolt 4

BELOW Large keys
and a huge trackpad
make work a breeze

you have a Huawei or Honor phone
you can use this to transfer files to
and from the laptop.
That touchpad is enormous, too,
with a glass coating to keep things
slick. And while the keyboard isn’t
made of the stuff novelists dream of,
it has a quiet action, big keys (there’s
no number pad, despite the chassis’
width), a double-height Enter key
and an easy-to-hit spacebar.
Huawei tucks a 1080p webcam into
the narrow bezel above the panel. It’s
a shame there’s no privacy cover, and
the angle is wider than ideal for video
calls, but the results are professional
and the mics simply excellent.
Where this laptop will struggle for
businesses is larger rollouts, in part
because there’s only one specification
available (one size rarely fits all). And
Huawei, in the UK at least, is a B2C
(business to consumer) rather than
B2B company. Changing that will be
tough for the company, but there are
easier business lessons to learn,
including making its laptops easier to
open – you have to fight past ten
fiddly Torx screws here – and being
more transparent about
its sustainability claims.
There’s no EPEAT
rating for this laptop,
nor TCO certification.
The single year of
return-to-base warranty
is also below par in this
month’s company, but if
you’re happy to service your
own laptops (the capacious
1TB SSD and battery are both
replaceable) it’s hard not to
be attracted by the all-round
quality of this laptop.

@PCPRO

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Labs Laptopsforwork

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon Gen 11

The classiest business
laptop here by a distance,
with no weaknesses at all –
other than the price
SCORE

PRICE £1,597 (£1,916 inc VAT)
from lenovo.com/uk (before discounts)

T

his is our first look at the 11th
generation of X1 Carbon, and
Lenovo’s compact 13in
ultraportable continues to impress.
We’ll start with the signature feature,
the ThinkPad keyboard. As ever,
Lenovo pays great attention to detail
with a gentle concave centre to the
keys, complete with a substantial
“feel” and a quiet action that adds up
to the best keyboard here. We also like
the double-height Enter key, large
backspace and wide spacebar. Quite
an achievement considering the
316mm width of this laptop.
The red trackpoint remains, along
with physical mouse buttons below it,
and while the glass-coated touchpad
isn’t the largest it’s still big
enough for navigation and
gestures. Naturally, a
fingerprint reader sits
above the keyboard,
embedded in the
power button,
while an excellent
webcam – again the
best here –
offers support
for Windows
Hello and easy
privacy via a manual
sliding cover.
It’s worth playing around with the
Dolby Voice settings in Lenovo’s
ever-useful Commercial Vantage app.
We found the AI noise reduction too
heavy-handed, and also reduced the
gain from 100 to 50, which produced
superb results. There’s no need to
fiddle with the speakers, which are up
to the quality you’d expect from such
a premium laptop.
Lenovo sent us a review sample
with its ePrivacy panel. The idea, as
with HP’s Sure View, is to cut down
viewing angles when activated (press
Fn + D) so people next to you can’t
view your screen’s contents. It works
well, but as with HP’s tech it means
natural viewing angles are reduced,
so you never get the evenness you
would from a “normal” screen. It’s a
£290 option, factored into the price

you see above, and we would only
recommend it for those who work on
confidential material on the move.
Both those panels use IPS
technology and cover a claimed 100%
of the sRGB gamut (we measured our
sample at a still strong 94%). It’s a
high-quality 14in display, as
we’re sure is its cheaper
incarnation, and we
rarely noticed its
1,920 x 1,200
resolution. Text
still looks sharp.
But if you want the
richer colours of
OLED, and a
2,880 x 1,800
resolution, then
that’s £170 extra over
the base panel – but a £120
saving on the price shown.
OLED displays require more power
than IPS, but not enough to make a
huge dent in this laptop’s excellent
battery life. In our idle test, its 16hrs
43mins was only bettered by the Dell
Latitude’s 20hrs 45mins, and it topped
the table in PCMark’s Modern Office
test with a result of 12hrs 32mins.
The X1 was always in the top half of
our performance tables, too, with its
Core i5-1345U processor (which
supports Intel’s vPro tech for easier IT
management) given every chance to
perform at top speed. Lenovo
gives it ample support with
16GB of LPDDR5-6400 RAM,
which you can double to
32GB for £80, but only at
time of purchase, as it’s
soldered on and there
are no spare sockets.

ABOVE The keyboard
is up to Lenovo’s usual
high standards

LEFT The patterned
carbon fibre weave on
the top adds class

BELOW There’s a fine
port selection on both
sides of the chassis

Undo the five crosshead screws
and you can at least replace the 256GB
SSD, but it’s more convenient to take
advantage of the affordable upgrades
that Lenovo offers at time of purchase:
£40 for a 512GB SSD, £110 for 1TB. Nor
do the upgrades end there, with a 4G
card adding £150 and 5G for £260. Or
you can choose to add the antenna for
£40 and then fit a card yourself.
Wi-Fi 6E comes as standard, along
with a fine selection of ports. The left
side holds the majority: two USB-C
(supporting both Thunderbolt 4 and
USB 4), HDMI and a single USB-A 3.2
Gen 1 slot. The right side holds a
second USB-A port, 3.5mm jack and,
if you choose mobile broadband, a
SIM drawer.
All of which makes it tough to
criticise the hardware offering here.
Other laptops may be slimmer than
15.4mm, but at 1.1kg the X1 Carbon
won’t weigh you down, and it even
looks more stylish than the average
Lenovo ThinkPad thanks to a
patterned carbon fibre
weave on the top.
We do have one
criticism. Lenovo’s opaque
approach to pricing on its
website makes it sound like
you’re making an astonishing
saving thanks to “flash sales”,
except that such sales are always
happening. However, once you’ve
applied these so-called discounts
it’s hard to argue with the value for
money on offer; it takes our reviewed
spec down to around £1,735 inc VAT.
This is a worthy Labs Winner and
our current pick of all the business
laptops we’ve tested.
85

Samsung Galaxy Book3
Pro 360

It may run Windows 11
Home, but this laptop is
brilliantly tuned to the needs
of modern workers
SCORE

PRICE £1,541 (£1,849 inc VAT)
from samsung.com/uk

T

here’s something odd about the
idea of a 1.7kg laptop that can
turn into a tablet, but Samsung
is never afraid to lead the way for
outlandish ideas. Nor does it
overcharge for extras, with a compact
S Pen in the box. It’s a great way to
write notes on the screen, with a soft
nib that reacts well with the glossy
surface, although we would have
liked it to be chunkier and thus easier
to hold. It’s not as if Samsung kept it
slim so it could fit within the chassis:
this is a pen to carry in your pocket.
Samsung also lifts itself above
rivals with an ecosystem that, in some
ways, rivals Apple. Buy a Galaxy phone,
tablet and laptop and you can easily
share files between devices, even
using the tablet as a second
screen. Then there’s the
Samsung Notes app,
which seamlessly
syncs between all
your devices.
Naturally, you
won’t want to hold
this “tablet” in
one hand, but on
the desk you’ll
appreciate the
huge expanse of screen.
Samsung packs in the
pixels, too, with a 2,880 x 1,800
resolution ensuring everything looks
sharp. Dynamic refresh rates are on
by default, so it will boost to 120Hz
when apps can take advantage, and
with excellent colour coverage from
AMOLED technology matched to
impressive accuracy this is one of the
best panels here. It’s easy to read in
the sun, if you ignore the glossy
screen’s inevitable reflections.
The photo on the right shows the
enormity of the trackpad, so even
those with the chunkiest fingers will
have no issues navigating Windows or
using gestures. Samsung also takes
advantage of the chassis’ 355mm
width to include a number pad next to
the main keys, and with no obvious
compromises elsewhere. Keys are easy
to hit, the Enter key is double height

86

and the cursor keys well separated.
We would have liked more travel on
the keys, but it’s easy to reach high
typing speeds and is also quiet.
Less quiet? The speakers, which
marry a tasty punch with subtlety and
bass to lift the Book3 Pro 360 well
above the chasing pack this month.
You won’t be playing the
latest games, but a Core
i7-1360P offers lots of
power for demanding
tasks that don’t call
for graphics
acceleration. As the
P suffix indicates,
it’s a step up from
the U series Core i7s
elsewhere in
this Labs, with
four P-cores to
accompany the eight
E-cores. It falls short of the
all-out power of the Core i9 inside the
Huawei, but it was no surprise to see
this laptop near the top of the graphs
in our speed tests (see p90).
Part of this is due to the meaty pair
of fans Samsung uses to
cool the chip. They will
rarely bother you in
general use (and you can
choose Silent mode in the
Samsung Settings app), only
becoming evident in arduous
tasks and when we removed
the base. This is fiddly, and
sadly the 16GB of RAM is
embedded, but it’s worth
doing if you want to replace
the M.2 SSD or battery.
Perhaps surprisingly when
you consider the power on

ABOVE The 2,880 x
1,800 AMOLED screen
is one of the best

RECOMMENDED

LEFT The flexible form
factor makes the
Galaxy Book3 Pro a
versatile option

BELOW Samsung has
squeezed a number
pad on to the keyboard

tap and the huge screen, the Galaxy
Book3 Pro 360 did well in our trio of
battery tests. Lasting over 11 hours
under light use (and playing videos) is
a superb result, and means you’ll
rarely have to sling the supercompact 175g charger into your bag.
There are a couple of weaker areas.
We hoped for more from the 1080p
camera, which produces good colours
and has some nice gimmicks (blur,
beauty effects, auto framing, even
adding background colours) but
produces fuzzier images than we’d
like. The AI mic is a tad over-keen,
too, and we would far rather have a
physical privacy shutter than rely on a
tucked-away setting to switch off
mics and the camera.
Also be aware that this laptop ships
with Windows 11 Home as standard,
even if you order from the business
section of Samsung’s online store.
Nor is there a huge range of options
for customising the spec, with choices
limited to the amount of RAM (8GB or
16GB) and storage (512GB or 1TB).
So, like the Huawei MateBook, this
is a cuckoo in this
nest of businessorientated laptops,
despite the Pro in its
name. Nevertheless,
it’s hard to resist its
charms, with a stylish
design, lots of power,
superb battery life, a
flexible form factor
and that gorgeous
screen combining to
create a highly
desirable laptop for
work and play.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Labs Laptopsforwork

AcerTravelMate
SpinP4

A well-built convertible with
some nice touches, but at
this price we expect a
higher-quality screen
SCORE

PRICE £804 (£965 inc VAT)
from business.currys.co.uk

D

on’t be too put off by the listed
price of £965 for this Spin P4,
as that’s for the 512GB version
we tested. The 256GB alternative costs
£827, which is a far better deal. Even
at £827, however, we would hope for
a better screen than this. It’s a dull
affair, peaking at 264cd/m 2 in our
tests with a lowly 55% coverage of
the sRGB colour space. Let’s not even
talk about colour accuracy.
It has two redeeming factors. One is
that good viewing angles and decent
whites make it bearable for everyday
office tasks. The second is that it’s a
touchscreen, which leads into the
Spin’s big skill: that the screen can

swivel 360° to turn the laptop into a
tablet. Unlike Samsung, Acer finds
room in the chassis for the stylus,
although this means it’s extremely
slim (like PDAs of yore). Still, it’s
great for quick annotations, and most
importantly you’ll never lose it.
At 1.6kg, the Spin P4 isn’t
much lighter than the Samsung,
despite the latter having a 16in
screen to the 14in panel here.
It’s well protected by a metal
lid, and at 16.8mm thick Acer
finds room for lots of ports:
two USB-A and a 3.5mm
jack on the right, RJ-45,
HDMI and two USB-C on the

AsusExpertBookB1

A laptop built to a budget,
but there’s enough power
here to keep the B1 in
service for years
SCORE

PRICE £358 (£430 inc VAT)
from asus.com/uk

I

n many ways, you know exactly
what you’re getting with this
laptop. It’s built to a budget and
that means compromises on screen
quality, aesthetics and bulk, but Asus
makes sensible choices throughout
– and throws in a surprise or two.
The screen obviously can’t
compare to the best here, whether
that’s for colour coverage (61% of
sRGB), accuracy (3.89 average
Delta-E) or brightness (260cd/m 2).
In general use, you’ll find it muted
rather than vibrant. And when it
comes to text, there’s a fuzziness to
letter edges due to stretching 1,920 x
1,080 pixels across a 15.6in diagonal.
But it’s by no means a terrible screen;
whites still look okay, for instance.

At this price the chassis is always
going to be predominantly made of
plastic, but it’s good to see some
post-consumer recycled materials and
for Asus to gain the top ratings from
EPEAT and the TCO for sustainability.
It’s easy to access the innards, too,
and once there you can replace the
battery, the huge 1TB SSD and access
the single spare SODIMM socket.
That means you can add
to the generous 16GB of
soldered RAM, and with a
Core i7-1255U chip in place
there’s enough firepower for
years of life. This processor dates
back to early 2022 but remains a
fine performer, and if you added
more RAM you’d also boost 3D
performance by roughly 50%.

ABOVE Acer tucks
this convertible’s
stylus into the chassis
BELOW The screen
swivels 360° to turn
the laptop into a tablet

left. Both of the latter support
Thunderbolt 4, and while you can use
them to charge the Spin P4 there’s
also a DC input for the supplied
charger.
A charger that you may well need,
as battery life isn’t one of this
machine’s strengths. It signed off
after exactly eight hours in our
light-use test, and less than seven
hours when playing back a video.
Turn to our graphs on p90 and you’ll
see the Spin P4 consistently sits near
the bottom of our performance tables,
too, with the Intel Core i5-1240P
showing its age despite the presence
of four P-cores.
You can give it a boost by doubling
the RAM using the spare socket, and
it’s great to see that the 8GB is
supplied as a SODIMM rather than
soldered on. It’s also easy to replace
the SSD, and the battery is replaceable
as well. Only Acer’s use of Torx
screws spoils the repairability party.
The challenge for the Spin P4 is
that while we can forgive a
lacklustre screen – and similarly
pallid webcam and speakers – in
a £430 laptop like the Asus
below, we expect more quality
when spending twice that.
Unless you’re absolutely
desperate for tabletesque
features, look elsewhere.

One area of weakness is
portability, with the chunky chassis
weighing 1.7kg and Asus also sitting
bottom of our battery-life
tests. It’s unlikely to last a
full day away from the
mains, so you’ll need to bring
the 340g power supply or
hope for a USB-C power
source at your destination.
RECOMMENDED
There are two such ports on
the right-hand side, along
with HDMI and an RJ-45 port; a
USB-A port sits on either side.
Add Wi-Fi 6E and we can’t
ABOVE With a Core
complain about connectivity.
There’s even a good level of
i7-1255U and 16GB of
RAM, the ExpertBook
security built in, with a fingerprint
B1 has plenty of power
reader to accompany the IR webcam.
Don’t expect great quality from the
latter – it produces passable but
detail-free images – or from the
speakers, but at this price such
BELOW The wellspaced keyboard
sacrifices are unavoidable. More
importantly, Asus produces a
includes a number pad
well-spaced keyboard
complete with a
number pad, and while
the keys lack travel it’s
fine for daily use.
All these shortcomings are
predictable for the price;
where Asus wins is for the
cutting-edge spec, so no-one
will be frustrated by its speed.
87

ChillblastPrestige
15.6inBusinessLaptop

A solid metal chassis
coupled with nippy
performance, but the
panel quality drags it down
SCORE

PRICE £524 (£650 inc VAT)
from chillblast.com

B

ritish manufacturers Chillblast
and PCSpecialist are united in
one aim this month: to
persuade businesses to choose their
laptops instead of one of the familiar
international suppliers. While their
rivals have the advantage of millions
to spend on R&D to create their own
designs, the Brits can lean into local
support and bespoke specifications.
Certainly, Chillblast isn’t falling
behind rivals when it comes to the
technology. It offers the Prestige
15.6in with a choice of 13th
generation Core chips: either a Core
i5-1360P, as found in the Samsung,
or the Core i3-1315U we tested. With

two P-cores and four E-cores, this
was always in the bottom half of our
speed tests, but don’t be put off: this
is a nippy machine.
Our test sample came with a 512GB
SSD that topped the table for both
sequential writes and reads, although
Chilllblast will ship the unit with a
1TB SSD from the same family. It’s a
simple process to replace this
yourself, and likewise to upgrade the
RAM – although 16GB, supplied
across two SODIMMs, is plenty.
We wish the battery was larger
than supplied, though, as this
55Wh unit only kept the
Prestige going for 6hrs

ABOVE The laptop
comes with a choice of
13th gen Core chips

BELOW There are
plenty of ports at the
chassis’ sides

HPZBookFireflyG9

A lightweight creative
workstation that could have
muscled its way into the
awards but for its screen
SCORE

PRICE £1,030 (£1,236 inc VAT)
from hp.com/uk

T

here are several things that
distinguish the Firefly from
other laptops this month. Chief
among them is the presence of a
discrete graphics chip, with Nvidia’s
T550 (complete with 4GB of GDDR6
memory) giving excellent support to
an Intel Core i7-1265U processor. The
T550 will make the biggest difference
in professional tasks such as CAD,
lending this compact 1.5kg laptop
creative workstation credentials.
It’s still poorly specified compared
to other more expensive (not to
mention bigger) members of HP’s
ZBook family, but the discrete
graphics pushed it to the top of this
month’s pile in 3DMark’s Time Spy
test, with similarly strong results in
88

PCMark. It dropped to mid-table in
our CPU-intensive tests, which is to
be expected as the i7-1265U is last
year’s chip and has two P-cores to the
four or six in some of HP’s rivals.
We have mixed feelings about the
14in panel that HP chooses. For a
professional laptop such as this, we
expected its colour coverage and
accuracy to be far better, and we
also kept trying to push it
brighter than its peak of 277cd/m 2.
Still, having 1,920 x 1,200 pixels
ensures text remains sharp at normal
distances, and its viewing angles are
among the best here.
Some of our
disappointment was also
washed away by the quality

ABOVE Discrete
graphics add to this
laptop’s creative clout

BELOW Despite an
all-metal chassis,
upgrades are easy

58mins in our light-use office test.
Nor is this the most portable laptop
here. Its all-metal chassis lends it
solidity but also weight, tipping our
scales at 1.9kg, and while it’s
relatively slim at 18mm you’ll notice
its 356mm width in a bag.
That allows Chillblast to include a
15.6in panel, but even at this price we
hoped for more quality. Whites have a
blue-ish hue that a third-party colour
temperature app couldn’t tune out,
and its colour coverage and accuracy
were the worst here. The keyboard is
far better, even including a number
pad, and what the touchpad lacks in
refinement it makes up for in size.
Two years ago we wouldn’t have
complained about the 720p webcam
either, but in this company it looks
drab, and the speakers again lag
behind our expectations.
This feeling is emphasised by
the presence of Wi-Fi 5 and all the
USB ports supporting 5Gbits/sec
transfers at the fastest; a shame, as it
was great to see two USB-C ports on
the left to accompany three USB-A
ports, a microSD card slot, an
HDMI port and a switch to
deactivate the webcam.
So, there are pluses and minuses
to this design, but against this
month’s tough competition the
Prestige fails to stand out.

of the keyboard. The keys offer plenty
of travel while staying quiet, and the
layout is beyond criticism. We also
appreciate the smooth touchpad,
which is more than big enough for a
laptop of this size.
HP again hits the right notes with
the 1440p webcam, with a sharp
image and decent (if not eyepopping) colours. The mics are
excellent, too, but don’t expect
miracles from the speakers: vocals
come through clearly but they’re
light on bass and heavy on mids.
Others could learn much from
HP’s approach to maintenance and
security. You can whip off the bottom
of this all-metal chassis within a
minute, with five captive crosshead
screws in your way, and then easily
add or remove DIMMs (there are two
slots, one of which is occupied) or
replace the SSD – which you may
want to, as it’s the slowest here. The
laptop also comes with HP’s Wolf Pro
Security, a vPro-supporting CPU, and
the plastics that are here are almost
all post-consumer recycled.
With cutting-edge
connectivity – it only lacks
an Ethernet port – there’s a
huge amount to like about
this laptop. If the screen
was a fraction better, it
would have won an award.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Labs Laptopsforwork

LenovoThinkPadE14
Gen4

You can buy far superior
business laptops for £1,000,
and we suggest you do – or
look for cheaper models
SCORE

PRICE £922 (£1,106 inc VAT)
from uk.insight.com

L

enovo makes so many business
laptops that it’s easy to become
confused. The E14 series sits
squarely in the budget category,
while the Gen 4 reveals its 2022
heritage: Lenovo is currently
transitioning the E14 series to Gen 5,
which use Intel’s 13th generation
Core processors, so you’ll struggle to
buy the exact model we tested. At the
time of going to press, only a Core
i5-1235U version with a 256GB SSD
was available direct from Lenovo,
while our tested spec was available
from Insight for an unenticing £1,106.
That buys you an Intel Core
i7-1255U, which is made to look its

age in this month’s company. To see
what we mean, turn to the graphs on
p90. The equivalent Gen 5 system,
with a Core i7-1355U, would perform
similarly to the Acer TravelMate P6.
Lenovo doesn’t help by providing
only 8GB of RAM, but it’s easy to
access the insides and double this
thanks to a spare SODIMM socket.
You can also replace the SSD and,
more trickily, the 55Wh battery.
That isn’t a huge capacity, but
it proved big enough to keep the
E14 going for a solid 10hrs 17mins in
our video-rundown test, and a less
impressive 8hrs 6mins in the PCMark
Modern Office test. When travelling,

ABOVE The keyboard
is much better quality
than the display

BELOW There’sonly
oneUSB-Cport,butit
supportsThunderbolt4

PCSpecialistFusion
Studio

A compact firecracker of a
laptop, with ample speed
matched with excellent
battery life
SCORE

PRICE £816 (£979 inc VAT)
from pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews

J

ust like Chillblast, PCSpecialist
must rely on third-party laptop
makers for its designs, and we
think it’s chosen wisely with the
Fusion Studio. This is a compact 14in
chassis that weighs 1.3kg, yet there’s
still room for a 99Wh battery; that
meant the laptop kept going for over
11 hours in the PCMark Modern Office
test, which is a great result.
Especially so when you consider it
has a Core i5-13500H inside. H series
chips lean towards power over
efficiency, and while this Core i5
version has only four P-cores to the
six inside Core i7 editions, the Fusion
Studio proved its worth in our

toughest speed tests. The downside is
a continual low hum of fan noise,
even when we chose Silent Mode in
the Control Center app.
The screen is another highlight,
with a 2,800 x 1,800 resolution
ensuring text looks sharp and images
detailed. Its colour reproduction is
excellent, covering 99% of the sRGB
gamut and 78% of the movie-friendly
DCI-P3 space, and it backs this up
with chart-topping accuracy. And
while the speakers can’t match the
quality of the best here – they lack
depth and bass – we found them
solid companions for background
music while we worked.

ABOVE The excellent
screen delivers sharp
text and images

BELOW The compact
14in chassis weighs
just 1.3kg

you’ll either need to bring the 355g
power supply or hope for a USB-C
connection at your destination.
Annoyingly, there’s only one USB-C
port, but at least it supports
Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4. Lenovo
also provides a pair of USB-A ports,
one on either side, plus an HDMI
output and a handy Ethernet port.
It claws back some pennies by only
including Wi-Fi 6 rather than 6E (the
same applies to the Gen 5 version),
but what’s most aggravating is the
quality of the screen. We can forgive
poor colour coverage and accuracy in
a £500 laptop, but if you’re paying
around £1,000 then you deserve
whiter whites and richer blacks.
The keyboard is much better
quality – albeit lacking some of the
cushioning you’ll find on more
expensive ThinkPads such as the
X1 Carbon – and the same is true of
the touchpad, despite its bijou
dimensions. We’re again happy with
the quality of the 1080p webcam and
mics (if not the clunky speakers).
So, not for the first time in this
month’s Labs, we’re left thinking
what might have been if only the
screen had been a fraction better. And
while the Gen 5 version offers
upgrades to the processor, its
panel appears to be made of
similar stuff to the Gen 4’s screen.

It’s a shame that the chassis
designers didn’t pay the same
attention to the keyboard, which is a
rattly affair with little cushioning to
the keys. It wins for layout, at least,
with sensible spacing between the
keys and a double-height Enter
button. A couple more dollars
spent softening the hollow click
of the left/right buttons on the
otherwise great touchpad would also
have been money well spent.
While we’re upgrading things,
it’s a shame the 1080p webcam
doesn’t produce as colour-rich
results as the screen. It does at least
support Windows Hello logins
(there’s no fingerprint reader).
Unscrewing seven crosshead
screws gives you access to the
real rather than hypothetical
upgrades: you can add a second
16GB DDR5-4800 SODIMM to
accompany the supplied Corsair
unit, or one day replace the 1TB
SSD. The battery is theoretically
replaceable, too, but you may need
professional assistance for this.
This, then, is a compact, fast
laptop with great battery life and a
superb 14in screen. A couple of
niggles steal it of a star and a
Recommended award, but at
this price it’s a genuine contender
to its international rivals.
89

How
wetest

A

cross these two pages,
you’ll find graphs
summarising the results of
our most important tests.
We measure each laptop’s
productivity and digital
creation power using a trio of
benchmarks. First, using the
industry-standard PCMark 10
benchmark. This gives an
overall score, but here we also
publish its Productivity scores
(across spreadsheets and
word processing) and Digital
Content Creation (photo
editing, rendering and video
editing). We also use the
Cinebench R23 and Geekbench
6 benchmarks to assess the
laptops’ single-core and
multicore performance.
We determine the maximum
sequential read and write
speeds of the internal SSD
using CrystalDiskMark 8.
We test 3D performance
using the DirectX 12
benchmark 3DMark Time Spy.
This also gives an indication of
how well each laptop will
perform in creative tasks
such as CAD software.
Our next stop is the screen,
where we use X-Rite
colorimeter hardware to
establish the screen’s
maximum brightness, along
with its effective contrast
ratio, sRGB coverage and
colour accuracy. The latter is
expressed as a Delta E figure,
with a score of 1.0 or below
representing perfection as far
as the human eye can discern.
Finally, we test each laptop’s
battery life using PCMark 10’s
tools. First, we set the screen
to a standard brightness of
150cd/m2, keeping the Wi-Fi
connection active. We then
run the Video test, Modern
Office and Idle tests. The first
plays a 1080p video on loop,
the second mimics a
light-usage workload, and the
third does nothing at all.
What we can’t show in
graphs are all the subjective
judgments we make. These
centre around design,
features and usability, as
discussed in our reviews on
the previous pages. Together
with value for money, these
determine the final star rating
out of five for each laptop.

90

Speedtests
PCMark 10 overall
Huawei MateBook
16s

PCMark 10 Productivity

HP ZBook Firefly
G9
Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

9,283

Huawei MateBook
16s

Recommended
Recommended

5,985

Huawei MateBook
16s

Recommended

8,181

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

5,948

Acer TravelMate
P6

Recommended

8,159

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

Recommended

5,944

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

Labs Winner

5,713

Recommended

Acer TravelMate
P6

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

6,615

Recommended

PCMark 10 Digital Creation

PCSpecialist
Fusion Studio
Asus ExpertBook
B9

Recommended

7,390

Acer TravelMate
P6

Dell Latitude 7340

7,279
7,264

Dell Latitude 7340

7,248

Asus ExpertBook
B9

5,778

7,173

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

5,748

5,495
Recommended

5,489

Asus ExpertBook
B9

Asus ExpertBook
B1

Recommended

5,356

Recommended

Asus ExpertBook
B1

Recommended

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

5,049

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

6,961

Asus ExpertBook
B1

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

5,046

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

6,958

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

5,023

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

6,817

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

4,794
0

1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000

0

1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000

Cinebench R23 multicore
Recommended

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

Recommended

Acer TravelMate
P6

HP ZBook Firefly G9
Asus ExpertBook
B1

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000 10,000

0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000 10,000

Geekbench 6 multicore

0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000 10,000

Geekbench 6 single core

Recommended

10,173

2,575
2,499

Recommended

2,409

PCSpecialist
Fusion Studio

2,405

PCSpecialist
Fusion Studio

2,264
2,255

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

Asus ExpertBook
B1

2,226

Dell Latitude 7340

Recommended

2,211

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

Recommended

2,149

Asus ExpertBook
B1

2,107

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

2,099

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

Labs Winner

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

5,524 Recommended
3,868

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500 3,000

SSDtests
Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

7,088
6,775

Recommended

Asus ExpertBook
B9
Acer TravelMate
P6

Recommended

Huawei MateBook
16s

Recommended

Asus ExpertBook
B1

Recommended

7,843
6,699
Recommended 6,678

6,601
5,946 Recommended
5,388 Labs Winner
5,381
2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

5,037

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

Asus ExpertBook
B9

4,938

Huawei MateBook
6s

Recommended

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

Recommended
Recommended

4,902

Recommended

6,461

Recommended

3,940

4,887

Acer TravelMate
P6

Recommended

3,934

Asus ExpertBook
B9

4,721

Asus ExpertBook
B1

3,591 Recommended

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

3,914

3,357

2,914

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

Dell Latitude 7340

2,742 Recommended

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

2,673

3,570

4,000

6,000

8,000

2,000

Recommended

1,032

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4
6,000

8,000

1,254

1,245

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

4,000

1,388

1,264

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

2,266 Labs Winner
0

Recommended

Asus ExpertBook
B1

2,489

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1
Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

3,104 Recommended

Labs Winner 1,527

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

3,719

1,750
1,670

1,544

Dell Latitude 7340

3,745

2,023

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

2,965

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

2,371
2,091

PCSpecialist
Fusion Studio

PCSpecialist
Fusion Studio

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

2,000

3DMark Time Spy

Acer TravelMate
P6

3,768

0

8,247

0

Huawei MateBook
16s

4,040
Labs Winner

CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential write (MB/sec)

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

6,610

Dell Latitude 7340

8,756

Gamingtest

CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential read (MB/sec)

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

9,525
Recommended 9,518

Asus ExpertBook
B9

2,356

11,208

Acer TravelMate
P6

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

6,628

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

Recommended

7,046

6,382

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

13,877

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

Dell Latitude 7340

PCSpecialist
Fusion Studio

Recommended

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

Huawei MateBook
16s

7,155

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

0

2,812

Asus ExpertBook
B9

6,833

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

4,442

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1
0

Asus ExpertBook
B9

Dell Latitude 7340

4,963

8,000 10,000

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

7,025

5,737

5,540

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

Recommended

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

Recommended

6,000

Acer TravelMate
P6

7,325

Labs Winner

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

5,880

4,000

10,397

7,763

Recommended

2,000

Recommended

Recommended

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

6,545

Labs Winner 6,034

0

Huawei MateBook
16s

13,702

PCSpecialist Fusion
Studio

6,480

5,574

Dell Latitude 7340

Huawei MateBook
16s

6,523
Recommended

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

PCSpecialist
Fusion Studio

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

6,785

PCSpecialist
Fusion Studio

7,559

Labs Winner

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

8,013
7,062

947
0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

@PCPRO

Labs Laptopsforwork

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Screentests
Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1
Huawei MateBook
16s

Recommended

Acer TravelMate
P6

Recommended

Dell Latitude 7340

Recommended

Asus ExpertBook
B9

505

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

497

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

Recommended

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

409
399

Asus ExpertBook
B1

1,791:1
Recommended
Recommended

99%

1,733:1

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

1,732:1

Huawei MateBook
16s

95%

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

1,485:1 Recommended

97%

Recommended

Dell Latitude 7340

Recommended

95%

Labs Winner

94%

1,374:1

55%

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

55%

1,307:1

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

54%

PCSpecialist
Fusion Studio
Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

Recommended

Asus ExpertBook
B9

1,256:1
500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500 Infinite

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500 Infinite

Average Delta-E

80

100

0

20

40

60

80

100

Maximum Delta-E
0.91

Asus ExpertBook
B9

0.39

Acer TravelMate
P6

0.99 Recommended

Acer TravelMate
P6

0.42 Recommended

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

0.47 Recommended

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

Labs Winner

72%

Dell Latitude 7340

70%

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

69%

Huawei MateBook
16s

0.5
0.57 Recommended
0.7 Labs Winner
0.8 Recommended

Asus ExpertBook
B1

44% Recommended

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

40%

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

40%

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

39%
37%
80

100

3

1.96

Dell Latitude 7340

3.21 Recommended

Huawei MateBook
16s

3.33 Recommended
Recommended 19.89

4

21.14
22.73

5

6

24.39

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

6.58
2

PCSpecialist Fusion
Studio

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

5.27

1

1.88 Recommended

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

5.09

0

1.79 Labs Winner

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

4.39

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

1.57

Asus ExpertBook
B1

3.89

Recommended

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in
60

60

99%

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

40

40

Asus ExpertBoo
B9

78%

20

20

0.35

73%

Recommended

52%
0

PCSpecialist Fusion
Studio

Recommended

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

0

61%

Recommended

99%

98%

Recommended

PCSpecialist Fusion
Studio

0

100%

1,358:1

600

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

2,481:1

Labs Winner

Recommended

PCSpecialist Fusion
Studio

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

500

Asus ExpertBook
B1

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

100%

277

400

Huawei MateBook
16s

Infinite

100%

279

300

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

Asus ExpertBook
B9

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

260 Recommended

Dell Latitude 7340

Infinite

Recommended

1,409:1

200

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

Acer TravelMate
P6

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

100

Acer TravelMate
P6

Infinite

Asus ExpertBook
B1

0

DCI-P3 coverage

Recommended

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

264

Asus ExpertBook
B1

Recommended

Dell Latitude 7340
Huawei MateBook
16s

369

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

sRGB coverage

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

437

Asus ExpertBook
B9

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

508

471

PCSpecialist Fusion
Studio

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

Acer TravelMate
P6

560

Labs Winner

Contrast ratio

Lower is better

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

(cd/m2)

7

Lower is better

Peak brightness

25.18
0

10

5

15

20

25

30

Batterylifetests
PCMark 10 Video Rundown

PCMark 10 Modern Office
13hrs
22mins

Recommended

Dell Latitude 7340
Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

12hrs
37mins

Labs Winner

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

Recommended

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

PCSpecialist Fusion
Studio

10hrs 31mins

Dell Latitude 7340

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

10hrs 17mins

PCSpecialist Fusion
Studio

Asus ExpertBook
B9

Acer TravelMate
P6

7hrs 46mins Recommended

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

7hrs 46mins

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4
Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

Huawei MateBook
16s

3

6

PCSpecialist Fusion
Studio

Recommended

11hrs
15mins

Huawei MateBook
16s

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

8hrs 13mins

HP ZBook Firefly
G9
Asus ExpertBook
B9

6hrs 50mins

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

8hrs 0min

Acer TravelMate
P6

6hrs 32mins

Acer TravelMate
P6

9

12

15

18

7hrs
13mins Recommended

6hrs 58mins

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

Asus ExpertBook
B1

6hrs
18mins Recommended

Asus ExpertBook
B1

0

3

6

9

12

15

18

14hrs
21mins

Recommended

13hrs 46mins
13hrs
36mins

Recommended

12hrs 56mins
12hrs 40mins
11hrs 32mins
10hrs 54mins Recommended
10hrs 42mins

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

Chillblast Prestige
15.6in

16hrs
43mins

14hrs 54mins

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Pro

8hrs 28mins

20hrs 45mins

Labs Winner

Acer TravelMate
Spin P4

8hrs 6mins

Did not complete Recommended
0

Recommended

11hrs
17mins

Lenovo ThinkPad X1
Carbon

Lenovo ThinkPad
E14

6hrs
12mins Recommended

Asus ExpertBook
B1

11hrs
55mins

9hrs 43mins

HP ZBook Firefly
G9

8hrs 29mins

Dell XPS 9315 2-in-1

Recommended

Dell Latitude 7340

Recommended

11hrs 7mins

Asus ExpertBook
B9

9hrs 10mins

12hrs
32mins

Labs Winner

Huawei MateBook
16s

11hrs
32mins

PCMark 10 Idle

9hrs 23mins
8hrs 52mins Recommended
0

3

6

9

12

15

18

21

View from
the Labs
Can we quit the fake
pricing, please?

E

veryone loves a bargain.
There’s a reason why
there used to be crowds of
people waiting outside
John Lewis’ doors when its
clearance sales began (I know
from my five years of working
there!) and that Amazon’s
Black Friday events are so
popular. But, my friends, we
are being played.
Let’s take Dell to start with.
I often get the feeling when
visiting its site that there’s a
list price and a “real” price.
Like a modern-day riddle, Dell
is challenging us, the buyer, to
work out how to unlock that
lower figure. I wouldn’t pay
the list price for either of its
products on test, because I
know discounts can be had by
using codes (sometimes
hidden) or playing hard-to-get
with the sales team.
Then there’s Lenovo, which
appears to have become
addicted to flash sales on its
website. Can it be a flash sale if
it comes so quickly after
another flash sale? I pity the
fool who buys a Lenovo laptop
at the full, stated price.
I understand that this is a
successful sales tactic for
both companies. Just as it is
for Amazon. And I have
nothing against genuine sales,
to clear old lines and actually
deliver bargains. What we have
now, however, is a layer of
opaqueness over prices that
means less savvy buyers are
spending10%,20%ormore
thanthe“real”priceofaproduct
because they don’t understand
the tricks being played.
It also means that we have
to print the high list price of
products on reviews. After all,
I can’t guarantee that those
flash sales or coupons will still
be active when you read these
reviews. And that puts both
companies at a disadvantage,
which makes you wonder: is
anyone really winning in this
fake price war?
Tim Danton is
editor-in-chief of PC
Pro and never pays full
price if he can help it.

91

TheNetwork
On-premises
business backup
Practical buying and strategic advice for IT managers and decision makers

The threat to your data comes
in many forms, so it makes
sense for SMBs to take full
control. Dave Mitchell explains
what to look for and reviews
four high-quality contenders

T

he ever-present threats of
data breaches, ransomware
attacks and natural disasters
mean it’s never been more
important for small and medium
businesses (SMBs) to get their backup
house in order. A complete data
protection strategy is an essential
business process and those
businesses that don’t have
one in place are foolishly
putting their business and
their staffs’ livelihoods at
extreme risk.
This shouldn’t be
challenging; there are lots
of top-quality backup
products on the market
that are suitable for a wide
range of environments and
budgets. The best backup
strategies use a hybrid mix
of on-premises and cloud
backup to provide the
requisite number of copies,
and the vast majority of
products can combine both for
simplified management.
This month’s buyer’s guide is
aimed at SMBs that want to keep it

92

in-house. We’ve tested on-premises
business backup software solutions
from four of the big names: Arcserve,
Hornetsecurity, Nakivo and Veritas.
We chose them as they’re all
affordable options for SMBs and we
test them in the lab to help you make
the right data protection decisions.

BELOW Arcserve’s
UDP software can
be managed
on-premises or
from a cloud portal

A hybrid backup strategy that
combines on-premises and off-site
storage is a lot easier to manage than
you might think, as the four products
on review can do it all for you. The
most common plan for reliable data
protection is 3-2-1, where you retain
three up-to-date copies of your data,
back it up to two different types of
media and keep one copy off-site.
This type of strategy gives you the
best of all possible worlds. Your onsite
backups provide fast recovery services
for lost or deleted items. If you
can’t access your main office for
reasons such as theft, fire or
flood, you’ll have the third copy
safely stored off-site.
The cloud is a natural
contender for off-site storage,
and all good backup products
offer support for a wide range
of providers including Amazon
and Microsoft Azure. You don’t
have to use the cloud, though;
many products offer replication
services that can copy backups
to your own remote storage
devices such as NAS appliances
and other storage servers.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

The Network BusinessFocus

LEFT VM Backup
provides great data
protection services
for virtualised
environments

It’s important to use a single
backup product to protect all your
systems and applications, since
multiple products can increase costs
and complexity. Furthermore, look
for those that can manage a hybrid
strategy with a single job – some have
a “staging” feature that allows you to
add extra tasks to a job such as
running off-site replication.

Easy as 3-2-1-1-0

Ransomware attacks are a clear
and present danger to us all, so
businesses of all sizes must take
precautions to mitigate them
and avoid paying for data to be
decrypted. A valuable feature is file
versioning, where you can instruct
the software to retain multiple file

copies going days,
weeks and months
back, so if you get
a ransomware
demand you
may be able
to browse and
restore them to a
state before they
were encrypted.
You can make
it even harder for
cybercriminals
to succeed by
setting the
backup software
to automatically
encrypt all
backup data
using your
own private
keys. Another
unpleasant type
of ransomware
attack attempts to
breach the backup
software and
delete all your
backups before
encrypting the
source data.
Immutable backup storage is a
great defence against this type of
attack as, once written to, it can’t be
changed, overwritten or deleted.
Cloud storage comes into its own
here, with many providers offering
an “Object Lock” feature that turns
their storage into a WORM (write
once read many) device so existing
data can’t be tampered with until the
set retention period has expired.
For even greater protection you
may want to add immutable storage
as a fourth backup stage and create a
“3-2-1-1” strategy. Savvy businesses
will regularly test their backups
to make sure they can recover data
from all archive locations with
zero errors, effectively creating a
3-2-1-1-0 strategy.

LEFT VM Backup
also supports
off-site immutable
cloud storage

There are many factors you need
to consider when creating a data
protection strategy. Systems and apps
that are critical to business operations
should be prioritised so that, in the
event of data loss, you can get
essential services up and running in
the shortest amount of time.
Two factors determine the speed
you need to restore data and the
frequency of backup jobs. A recovery
time objective (RTO) defines the
length of time your business can
survive without access to its systems.
You may need more than one RTO, as a
host managing core email services will
have a much shorter RTO than one
providing basic file-sharing services.
Backup frequency is determined
by the recovery point objective (RPO),
which defines the amount of data loss
your business can accept. If you can
only tolerate losing data created over
the past few hours then you’ll need to
schedule backup jobs to run more
than once a day.
This increased frequency won’t be
a problem if you choose backup
products that use an “incremental
forever” approach. Most default to a
strategy comprising one full backup
followed by incremental, or partial,
backups that only copy data that
has changed since the last backup
was run and are much quicker.

Masters of
“It’s important to use a single disaster
backup product to protect all When your data
protection solution is
your systems and apps, since
up and running you
multiple products can increase must regularly test its
costs and complexity”
restore facilities for

files, applications and
systems. Called contingency
planning, this will ensure your
backups are working and any
unforeseen problems are ironed
out before you need to use them
when a real disaster strikes.
The process should be documented
by creating a “run book” and keeping
it up to date. This must provide clear
instructions for all systems and where
their backup data is stored, so any
type of recovery can be run even if key
personnel aren’t available.
The four products chosen for this
guide are all available as free timelimited trials so you can try them out
before buying. They’re all affordable
options for SMBs, so turn the page
to see which one will keep your
business safe from data disasters.
93

ArcserveUDP9.1

Powerfulsoftwarethat
deliversanall-in-onesolution
forprotectingphysicaland
virtualenvironments
SCORE
PRICE Premium, one socket, £1,257
exc VAT from arcserve.com

A

rcserve UDP (unified data
protection) provides a
one-stop shop for backup and
recovery of all your physical and
virtual systems. Available as a turnkey
appliance or software only, UDP 9.1
introduces a choice of private
on-premises or cloud management.
There’s a range of licensing plans;
the price we’ve shown is for an
on-premises UDP 9.1 single socket
premium licence. Socket licences are
only applied to the systems being
protected, have no restrictions on the
amount of back-end storage and
support unlimited virtual machines.
Ransomware protection for the
UDP host comes into play as the price
includes the Sophos Intercept X
Advanced for Servers endpoint
protection software. Arcserve
supplies it with a personal Sophos
Central account so you can manage
the software in the cloud.
We chose the on-premises UDP
version and installed it on a Dell
PowerEdge R760xs Xeon Scalable
server running Windows Server 2022.
Initial deployment is deftly handled
by a wizard that helped create
protection plans, add nodes, define a
backup destination and schedule jobs.
The recovery point server (RPS) is a
smart feature. It defines where data is
backed up to, and you can use the

local host along with other networked
Windows Server systems. It provides
AES-256 encryption, deduplication
and replication services, and each RPS
performs global deduplication using
dedicated data block locations, hash
databases and indexes.
When physical nodes are declared
to UDP, an agent is pushed to them. To
define our VMs for agentless backup,
we used the import function to add
the VMs to be protected. UDP also
supports CIFS/NFS shares, and we had
no problems bringing a Synology NAS
appliance under its protection.
Microsoft 365 (MS365) support is
enabled when a UDP licence has been
applied but the authorisation process
is tediously complex. You may want to
consider Arcserve’s separate SaaS
cloud product for protecting MS365
accounts as this is far easier to use.
Protection plans are very flexible
and contain selected nodes, an RPS, the
required number of recovery points
and a schedule that can be run as often

ABOVE The UDP
console provides a
status overview
and offers plenty of
recovery features

as every 15 minutes. A smart feature is
the option to add extra tasks to a plan;
these include replication to a remote
RPS and assured recovery, which loads
a temporary VM on a virtualisation host,
confirms it works and then deletes it.
Another valuable task is virtual
standby, which creates backup
VMware or Hyper-V VMs of selected
nodes. It uses a heartbeat service
measured in seconds to monitor the
primary node and, if it fails to respond,
the standby VM is automatically
started using the latest recovery point.
For file and folder recovery, we
RECOMMENDED
loaded the UDP agent’s console for
the selected node, chose a recovery
point, picked files and folders and
restored them back to the
“Protection plans are very node or another location.
flexible and contain selected An agent installed on
our SQL Server system
nodes, an RPS, the required automatically
added its
number of recovery points databases as backup
sources and we had
and a schedule”
no problems restoring
these back to the host.
BELOW UDP 9.1
We tried out cloud management by
allows you to move
installing the gateway component on
all data protection
a separate Windows host and using
management into
the migration tool to move everything
the cloud
to our cloud console account. This
only took ten minutes, and we could
then use the portal to manage our
on-premises UDP installation along
with all backup and restore tasks.
MS365 support is cumbersome, but
UDP 9.1 delivers a wealth of data
protection services for a wide range of
environments. Recovery features are
outstanding, the free Sophos endpoint
agent adds essential ransomware
protection and you can choose from
on-premises or cloud management.
REQUIREMENTS
Backup host – Windows Server 2012 upwards

94

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The Network BusinessFocus

HornetsecurityVM
Backup9UnlimitedPlus

A great price and simple
drag and drop manoeuvres
make this ideal for VMware
and Hyper-V protection
SCORE
PRICE Unlimited Plus, Perpetual, from
£536 exc VAT from hornetsecurity.com

H

ornetsecurity’s VM Backup is
designed specifically to protect
VMware and Hyper-V
environments. It presents a clever
management console where most
operations can be carried out using
nothing more than drag and drop.
VM Backup’s perpetual licences are
based only on the number of hosts,
regardless of the sockets each one has.
There’s also a subscription model where
licensing is charged on the monthly
number of VMs being backed up.
A perpetual Standard edition starts
at £348 and allows you to back up five
VMs per host. You can protect all VMs
on each host with the Unlimited
edition (£426 per host), while the
Unlimited Plus edition on review ups
the price to £536 and enables all the
features VM Backup has to offer.
And features there are aplenty, with
Unlimited Plus 9 enabling support for
immutable cloud storage on Amazon
S3 and Wasabi, and Azure Blob
coming soon. When creating offsite
backup locations, you configure these
locations as immutable, which brings
the Object Lock mechanism into play
and turns them into ransomwareresilient WORM repositories.

We installed VM Backup on a
Windows Server 2019 host and had
our VMware and Hyper-V hosts
declared in 15 minutes. After assigning
a local hard disk backup repository,
we dragged and dropped selected VMs
onto it and started our first backups.
VM Backup supports local and
external storage, iSCSI targets and
UNC paths for NAS shares as backup
destination options. For secondary
off-site locations you can use physical
devices, network shares, the free
Offsite Backup Server app and
standard or immutable cloud storage.
We added a Synology NAS share for
our on-site backups and an Amazon
S3 bucket with Object Lock enabled
for immutable off-site cloud storage.
Two predefined backup schedules
are provided, but it’s easy to create
your own with the preferred weekly

ABOVE The VM
Backup console is
very easy to use

and monthly recurrences, versioning
and retention policies. Each job can
include replication to the secondary
location. You add VMs by dragging
and dropping them on the desired
schedule and retention policy icons.
Along with a cloud console for
managing multiple VM Backup
installations, Unlimited Plus adds
constant data protection (CDP) which
is enabled on selected VMs and set to
run as often as every five minutes.
Both Unlimited and Unlimited Plus
provide inline deduplication for faster
backups, and you can view your
RECOMMENDED
storage savings from the dashboard.
A wizard guides you through the
data recovery process: you choose a
VM, restore its virtual hard disk, clone
it or boot it straight from a backup to
its original host or to another one. If
you need to retrieve a file,
“VM Backup supports local folder or on-premises
and external storage, iSCSI Exchange item, VM
Backup provides granular
targets and UNC paths for recovery
technology
NAS shares as backup
(GRT) services.
destination options”
For data restoration, all
three VM Backup versions
use the Sandbox & Verification feature
to confirm the integrity of all backups.
Along with verifying data, it runs a
background job that clones a VM back
to the original host and confirms that
it runs correctly.
VM Backup is an affordable choice for
Hyper-V and VMware environments.
The Unlimited Plus version delivers a
wealth of features at a great price,
support for immutable cloud storage,
adds valuable ransomware protection
and it’s incredibly easy to use.
LEFT Plenty
of backup
destinations
REQUIREMENTS
are supported Backup host – Windows Server 2012 upwards
95

NakivoBackup&
Replication10.9

Extensive platform support,
goodvalue and greatdata
protection features make
Nakivo a fine choice forSMBs
SCORE
PRICE Enterprise, 10 servers, perpetual
from £1,874 exc VAT from nakivo.com

M

any business backup
solutions require a dedicated
Windows Server host, but
Nakivo’s Backup & Replication (NBR)
is far more amenable as it can be
deployed to just about any platform
you care to name. It will run happily
on a Windows host, but also supports
Linux, VMware vSphere, Nutanix
AHV, AWS EC2, Raspberry Pi and all
the main NAS appliance vendors,
including Qnap and Synology.
On review is NBR 10.9, which
includes bare metal recovery where
you use its new Bootable Media
Wizard to restore physical Windows
and Linux servers from selected
backups. Malware protection is now
available, with NBR integrating with
a range of third-party antivirus
products, and all MS365 components,
including Teams, can be protected.
Licensing is equally versatile.
There are five versions available,
with options for perpetual licences
or per-workload subscriptions.
Nakivo cuts through any confusion
with a cost calculator on its website.
We’ve shown the price for an
Enterprise 10-server perpetual
licence with a two-year 24/7
support contract here.
For testing, we chose Qnap’s
TS-855eU-RP short-depth 8-bay rack

96

NAS and used
the QuTS Hero
App Center to
load the NBR
package. NBR
comprises three service components,
with a Director for browser-based
management, Transporters to handle
backup, replication and recovery
operations, and Repositories for
storing backups.
After adding protected systems
to NBR’s inventory, it pushed the
transporter service to our physical
Windows servers and workstations;
note that Mac clients are still not
supported. For Hyper-V, the service
just needed loading on our host,
while for our VMware vSphere host,
we only had to provide its credentials
for agentless VM backups.
Our Qnap appliance received a
default local repository but this was
on its system SSDs, so we created
another on a large-capacity RAID5
pool. During creation, you must
enter the absolute path, which can
be found from an SSH session using
the Linux List command.
Other possibilities for repositories
are local storage, network shares or
cloud stores. Ransomware protection
comes into play with NBR supporting
immutable cloud storage from
Amazon EC2 and S3, Microsoft Azure
Blob, Wasabi and Backblaze B2.

ABOVE We created
multiple backup
strategies for
our physical and
virtual systems

Creating backup jobs is simple as
options are based on the systems in
your inventory. Just choose those you
want to protect, assign a repository,
set a schedule and decide how daily,
weekly, monthly and yearly recovery
points you want retained.
For our Hyper-V host, we chose the
VMs to be included, and protecting
our VMware vSphere system only
required the host to be selected so any
new VMs would be automatically
added to the schedule. To use malware
protection, you declare a “scan server”
to NBR, which has the required
antivirus software running on it.
RECOMMENDED
MS365 licensing is separate, with
ten users costing £252 per year, and it
requires a special SaaS repository to
store backups, which we found isn’t
currently supported by QuTS Hero 5.1.
Nakivo’s attentive support suggested
creating an iSCSI target on the appliance
and mapping it to a Windows system
running the transporter
“SMBs that don’t want
service – hardly elegant,
their backup software tied but it does work.
Recovery features are
to a Windows Server host
outstanding. Along with
will love Nakivo’s Backup & files and folders, granular
Replication 10.9”
restores can be used for
MS365 items, SQL
databases and on-premises Exchange
objects. Disaster recovery is just as
good, with Flash Boot jobs creating
new VMs directly from the backup
repository and facilities for
replicating VMs as clones.
SMBs that don’t want their backup
software tied to a Windows Server host
will love Nakivo’s Backup & Replication
10.9 as they can run it on almost any
hardware platform and OS they want.
It’s good value, MS365 protection is
LEFT
Services can handled well and it provides extensive
data recovery services.
be extended
to MS365
Exchange,
REQUIREMENTS
SharePoint,
Backup host – Windows 7/Server 2012
OneDrive
upwards Linux, VMware, Nutanix AWS
and Teams
EC2, supported NAS appliance Raspberry Pi

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The Network BusinessFocus

VeritasBackup
Exec22.2

Perfectly priced for SMBs,
Backup Exec is very easy to
use and offers a superb
range of features
SCORE
PRICE Simple Core Pack, 5 instances, £489
per year exc VAT from uk.insight.com

V

eritas Backup Exec (BE) has
always been one of our top
choices for on-premises data
protection. It delivers a comprehensive
range of backup and recovery services.
The BE Simple licensing plans make it
very affordable for SMBs, and BE 22.2
on review introduces plenty of new
and welcome features.
Microsoft 365 (MS365) backups
now support SharePoint and Teams
as well as Exchange Online and
OneDrive. Microsoft Azure Object
Lock provides ransomware-protected
immutable cloud storage, backups to
ReFS volumes can be accelerated,
anomaly detection protects backup
scripts from tampering, and BE
now uses the FIPs-compliant
deduplication engine from Veritas’
enterprise NetBackup product.
The simple yearly subscription
service is based only on compute
instances, which can be a physical
system, a virtual machine or ten
MS365 users. The starter five-instance
Simple Core Pack costs an agreeable
£489 per year, and Veritas generously
includes a bonus instance for an extra
ten MS365 users.
Deployment is swift; we installed BE
on a Dell PowerEdge R760xs Windows
Server 2022 host in 20 minutes. After
declaring our physical servers using
their IP addresses, BE pushed the
remote agent to them while for our

Hyper-V systems, we just needed the
agent loaded on the host to secure all
its virtual machines.
Adding our VMware vSphere host
was simple, and we only had to
provide its IP address and credentials.
MS365 couldn’t be any easier, either:
we added our tenant using the link
provided by BE and entered the
unique device code it generated for us.
Backup job creation is simple, too:
you just select sources from the list
presented and choose from a range of
predefined strategies. These include
backup to disk or cloud, and you can
add extra stages in the job for local
and offsite backup, replication to
other disk stores or conversion to
VMs, and add an essential air gap by
migrating backup data to tape drives
attached to the BE host.
BE supports plenty of storage
locations, including physical and
virtual disks, cloud, tape,
deduplicating stores and network
shares. For our tests, we created a
local store on the BE server, used a

ABOVE A dashboard

multi-TB share on a Synology NAS
appliance and added immutable cloud
storage using an Amazon S3 bucket
with Object Lock enabled.
Veritas takes data protection very
seriously, and the job wizard always
advises you to enable encryption. You
can choose from 128-bit or 256-bit
AES encryption and, if required, only
allow the user that created the key for
a job to recover data from it.
Data restoration is another pleasant
experience: you select a source, view its
files, folders or volumes, pick a recovery
point and decide where to send them.
Creating a simplified recovery disk
brings bare metal recovery into play,
BE’s Instant GRT (granular
“It supports plenty of
recovery technology) is
storage locations, including used to restore items such
physical and virtual disks, as SQL databases and the
Instant VM Recovery
cloud, tape, deduplicating feature takes seconds to
stores and network shares” create a new VM from a
backup set.
MS365 backups require a
deduplicating store, and the best
practice is to apply encryption at the
store and not the job level otherwise
data reduction may not be as efficient.
BELOW All four
We created one job to protect our
components of
Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint sites
MS365 can be
and Teams data and used the restore
secured
wizard to recover data by choosing a
component and selecting a time point.
SMBs that want every data backup
and recovery angle covered will love
Backup Exec 22.2. It offers a superb
range of features, is a strong candidate
for protecting virtual environments,
cloud support is excellent and it’s
very competitively priced.
keeps you in touch
with all the action,
including instance
licence usage

REQUIREMENTS
Backup host – Windows Server 2012 upwards
97

SynologyBC500

Awell-builtIPcamerawith
goodimagequalitythatmust
bepartneredwithaSynology
NASorDVAappliance
SCORE
PRICE £246 exc VAT
from amazon.co.uk

B

est known for its excellent
range of NAS appliances,
Synology moves deeper into
surveillance territory with a choice of
two IP cameras. The TC500 targets
indoor use while the BC500 on review
is geared up for the great outdoors.
The British weather won’t worry
this little bullet camera, since its IP67
rating means it’s certified as dusttight and can survive total immersion
in water for up to 30 minutes. Its 5MP
CMOS sensor and 2.8mm/f1.8 lens
team up to deliver a maximum
resolution of 2,880 x 1,620 pixels, it
supports the H.264 and H.265 codecs
and it offers a wide 110° horizontal
field of view (FoV).
The BC500 has a 10/100 Ethernet
port on the end of a 35cm waterproof
cable and can be powered by an
802.3af PoE source or an optional
12V DC adapter. Its four IR LED array
has a claimed 30-metre range, while
an integral microphone provides
one-way audio.
Most business IP cameras need a
supporting video management app to
get the best out of them, but the
BC500 is different as it’s designed to
work with a Synology NAS appliance.
Yes, you can view the camera’s feed
using a standard web browser, but
this only offers a basic set of features
for viewing the live feed and
modifying the network settings.

Synology NAS appliance owners
can load the Surveillance Station
app and avail themselves of a
superb range of services, including
multi-camera monitoring, recording
and motion-detection features. A
smarter alternative is a Synology
deep video analytics (DVA)
appliance, which runs a different
version of Surveillance Station,
offering people and vehicle counting,
enhanced intrusion detection,
no-idle zones and licence plate and
facial recognition.
For testing, we used Synology’s
entry-level DVA1622 2-bay
appliance, which costs about £450
and utilises its Celeron CPU’s
embedded UHD Graphics 600 GPU to
run up to two simultaneous DVA
tasks. If you’re serious about
surveillance consider the four-bay
DVA3221, as this sports Nvidia
GeForce GTX 1650 graphics and can
run up to eight DVA tasks.
For added security, the camera
doesn’t have a default admin account
and we used Synology’s Camera Tool
app to discover it on the network and
set our own username and password.
From the Surveillance Station app on
the DVA1622, we added the camera,
authenticated it and configured basic
settings such as H.264 or H.265 plus
resolutions and frame rates for highquality and balanced video streams.

The BC500 delivers great daytime
image quality. Along with good
contrast and colour balance, it has a
sharp focus, handles bright sunlight
well and conveys smooth movement
at the top resolution. The IR LEDs
provide good night illumination and
allow the camera to gather plenty of
detail, although we’d say their usable
range is more like 20 metres.
Setting up people counting is easy.
With the camera mounted high on a
wall or on a ceiling, you use a mouse
to scale and position a detection zone
in the task preview window, define a
head size and set entry and exit
directions. Enable crowd control
and the task counts all entry and
exit events and alerts you if the
discrepancy exceeds a specific limit.
People and vehicle
“Team it up with a Synology detection tasks monitor
NAS or DVA appliance and up to three areas defined
custom polygonal
this unleashes an incredible by
zones. They’re deemed
range of monitoring and
inclusive or exclusive,
recording features”
and setting a minimum
duration time in seconds
will alert you to objects lingering in a
detection zone.
Intrusion detection is configured
by positioning a line in the preview to
denote a digital fence and choosing
from one-way or two-way directions.
Anything that crosses the line will
send alerts and trigger a motion
detection rule.
For a 5MP outdoor IP camera, the
BC500 is comparatively good value.
You’ll need to team it up with a
Synology NAS or DVA appliance but
LEFT The
this unleashes an incredible range of
BC500 delivers
monitoring and recording features,
great daytime
and a bonus is Synology’s cameras
image quality
don’t consume any Surveillance
Station licences. DAVE MITCHELL

ABOVE The BC500’s
5MP sensor delivers a
maximum resolution
of 2,880 x 1,620

SPECIFICATIONS
1/2.7in 5MP CMOS sensor 2.8mm/f1.8 lens
2,880 x 1,620 max res 30fps internal mic
H.264/H.265 10/100 Ethernet 802.3af PoE
or 12V DC 4 x IR LEDs microSD card slot
IP67 web browser, Synology Surveillance
Station or DVA management 110 x 161 x
110mm (WDH) 353g wall-fixing kit
3yr warranty
98

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ZyxelSCR50AXE

An affordable small office
Wi-Fi 6E security router
with tough threat
protection measures
SCORE
PRICE £146 exc VAT
from broadbandbuyer.com

Z

yxel’s SCR 50AXE will appeal
to small businesses and home
offices that want secure
wireless networks without the
added expense of separate devices.
This desktop router delivers triband Wi-Fi 6/6E services, combines
these with an integral firewall
and Zyxel’s threat management
services, and delivers them all at
a tempting price.
It looks particularly good value
as the price includes a lifetime
subscription to Zyxel’s Security
Cloud, which enables (deep breath) a
firewall, ransomware and malware
prevention, VPN proxy, intrusion,
dark web and ad blockers,
application monitoring, GeoIP
country restrictions and protection
against mail fraud and phishing.
An SCR Pro Pack licence adds the
Trellix-powered real-time threat
intelligence and web filtering
services, with a one-year
subscription costing around £40.
The router comes with a magnetic
desktop base or it can be wallmounted with the supplied bracket.
It sports a WAN and four LAN ports
– all of the gigabit variety – while on
the wireless side its AX5400-rated
access point (AP) claims speeds of
575Mbits/sec on the 2.4GHz radio
and 2,400Mbits/sec each for the
5GHz and 6GHz radios. The latter
two both support the high-speed
160MHz channels, but with gigabit

ports all round you won’t see their
full performance potential.
The SCR 50AXE is designed to
be managed from Zyxel’s Nebula
cloud portal. We found it simple to
add it to our account. After logging
into the Nebula app on an iPad, we
selected our predefined site, scanned
in the QR code on the label on the
device’s side and added it to our site
with one tap.
The portal presents a customisable
site dashboard with extra sections for
the SCR 50AXE. You can check its
uptime and firmware status, see the
top ten apps identified by the
application identification service and
view threat management activity. A
second table shows total detections
for each category.
Up to four cloud-managed SSIDs
are supported, each with their own
authentication scheme, including the
mandatory WPA3 for Wi-Fi 6E. You

The Network Reviews
can decide which of the three radios
are to be active, create custom
captive portals for guest networks
with click-through, voucher,
Facebook or Nebula authentication,
enable L2 isolation to stop guest users
seeing other devices and apply
upload and download rate limits.
You should use Zyxel’s application
identification service with extreme
caution, as its overheads will reduce
wireless performance by up to 50%.
We tested this using a Dell Windows
11 Pro workstation equipped with a
TP-Link Archer TXE75E Wi-Fi 6E
PCI-E adapter and saw close-range
file-copying speeds between the
client and a server on the gigabit
LAN of 112MB/sec, dropping to a
respectable 87MB/sec at a distance
of ten metres.
Running the test again with
application identification enabled
saw close range and distance speeds
tumble to 48MB/sec and 32MB/sec.
While the copy test was running we
enabled and disabled the service from
the Nebula portal and could see its
impact almost instantly.
Threat management is simple
ABOVE The router
to apply, with six slider bars for
delivers tri-band
enabling or disabling each individual
Wi-Fi 6/6E services
component, and you can add
at a decent price
exception lists for specific clients and
IP addresses plus blocked or allowed
web domains. Clicking on the main
chart takes you to a monitor page with
a map showing where
“YoushoulduseZyxel’s
threats are emanating
from, and the affected
applicationidentification
clients with the SCR Pro
servicewithcaution,asits
Pack licence extending its
overheadswillreduce
reporting period from 24
wirelessperformance”
hours to 30 days.
This licence enables
content filtering, which offers 103
URL categories to block or allow, and
you can fine-tune access by applying
custom policies to all or selected
clients. We also ran our copy tests
with each threat management
component progressively enabled
BELOW You can
and can confirm they have no adverse
manage the 50AXE
impact on performance.
from Zyxel’s
The SCR 50AXE is an affordable
Nebula portal and
all-in-one wireless security router
mobile app
for small offices. The fly in the
ointment is the application detection
service, which hits wireless
performance hard, but otherwise the
router is easy to manage from the
Nebula cloud portal and offers strong
threat protection measures for the
price. DAVE MITCHELL
SPECIFICATIONS
AXE5400 tri-band 802.11ax router 1GHz
dual-core CPU 1GB RAM 4 x internal
aerials 5 x gigabit (WAN, 4 x LAN) 12V
external PSU desk stand and wall mount
plate 68 x 178 x 242mm (WDH with stand)
615g 2yr hardware warranty
99

Optimise your
website for Google

If your business has a web presence then it makes sense to maximise its
visibility on Google. Nik Rawlinson explains how to do just that

E

very business needs a website,
and every website needs a
presence on Google. Getting
onto Google isn’t hard: in fact,
once your site is live you can just sit
back and Google will discover and
index it sooner or later. However, it
can take weeks for a new website to be
added to Google’s database – weeks in
which you’re missing out on business.
What’s more, once your site has
been indexed you might well find that
not all pages are represented in the
way you hoped. Your site is doubtless
full of enticing content that offers
precisely what your would-be
customers are looking for – but in
order to get the search rankings and
traffic you deserve, you need to ensure
that Google’s web-crawling engine
has properly explored your site and
correctly parsed the key content.
That means taking things into your
own hands. Here’s how to tell the
world’s biggest search engine that
your site exists, and how to help it
read and catalogue your site for the
best search performance.

Mapping your site

When your site first goes live, you can
bring it to Google’s attention using the
Google Search Console (pcpro.link/
350search). Start by logging in, with
100

your regular Google account or one
that’s linked to the website, then enter
the details of your domain. Google will
prompt you to prove that you own the
domain in question by adding a
custom TXT or CNAME entry to your
DNS record – something
“You need to ensure that only an administrator of the
domain will be able to do.
Google’s web-crawling
It can take a few hours for
engine has properly
your change to propagate
explored your site and
across the web and be
parsed the key content”
recognised by Google. Once
this has happened, your
domain will appear in your Search
Console account and you can start
managing your search profile.
Google does its best to crawl all
the pages of your site, but you can

RIGHT The Search
Console lets you check
how Google has
indexed your site

help it along by generating your own
sitemap – a digital index of all the
different pages on your domain. There
are plenty of free online services that
can generate an XML sitemap of any
site you care to point them at, such as
xml-sitemaps.com.
If your site is built on WordPress
then you can bring up a sitemap by
simply visiting mydomain.com/
sitemap.xml, replacing the domain
name with the address of your site.
For more flexibility you might choose
to install an SEO tool such as Yoast
(yoast.com) or the free edition of
Rank Math (rankmath.com), which
can not only handle sitemap creation
but can also help optimise your
content for search performance.
Rank Math can be installed directly
from the WordPress repository; once
it’s running, you can view your
sitemap by hovering over Rank Math
SEO in the WordPress sidebar and
clicking Sitemap Settings. Rank Math
will already have created a map at the
address in the blue box at the top of
the General sheet. Two options on this
page allow you to include images and
featured images in the map; “images”
in this case means media that has been
directly embedded within a post or
page, and enabling these will help you
to recognise your pages at a glance.

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Featured images are attached to a post
(and perhaps used in an index) but not
necessarily displayed within the post.
After choosing your image
preferences, hit Save Changes, then
click HTML Sitemap in the sidebar.
If you want to display the sitemap on
your own site so that visitors can use it
for navigation, enable the option to
generate an HTML sitemap and use
the options below to tailor it. It’s up to
you whether you want to sort your
posts by WordPress post ID, by date
or by title (for the latter, choose
Alphabetical on the Sort By menu).
You can also decide whether your
sitemap should show dates for each
page and post; if you’re using
WordPress as a CMS rather than a
blogging engine, we’d recommend
suppressing dates, as otherwise still
relevant pages may appear outdated.
The Posts, Pages, Categories and
Tags tabs let you activate or deactivate
sitemaps for each content type; at the
very least you’ll probably want to
enable Posts and Pages, to capture the
bulk of your content. Once you’ve
made whatever changes you need, you
can check your Math Rank sitemap
atmydomain.com/sitemap_index.
xml. On large sites, the map will
automatically be divided into multiple
sub-maps; while Google allows a
maximum of 50,000 entries in a single
sitemap, SEO experts recommend
keeping each sitemap file to 1,000
entries or fewer. As always, it’s hard
to guarantee that this will definitely
help your search performance, but
linking several sitemaps like this
ensures that Google has everything
it needs while keeping things clean
and simple.
Now you’ve made your sitemap,
switch back to the Google Search
Console, click Sitemaps in the sidebar,
enter the address of your main
sitemap index in the “Add a new
sitemap” box and click Submit.
Google will now ingest the map and
within a day or two you should see its
contents added to the index.
There’s just one catch: when you
come back to check the Pages tab in
Search Console, you may be annoyed
to see that not all of the pages included
in your sitemap have been added to
the catalogue. This is because Google
doesn’t try to comprehensively index
every page of every website, but
focuses on the important stuff – so
the next step is to help it identify
what’s important.

Data about data

The way that Google parses and
processes web pages has changed
several times since the service was
launched in 1998. One of the biggest
changes occurred in 2012 with the
introduction of Knowledge Graph.

The Network Googleoptimisation
the information on your site in a
machine-readable way.
You can do this using schema
markup – metadata tags that tell
Google and other page-crawling
systems exactly what type of data
you’re publishing. You can find a full
explanation of schema, along with
details of all supported tags, at
schema.org. As you’ll see, there’s a
huge range of tags available to
categorise everything from books and
films to events, organisations, people
and places, each of which can have
numerous attached properties. Here’s
schema.org’s example of how you
might mark up information about a
popular film:
<div itemscope itemtype ="https://
schema.org/Movie">
<h1 itemprop="name">Avatar</h1>
<span>Director: <span itemprop=
"director">James Cameron</span>
(born August 16, 1954)</span>
<span itemprop="genre">Science
fiction</span>
<a href="../movies/avatar-theatricaltrailer.html" itemprop="trailer">
Trailer</a>
</div>

This feature shows information about
your search terms directly on the
search page, rather than solely
providing links to relevant pages. For
example, if you search Google for Tom
Cruise, you’ll see a selection of photos,
a brief biography of the actor and a
rundown of his most popular films,
above the list of relevant websites.
Google boasted at launch that this
feature saved users from having to
carry out multiple searches to find the
details they wanted: “the information
we show for Tom Cruise answers 37%
of next queries that people ask about
him”, according to Amit Singhal,
former SVP of engineering. Today,
Google is taking things even further
by combining Knowledge Graph data
with generative AI, allowing users to
interactively ask natural-language
questions and explore topics without
ever leaving Google.
Knowledge Graph is controversial,
as it gives users less reason to visit
your website. However, sites that
contribute to Knowledge Graph are
likely to fare well in search results,
and in all cases it’s helpful to structure

TOP Images can
be included in your
sitemap
MIDDLE You can
generate an HTML
sitemap for visitor
navigation
BOTTOM Breaking
down a large sitemap
into smaller indexed
maps may help search
performance

It’s worth using schema markup
wherever you can: according to
Google, when Rotten Tomatoes added
schema information to 100,000 pages in
its database, those pages experienced
a 25% higher click-through rate.
Nestlé found that pages marked up
with heading and data information
had an 82% higher click-through rate
from search results.
Schema markup tags can be
applied by hand, but unless your site
is very small this is likely to be a
tedious process. You’ll get quicker
results using a content management
system with built-in schema support
– or a plug-in that automatically
adds the appropriate tags. The free
version of Rank Math can mark up
books, job postings, music,
restaurants, software and 17 other
categories; upgrading to the Pro
edition adds tags for movies, podcast
episodes, fact checks and custom tags
that you can define yourself.
The more consistently and
explicitly you structure your data, the
more effectively Google will be able to
parse and file the content on your
pages – and the more likely it is to be
highlighted in search results.

Excluding data

As well as bringing important
information to the fore, you can
present your site to its best advantage
by steering Google away from less
valuable pages, such as administrative
portals or stubs that aren’t intended
for public consumption.
101

The Network Googleoptimisation

One way to do this is to place a
plain-text document in the root of
your domain called robots.txt,
containing the addresses of any
folders and documents that Google
should bypass. Google’s own robots.
txt file at google.com/robots.txt is
a fine, if lengthy, example of such a
file; your own robots.txt might look
something like this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /css/
Disallow: /pages/cookies.php
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /pages/
Allow: /pages/copyright.php
User-agent: Googlebot
User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /pages/login.php
Disallow: /admin/
Sitemap: https://history.scot/
sitemap.xml
The three User-agent sections let you
give instructions to specific search
engines and web crawlers; the first,
“*”, means that the instructions in
that block apply universally, telling
all engines to ignore the images and
css folders, plus the specific page at
/pages/cookies.php.
The “Googlebot” User-agent block
applies specifically to Google, and will
be ignored by Bing and others.
Googlebot covers all of Google’s
search services, but you can also
specify instructions for individual
Google crawling engines, such as
Image search: you’ll find a list of these
at pcpro.link/350crawl. In this
instance, we’re asking Google to
102

ABOVE Structured
data helps Google to
anticipate what users
want to know

@PCPRO

completely exclude our pages
directory from its index, except
for one file – copyright.php –
which we’re explicitly including
using the Allow tag.
The third code chunk tells
both Google and Bing to exclude
our login page and the admin
directory. You could create
separate sections for each user
agent, but stacking them like this
keeps things clean and simple.
We’ve also included a link to
our sitemap at the bottom of the
robots.txt file. In Google’s case
this is unnecessary, as we’ve
already manually added it to the
Google Search Console, but
specifying it here means it should
also be picked up by any other
service to which we’ve not added
it manually. If you’ve hand-coded
your robots.txt file, you can test
whether it’s including and
excluding the content you expect
at pcpro.link/350tools.
Note that there are scenarios in
which a page specified by robots.txt
may still be indexed, such as when it’s
linked to by other pages on the web.
In such instances Google’s search
results may show a link to the page,
but without a description or preview.
That means you shouldn’t use
robots.txt for content you really want
to keep off Google – and certainly
don’t try to use it to protect sensitive
information, as your pages will still be
fully accessible on the web, and
there’s no guarantee that all crawling
engines will respect your exclusions.

The noindex tab

As well as using a robots.txt file, you
can mark individual pages as not for
indexing by including a
“Once you understand how “noindex” tag in the
Google is reading your site, HTML <head> section of
you can start to take greater each page. The syntax
might be as follows:

control over what is and
isn’t included in its index”

<meta name='googlebot'
content='noindex' />

This specifically asks Google to
exclude the current page from
its index, but allows all other
search indexes to include it. If you
want to exclude the page from
all search indexes – at least for
crawlers that respect your request –
use the following:
<meta name='robots' content='noindex'
/>
You can further tailor the tag for
greater control: for example, you
could tell crawlers to index the
current page but not to follow any
links by swapping “noindex” for
“nofollow”. To exclude the page

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

and discourage crawlers from
following its links, use “none”.
For pages that update frequently,
you can use the robots tag to instruct
search engines not to cache old
versions of the content by including
“noarchive” in the content tag. The
“nosnippet” keyword tells them not to
generate text snippets to be shown in
search results. You can combine
multiple content instructions using
commas, as follows:
<meta name='robots' content='none,
noarchive, nosnippet, noimageindex,
notranslate' />
This extended tag requests crawlers
not to include the current page in their
index, not to index any of the links it
contains, not to save a cached version,
not to generate a text snippet, not to
index images used on the page, and
not to offer to translate the page in
search results.
What if you only want to exclude
part of a page from search results,
rather than delisting the whole thing?
To achieve this you can use the
“data-nosnippet” attribute within
your HTML code, applying it to the
span, div or section you want to hide.
For example:
<div>
<p> Search engines can include this text
in their index. <span data-nosnippet>
However, this part of the paragraph
should be excluded from the search
index.</span></p>
</div>
<div data-nosnippet>
<p>This whole div will be excluded from
search results.</p>
</div>
<section data-nosnippet>
<div>
<p>All of the content in this section will be
excluded from the index.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>The section may contain any number
of spans or divs.</p>
</div>
</section>
Once you understand how Google is
reading your site, you can start to take
greater control over what is and isn’t
included in its index. Using metadata
to describe what you’re publishing
increases the likelihood of it being
used on the search page, and of
searchers clicking through to your site
for more information. Excluding less
relevant pages will help Google to
understand what it should focus on,
giving you a better chance of ranking
highly when your site has the perfect
answer to someone’s query.

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Real world
computing
Expert advice from our panel of professionals

JONHONEYBALL

“Whenyoustandthreeorfourmetres
awayfroma210indisplaypanel,it’s
likehavingahugeTVintheroom”
Jon wants to talk cats, albeit of the cable rather than purring variety. Plus,
he explores the best tools for Wi-Fi analysis – with half an eye on Wi-Fi 7

W

hat sort of cats do you
have? I don’t mean the
fluffy sort that like to
walk across your keyboard at an
inopportune moment; I mean the
Ethernet cabling that you have in
your walls, and between your various
pieces of network equipment.
What you need will depend on
what you’re trying to do, of course.
However, the specifications keep
moving forward and it’s possible to
go very fast over wired Ethernet if
both your devices and cabling
support it properly.
Cat5E is now considered the basic
standard cabling. It’s good for gigabit
connections, which are used by the
majority of client devices. It’s not
unusual to have 2.5GbE or 10GbE on
devices, but it most certainly is not
the norm. You can run Cat5E for a
long distance and it will work well up
to nearly 100m in distance.
Cat6 is a better cable and
designed for a wire speed of
250MHz, compared to the 100MHz
of Cat5/5E. Cat6 is good for 55m at
10Gbit data throughput. Cat6E
cabling is the same, only better, and
increases the wire speed to 500MHz.
Its improved shielding and crosstalk
performance means it’s good for
100m runs at 10Gbit throughput.
Although the name Cat6E is used by
many firms, it isn’t actually an
approved ISO standard.
Then we come to Cat7, which
runs the wire speed up to 600MHz
and is really designed for 10Gbit
connections. Cat8 is designed for
even faster connections, although
potentially with a reduced distance.

106

Which to buy? Much will depend
on your needs. Whatever you install,
especially into wall trunking, it’s
important to get an expert in who can
test the cabling properly. There are
various test hardware tools available
from a variety of vendors. It might be
tempting to use a simple continuity
checker, consisting of a device that
plugs into each end of the cable and
checks the wiring for a connection.
This really isn’t enough. You need
tools that will properly stress-test the
cabling with real network traffic.
These don’t come cheap, with prices
easily running into the thousands of
pounds for a complete system. A good
example of this is from Fluke, whose
cable tester kit will properly evaluate
wiring up to 10Gbits/sec. The price?
Nearly three grand.
Although these can be rented, it’s
likely to be more effective to have a
nominated grown-up do the testing
who comes along with the
appropriate hardware. In
fact, if you’re having wiring
put in afresh, then it really
should be part of the design
and implementation process
that every cable and patch
panel is fully tested, and that
a conformance certificate is
generated. If you’re tempted
to get a local sparky to pop
the cable into some plastic
trunking, then be warned
that it might not be up to
the required specification.
Wiring needs to work
correctly over a long period
of time, and there are few
things more annoying than
an intermittent fault.
Whatever happens, don’t
be fobbed off by a keen if
underqualified sparky
saying, “well my box went
beep so it must be all right”.

Sony video wall

Jon is the MD of an IT
consultancy that
specialises in testing
and deploying kit
@jonhoneyball

BELOW Sony’s video
wall technology is
hugely impressive

Last week I visited Sony UK
headquarters in Weybridge, Surrey,
to look at its video wall technologies.
These are the huge display panels that
can take up whole sides of a room.
The first thing to say: these things
are incredibly impressive. From the
side of a large room or atrium, they
can give the appearance of a razorsharp image with punchy colours and
brightness. The fun part is that they
are built as modular bricks that you
build together into whatever size and
shape you require. The pixels go right
to the edge of each panel unit, so you
get what is effectively a seamless join
across the multi-unit panel.
The refresh rate and speed of the
display was very impressive, and
when you stand three or four metres
away from a 210in display panel, it’s
like having a huge TV in the room.
Even when you stand close in front of

@PCPRO

Real world computing

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Jon Honeyball
Opinion on Windows, Apple and
everything in between – p106

Lee Grant
Tales from the front line of
computer repair – p109

a screen, the image doesn’t
get horribly pixellated.
There are two main
platforms: the B series and
the C series. The B panels are
designed for maximum
brightness, whereas the C is
aimed at colour-accurate
contrast. Clearly, if you’re
trying to illuminate a highly
lit retail space or business
atrium, the B series will be
more appropriate. If you’re
modelling an F1 car design,
doing large-scale CAD work or
presenting something more
photo realistic, the C contrast
range is a better choice.
Behind the scenes, there’s
a controller box and a large
network of Ethernet feeds to
each panel. What was particularly
impressive was the ability to pull a
panel out from the front, using
appropriate suction cups. This
makes it much easier to fix any
issues with individual panels,
without having to do a strip down
of the entire supporting frame.
Price? It sort of fits into the “if you
have to ask” category. I believe a
figure of around 100 grand wouldn’t
be out of place for a big wall. But if
you need it, then defining the return
on investment shouldn’t be too hard.
The team at Sony also showed
me its TEOS system. This is an
infrastructure management system
for corporate users. It allows you
to join up room control panels,
displays and all of the necessary items
into a system that allows for room
booking, mixing local and remote
conferencing, digital signage and a
bunch of other capabilities into one
unified platform. You can find out
more on its website (pcpro.link/
350TEOS), and it might be a
worthwhile solution if you’re in
the market for such a tool.

Chanalyzer and the new
osmium RF scanner

One of the mainstays of my Wi-Fi
testing capabilities has been
Chanalyzer from
Metageek (metageek.
com). Although a
somewhat ageing
product – it doesn’t
support the new 6E
6GHz spectrum – it has

Dr Rois Ni Thuama
Risk analysis from RedSift’s
head of cyber governance – p112

Mark Parvin
Our guest columnist explains
what makes him grumpy – p114

still proved invaluable in my
understanding of what’s happening
in a given Wi-Fi space.
It was designed around the Wi-Spy
DBx USB spectrum analyser, a small
USB device you plug into your host
computer. This provides a frequency
response spectrum analysis of the
2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi spaces, and
it’s this that allows you to see the
amount of Wi-Fi traffic across each
band. Unfortunately, the Wi-Spy DBx
is now end of life and the Chanalyzer
5 is now in its support phase of life
(although it will continue to be
supported for some time).
However, Metageek hasn’t been
sitting still. It developed a product
called EyePA that allowed you to do
packet analysis on the Wi-Fi traffic
itself. It also uses external hardware
in the shape of the AirPcap Nx USB
tool from Riverbed. With EyePA, you
can sit it on a Wi-Fi channel and hit
record. It will then record all the
traffic, and allow for analysis of all
the underlying protocols that keep
Wi-Fi working. This is very useful
if you’re trying to work out why a
client isn’t playing nicely with a base
station. For example, we expect to get
a good throughput if the signal level is
solid between a client and an access
point. We expect it to get significantly
worse if you move the client away

Davey Winder
Keeping small businesses
safe since 1997 – p116

ABOVE One thing a
busy office relies on is
strong, stable Wi-Fi

“EyePA allowed
you to do
packet analysis
on the Wi-Fi
traffic itself”

BELOW The Oscium
WiPry Clarity offers
analysis of the 2.4GHz,
5GHz and 6GHz bands

Steve Cassidy
The wider vision on cloud and
infrastructure – p118

from the access point. As the signal
level drops towards the background
noise floor, the error rate goes up, and
the throughput drops away. This is
entirely understandable.
But what happens if you have a
client that’s near the access point but
is still getting poor throughput? It
might just be bad design of either the
client or the access point, but let’s
assume they both work well when
connected to other devices.
How can we find out what
is going on? This is where
EyePA comes in handy: it
grabs all the traffic, and
checks if there is an
unusual pattern to the
data, such as far too much
pinging back and forth and
not enough user data.
This was good, but
EyePA is also end of life. It
was replaced by a product
called Tonic, which offered
similar features but with
a significantly improved
user interface.
At the risk of sounding
like a stuck record, Tonic
has now been superseded
by Chanalyzer 6. This one
product replaces Tonic
(and thus EyePA) and also
Chanalyzer 5. In one
platform, we have the
RF spectrum analysis
capabilities, showing what
is going on in the various
bands. Plus we can zoom in
on a particular channel and
107

wireless access point and do all of the
packet capture and analysis. This
integrated approach makes a lot of
sense, because it’s better to have one
view of all parameters, rather than
having to switch back and forth
between various tools.
But what of the hardware? Well,
Wi-Spy DBx is dead. So is AirPcap Nx.
So what do we use now? The preferred
spectrum analysis hardware add-on
is called Oscium WiPry Clarity
(oscium.com), which I bought from
the UK dealer The Debug Store
(pcpro.link/350debug). This offers
spectrum analysis of the 2.4GHz,
5GHz and 6GHz bands. I accept it isn’t
cheap at £1,110 including VAT, but it
seems to be the only game in town if
you want to look at the 6GHz band in
any reasonably cost-effective way.
Naturally, there are mega rackmount
solutions from the likes of Rohde &
Schwarz, but at that point the price
tag runs in to the realms of “extra
wide calculator” .
To do the actual packet capture,
Chanalyzer 6 supports up to three
Wi-Fi adapters. There’s a list of
those it works with, because it
doesn’t use the standard Windows
Wi-Fi driver. It needs a driver that
can control the hardware in a more
precise and detailed way, and to
extract all of the data flow in
“promiscuous” mode. Here the
documentation isn’t particularly
clear: it recommends some AC
adapters, and says that 6GHz support
is coming. But it’s not there yet, so
Chanalyzer 6 doesn’t yet do 6GHz
scanning and packet capture analysis.
I’m sure this will come as soon as the
drivers are sorted out.

108

Overall, I like the upgrade. It gives
a one-shot place to do packet analysis
and Wi-Fi analysis. Some areas of the
UI could benefit from some clarity,
but much of this is because of the
complete rewrite from V5 to V6.
However, V5 is like a well-worn
pair of shoes. I know how to get the
exact information I need out of it.
Getting to the same level of familiarity
with V6 is going to take some time, as
will getting hold of supported 6GHz
Wi-Fi USB units to complete the
picture. So it’s not all there yet, but
it’s certainly an interesting upgrade
of an industry-standard tool.

ABOVE Version 6 of
Chanalyzer has been
completely rewritten

“Ilikethe
upgrade.Itgives
aone-shotplace
todopacket
analysisand
Wi-Fianalysis”

WiFiman wizardry

And in yet more Wi-Fi news, I bought
the WiFiman Wizard hardware
add-on. This works with the
Ubiquity/UI WiFiman network
visualisation and scanning tool,
which is a free download for both
iOS and Android.
I like WiFiman
as a tool, but it
could be more
comprehensive in
several areas. For
example, the
Android version
doesn’t appear to
have the roommeasurement
tools (unlike the
iOS app), but it
does have a good
visualisation of the
various Wi-Fi
access points, their
signals strengths
and other basic
information for
both the 2.4 and
5GHz bands. If your
Android phone
supports the 6GHz
band, then it will
show that too. This is

BELOW WiFiman
Wizard is a snap-on
spectrum analyser
for the iPhone

very useful if you want to
see whether Wi-Fi around
you on the 2.4GHz band is
entered on the correct
channels 1, 6 and 11. And
to see just how congested
the lower channels are
on the 5GHz band, with
lesser equipment not
supporting the channel
100 and higher space.
However, on iOS there is
a problem. Apple doesn’t
allow third-party apps to
access this information on
the iPhone. So UI has come
up with a cunning solution:
WiFiman Wizard (pcpro.
link/350man) is a MagSafe snap-on
spectrum analyser that talks to the
iPhone over Bluetooth. It brings this
data on to the iOS platform, and
shows it within the app itself. You
don’t have to have the WiFiman
Wizard mounted on the back of the
phone; it can be hung from a ring on a
bag as you walk around. The battery
life is claimed to be four hours.
There is one caveat, though – it
doesn’t do the 6GHz band. So what
could have been a very useful add-on
to iPhones, which currently don’t
support the 6GHz band at all, means it
is somewhat limited compared to my
recent Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 phone.
At €108, it’s useful but falls into the
“could try harder” bracket.

Wi-Fi 7 is coming?

Talking of Wi-Fi analysis, there’s a
whole different level of equipment
that you need if you want to do

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

compliance testing. This is the work
done by the manufacturer to ensure it
meets both the specifications of how
Wi-Fi should work, and also that it’s
compliant with all the necessary RF
standards. A leading company in this
space is Rohde & Schwarz, which
makes heavyweight test platforms,
both for R&D and compliance testing.
It recently did a most interesting live
webinar covering the forthcoming
Wi-Fi 7 specifications, and I learnt a
lot from it. The changes from Wi-Fi
6/6E to 7 aren’t small, and much is
claimed for both cohabitation of
multiple devices and also for
maximum throughput on the 2.4GHz,
5GHz and 6GHz bands. Apparently
the first hardware, in the shape of
both clients and access points, is due
to arrive in the marketplace over the
next six to 12 months. I would expect
to see significant announcements at
Consumer Electronics Show in Las
Vegas in January 2024.
You might argue that this is all too
hot on the heels of Wi-Fi 6 and 6E, and
I wouldn’t disagree. However,
802.11ax has been around for a few

ABOVE Get the lowdown on Wi-Fi 7 at
pcpro.link/350webinar

years now and is quite mature, with
almost every decent-quality device
supporting it. While it’s tempting to
wait for Wi-Fi 7, which is going
through final testing now, you should
learn lessons from the past. If Wi-Fi
6/802.11ax was anything to go by,
then it might be wise to keep away
from Wi-Fi 7 for at least the next 18
months or so until things settle down.
And if that wasn’t enough, dare I
mention that work is about to start on
the new specification for Wi-Fi
version 7+1? It seems that things
never stop in this world.
For those who are curious, you
can register to watch the webinar at
pcpro.link/350webinar.
jon@jonhoneyball.com

Real world computing

LEEGRANT

“‘ButIwantmymoneyback!’
Sixwordsthatexcitethe
cocklesofanyretailer”
Whilst wrestling with a sticky problem, Lee politely explains why you’re
not getting a refund and demands that you clean up your act

“Y

our column writes itself,”
was the shrewd
observation of PC Pro’s
features editor, Barry Collins, when
I posted a picture of Oscar’s laptop.
His machine was rather curious and
a reminder that as I extol the virtues
of repair and upgradability from a
well-stocked workshop, the reality
of doing tricky tweaks at the kitchen
table, with only YouTube for
guidance, is often a breeding ground
for unpredictable results.
Oscar felt his laptop was lacking in
the Wi-Fi department. When you
listen to the PC Pro podcast, you’ll
hear our frequent mutterings about
PCs being factory-fitted with Wi-Fi 6
and 6E, but here in the shop, I have
suppliers offering machines with the
latest and greatest CPUs backed by
Wi-Fi 5. For many users, it’s an
unimportant detail of their
technological life, with most
consumers being blissfully unaware
what level of Wi-Fi their router and
devices are using. Oscar knew and
hoped to upgrade his Wi-Fi 5 chip to
Wi-Fi 6. Dutifully he read and
researched and ordered an Intel
AX200 wireless card, which was
compatible with his machine.
Wi-Fi upgrades are reasonably
straightforward on modern machines
with easily accessible innards. I won’t
mislead you by claiming that

Lee Grant and his wife
have run a repair shop
in West Yorkshire for
over 15 years
@userfriendlypc

“He confessed
to the crime,
and handed me
the laptop and a
pair of wireless
antennas”

BELOW Dipping the
Wi-Fi antennas in glue
isn’t recommended

manufacturers place them in a
machine with any consideration for
upgrades, but their handy placement
to ease mass production bottlenecks is
a convenience for which I’m grateful.
That said, a decade ago, Wi-Fi cards
often had their own little access
panels, which meant they could be
removed and refitted more easily and
without fear of destroying a machine
in the attempt.
Oscar had tried. He opened the
machine, removed the Wi-Fi 5 card
and screwed down the Wi-Fi 6
replacement. Let’s all take a moment
to acknowledge a job well done. The
next stage is to reconnect the Wi-Fi
antennas, which plug into the card’s
sockets. Today, these sockets are
MHF connectors (made by I-PEX) or
W.FL connectors (made by Hirose).
Both look and work the same, and
interchange seamlessly. I’ll refer to
them as MHF and point out that as
they’re around 2mm in diameter, the
ocular degeneration of my increasing
years means that I always need to use
magnification to get these mounted.
With the greatest of respect and
with no suggestions of ageism, Oscar’s
eyes are more mature than my own
and his kitchen didn’t have adequate
means of magnification to get the little
blighters in the right spot. What Oscar
did possess, however, was glue. He
applied a couple of drops into the MHF
sockets and dipped the
antennas into the bottle
to give them a decent
coating before carefully
placing them together for
curing. The answer to
your question is no, it
didn’t work. Oscar
struggled to reassemble
his laptop, too, but we’ll
get to that later.
When Oscar arrived,
he confessed to the crime,
and handed me the laptop
and a pair of wireless
antennas bought from
eBay with instructions as
to what I needed to do
109

with them. Oscar had watched a
YouTube repairer fix a pair of broken
Wi-Fi cables by snipping off the ends
and splicing in some replacements
with a few dabs of solder. “It won’t
take you long,” was his summation of
the situation.
His woefully misguided
proclamation came immediately after
a quick mention that he could no
longer get the back cover off the
laptop. At first, neither could I. The
brass screw insert into which the
cover retainer fitted had come away
from its plastic mounting. This is
something I’ll be coming back to in a
few months (get those subscriptions
ordered now, brass insert fans!) as
increasingly, these are failing in all
sorts of machines, so once a laptop is
opened, it can be incredibly difficult
to close again.
After some vigorous wiggling
and speaking in tongues, I managed
to remove the blighter and could
gaze in astonishment at Oscar’s
Gluenami. Glue, being a liquid when
applied, had seeped into the spaces
where the connectors fit together,
but because Oscar hadn’t successfully
mounted the MHF connectors, there
was no longer any space for them to
be attached.
As a desperate move, I wrapped the
antenna ends in cotton wool and
placed them in a bag filled with
isopropyl alcohol, but after 36 hours it
was clear they’d made the glue of
tougher stuff. The MHF sockets on the
Wi-Fi 6 card were also a write-off, but
Oscar kindly supplied a replacement
to accompany his Wi-Fi cables.
There were problems here, too, as
they were the wrong size. Currently,
MHF connectors are around 2mm
connecting to cables with a diameter
of between 0.8mm and 1.3mm.
However, the older type, used
commonly in laptops created six or
more years ago, used a larger 3mm
connector clamped to the end of a
bit of wire between 1.55mm and
1.85mm. If you’ve been rummaging
around inside a laptop recently
thinking that Wi-Fi cables seem
smaller, then you’re right.
Like old TV aerials, wireless
cables are coaxial, meaning that
the inner conductor wire is
surrounded by a plastic dielectric
insulator, then covered in a single
layer (sometimes more) of woven

110

the PC Pro logo. Never let
it be said that I’m not
committed to this brand.
Ironically, I needed to add
more glue to hold the
brass screw insert in
place, but at least Oscar’s
Wi-Fi 6 powered laptop
now closes.

For refunds, come
back tomorrow…

shielding cable and finally wrapped in
plastic. Four layers in less than 2mm.
Oscar’s YouTuber is correct to say
that you can cut the cables and solder
on replacements, but in a PC Pro
exclusive, we can reveal that the
results are as diabolical as using glue
when upgrading a wireless card.
Stripping 1.5mm coax to a usable
and solderable core required the use
of a stereo microscope and is not a
fun way to spend an afternoon.
For this machine, it was necessary.
Wireless antennas are reasonably
universal, but this particular laptop
manufacturer didn’t mount them in
the screen, like most, but in the
laptop’s body using proprietary
plastic blocks. Clearly this was a
short-lived experiment as I couldn’t
source replacements, so wireless
microsurgery was the only viable
internally mounted solution.
Dual wireless antennas are usually
distinguished by white or black
shielding to show whether they’re to
be connected to the main or auxiliary
sockets. On this laptop it didn’t
matter, so instead of using black, I
deliberately added red heat shield
for no other purpose than red,
white and black are the colours of

ABOVE The red,
white and black PC
Pro-branded cables

“Wireless
microsurgery
was the only
viableinternally
mounted
solution”

BELOW Fixing a Wi-Fi
cable requires either
younger eyes than
mine or magnification

Another way of looking at
Oscar’s experience is
through the lens of
expectation. He expected
the upgrade to be easy
and also expected that
the YouTuber’s guidance
would be accurate. Finally, his
expectation that this was a tenminute job was way off the mark, but
expectations and reality often differ.
“But I want my money back!”
Six words that excite the cockles of
any retailer. You’ll infer from the
customer’s critical insertion of the
word “But” into their demand, that
I’d already said no. Six weeks earlier,
the same customer came into the
shop to chat about laptops.
Now, what I’m about to say is
heavily biased and you should treat it
as such, but one of the benefits of
using a bricks and mortar emporium
like ours over online vendors is that
you get to speak to a real person who’s
used to the scenario. Technically
literate people like yourself and your
fellow PC Pro readers who “know
what they like” probably don’t fall
into this category, but there are
squillions of people out there who
appreciate advice, reassurance and an
experienced hand on the tiller.
My job is quite simple. I listen, ask
questions, make comparisons, and
then make suggestions. Hopefully,
the customer will point at a
machine before making some kind of
purchasing declaration. All of this
happened with the gentleman now
demanding a refund.
As his needs were modest, we’d
supplied him with an Acer Swift and
Office 365 as he’d requested a
preference for Microsoft’s Office
suite. He’d also asked us to set up the
machine, which involves unboxing it,
starting it up and throwing every
BIOS, driver and Windows update
available at it before installing the
software. This also affords me an
opportunity to check for faults
(factory-boxed machines don’t always
work), assess performance and make
sure the setup is as required so that the
customer is happy with the purchase.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Within the cobwebbed recesses of
the customer’s Microsoft account was
a licence for Office 2019, a purchase
he’d completely forgotten about. I
could have kept quiet and installed
Office 365 but that’s not how I choose
to do business. With the added levels
of happiness that an extra £60 in the
pocket brings, the customer took the
laptop home.
You may then wonder what went
so spectacularly wrong that the next
time I saw him he was demanding his
right to a refund; a right that, in his
situation, doesn’t exist. Consumer
rights differ between online and
physical stores. The legislation for
online sales gives buyers a cooling-off
period, so we can physically assess a
product as we’d do in a real store. This
cooling-off period doesn’t apply
automatically to bricks and mortar
sales, but general confusion has been
stoked by the large retailers that have
merged consumer rights into their
own returns policies. They’ve thrown
in an over-generous dollop of goodwill
because they’re big enough to take the
hit and will basically exchange,
refund and return almost anything.
As it’s been six weeks since the
gentleman bought the laptop, he’s
already outside the cooling-off period
that he thinks exists. The other
problem that he’s got in trying to
secure a refund is that the laptop
isn’t faulty. If it was, then I’d spring
into action and remedy the situation
under my Consumer Rights Act
obligations, but the gentleman is
genuinely pleased with the machine,
so I’d better (finally) tell you why he
wanted a refund.
Prior to buying the laptop, the
customer entered into a new
broadband and phone contract with
BT Broadband. The contract is for
two years, priced around £30 a
month for the blistering speeds of
between 4Mbits/sec and
10Mbits/sec. Just to be
clear, that’s mega, not
giga, and don’t start
thinking that this guy
lives in a field, either. He
lives centrally in a large
populous near to our
shop, but his broadband
speed is certainly not
delivering his love for
watching sport and
movies on his laptop.
Unfortunately, he
believed that because
his broadband was slow,
it granted him an
automatic refund for a
laptop purchased a

month and a half earlier. I can
understand if you think I took a hard
line, but if I’d taken the machine back,
I’d have to sell it as a refurb with a
reduced warranty.
This is something we’ve done
many times, but not on this occasion
as the machine looked like it had been
to war. In only six short weeks, he’d
scratched the screen, stained the
chassis and, by the look of it, emptied
bird seed into the keyboard. It looked
as appealing as the discounted
wedding cake in the patisserie
window that had a tooth sticking out
of it when the previous owner had
taken a sizable bite.
I tried to appease him by
mentioning that 4G/5G and Virgin
seemed to offer better speeds in his
area, but his interest in me had waned
as, I’m sure, are the prospects of him
ever returning.

A bleak Outlook

Recently we upgraded the desktop of
a freelancer who works in the media
and entertainment industry. Their list

Real world computing

ABOVE Your rights
are different if you’re
buying from a bricks
and mortar shop

“Theother
problemhe’s
gotintryingto
securearefund
isthatthelaptop
isn’tfaulty”

BELOW This month’s
Readers’ Drive was a
real health hazard

of contacts and appointments were
dutifully logged into Outlook 2007,
and naturally it was vital that this
data came across. I wasn’t aware of
this data store as the client only
mentioned Outlook to say that it
had stopped receiving email.
I shuttled the data to the new
machine, fixed the email account and
sent the machine out. The angry
phone call received a few days later
was rather vitriolic. The Outlook
contacts and calendar, vital to the
running of the business, were empty.
I asked if they were present on the old
machine, and was informed, in words
I won’t repeat here, that they were.
Apologising profusely, I promised
to investigate immediately. As her old
machine kept crashing, I’d imaged the
hard drive and made a virtual machine
from which I could work. Indeed,
Outlook was bereft of contacts and,
digging deeper, I could see that the
Outlook data file had been created
three days before the machine arrived
in our shop.
I eventually restored some data
from a discarded backup drive
discovered in an office drawer a few
days later. It was never revealed
who’d created the new Outlook data
file while deleting the old one, but I
strongly suspect it may have been the
same person who’d noticed that
Outlook had stopped receiving email.

Suspected printer virus

Finally, in Readers’ Drives this month
we have a desktop PC and Epson
printer. The owner’s expectation was
that I would fix it. My hope was that I
wouldn’t contract tuberculosis by
having to touch it. Customer got quite
affronted when I returned the devices
fixed and cleaned. What can you do?
lee@inspirationcomputers.com
111

ROISNITHUAMA

“Areweglimpsingafuturewhere
mega-richtechentrepreneurs
assertundueinfluenceinwars?”
As someone who considers risk management her day job, Rois lays into
our casual dependence on Elon Musk and other super-rich technocrats

I

miss the silly season. It used to be
the case that summer was the
time when the news took a
snooze. You could get through a
dozen books in a month because the
whole world hopped in a hammock.
Everyone took a few weeks off. But I
will remember this year for a bumper
crop of huge headlines.
If you blinked and you missed it
as the unrelenting news cycle
reported endlessly on a range of
hot topics, these are two stories
that will continue to play out.
Their significance should not
be underestimated.
Both stories centre around
technologies that are characterised
by novelty, potential for disruption
and transformative capabilities.
They therefore sit neatly in the
realm of emerging technologies.
They also raise serious questions
about how we as a society are going to
address emerging technologies in
critical areas such as communications,
space and finance, as well as the global
risks associated with failing to think
through the implications and
consequences, which are real and
painful for us and our allies.

Conversations with
God complex

Rois Ni Thuama PhD
is an expert in risk
mitigation and head of
cyber governance at
Red Sift.
@rois_cyberstuff

“There’s no
doubt that
Musk has
influenced the
direction of the
war in Ukraine”

First, my mate Elon* is back in the
news, and it’s not flattering.
At the end of last year, we learned
that as Ukrainian soldiers began to
push into Russian controlled
territories, they suffered a significant
disruption to the Starlink satellite
service. What we discovered this
summer was that around the time of
this catastrophic interruption in
essential communications, Musk was
shooting the breeze with Vladimir
Putin. In other words, during
Ukraine’s counter offensive, when

RIGHT According to
Musk, he had “a great
conversation” with
Vladimir Putin
112

they suffered a comms failure, Elon
was having (his words) a “great
conversation” with Vlad.
We know this because a former US
undersecretary of defence for policy,
Colin Kahl, told the New Yorker
about a conversation he had had with
Musk. Kahl also told the magazine
that Musk revealed that SpaceX
wasn’t prepared to stomach the costs
long term. Fair enough. No-one
could have foreseen how long and
protracted this war would be. Making
sure that SpaceX can keep the lights
on is a sound commercial decision
for SpaceX and it’s essential for our
ally’s war effort. Another issue Musk
raised was what he called “the
extremely difficult moral question”.
Huh? It doesn’t take Immanuel Kant
to tease this through. Let’s park that
and deal with this later.
Since this story appeared, there
have been no angry denials and,
more revealingly, no rage tweeting.
Read into that what you will.
This latest revelation of exchanged
phone calls puts a whole different spin
on an announcement made earlier in
the summer. In June, the Pentagon
issued a statement that read in part,
“satellite communications constitute
a vital layer in Ukraine’s overall

communications network and the
department contracts with Starlink
for services of this type”. SpaceX had
“won” the contract to provide that
vital layer to our ally, Ukraine. Due to
“operational security reasons” and
“the critical nature of these systems”
there can be no scrutiny of the terms
of the contract. Okay.
Starlink has a significant
competitive advantage in a very
important way. SpaceX is the
proud owner of the world’s first
and largest satellite constellation
using a low Earth orbit to deliver
high-speed, low-latency internet
to users all over the world.
So the best product has been
deployed and forms part of that vital
layer that Ukraine relies on to defend
itself. Good. SpaceX won the contract
with the US Department of Defense.
Also good. But how it won the
contract and what that means for the
rest of us? Not good. Not good at all.

ICYMI: SBF + VPN spells
trouble for former FTX CEO

The other tech entrepreneur who
can’t keep himself out of the press (or
jail) is Sam Bankman-Fried. That
scruffy charlatan was recalled to jail
for breaching the terms of his bail.
Among SBF’s latest antics, it was
alleged by prosecutors that he
reached out to a former colleague
(and potential witness) to see if they
could get on the same page. OMG.
It transpired that SBF was using a
VPN. Prosecutors allege he was using
the VPN to avoid being monitored,
which also put him in breach of his
bail conditions. LOL. SBF said it was
in no way to sidestep the authorities,
he just wanted to watch the football.
No wonder his mother was crying in
the courtroom.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

You’ll recall that SBF was on bail
awaiting trial for a range of serious
criminal offences relating to FTX,
the crypto exchange and trading
platform that he founded. FTX, once
valued at $32 billion, has now filed
for bankruptcy with an $8 billion
black hole. It is alleged that SBF used
billions of dollars in stolen funds for a
whole range of activities, including
funding speculative venture
investments; making charitable
contributions with other people’s
money; syphoning off investors’
money to enrich himself; and (my
personal favourite) trying to purchase
influence over cryptocurrency
regulation in Washington, DC.
Apart from keeping me away from
my summer reading list, SBF has
provided a valuable contribution by
way of supplying a useful example of
the dangers of emerging technologies
that claim to be a currency. To protect
the public, governments routinely
restrict certain behaviours and
compel compliance with high
standards in the financial sector.
So how, then, is it possible that a
product that is still emerging, that
calls itself a “currency”, is able to
side-step the absolute basic
requirements that would apply to a
more established currency?

Risky business

In the world of emerging technologies,
communications, space and finance
are matters that should interest us
all deeply. The risks of allowing a
small number of private individuals
to have an outsized influence isn’t
good for society.
There’s no doubt that Musk has
influenced the direction of the war in
Ukraine. SBF made such significant
efforts to influence financial regulators
that he’s facing criminal charges.
At a critical time in Europe, how do
we protect ourselves and our allies if
we are so heavily reliant on a wellfinanced private individual? Is it
desirable that we allow high levels of
interference from individuals whose
motivations are unclear? If not, what
short-term measures can we put in
place to rein in this behaviour?
In a world of grey, Ukraine’s right
to defend itself is in the realm of
black and white. It is absolute and
categorical. Anchored in the
principles of the UN Charter, Article
51 preserves a state’s inherent “right
to defend itself”, so Ukraine’s position
is unambiguous. There is no moral
conflict. There is no big philosophical
question. It’s this simple: Russia is
the aggressor. Ukraine deserves our

support. Musk’s moral
wobble is at best
unjustified, at worst
disingenuous.
How do we, as a
society, communicate
these important ideas
more effectively and
efficiently to counteract
this noise? Does it
matter that this same
individual owns and
controls one of the
biggest social media
platforms in the world?
Besides censorship,
manipulation, creating
an imbalance in global
influence, what other
risks are we prepared to run? How do
we as private individuals contribute
to creating the conditions for
mega-platforms through our choice
of social media channels? Do we need
to rethink our choices?

Real world computing

ABOVE A SpaceX
Falcon 9 rocket
carrying 56 Starlink
satellites launches
from Cape Canaveral

The final frontier

We’ve already seen that total reliance
on Starlink meant that an outage,
during a critical operational phase,
created such risky conditions that
Ukrainian forces were vulnerable. If
the outage was unavoidable, could
our allies encounter the same issue
again? If the outage was avoidable,
what does that mean for those who
control the company, particularly if it
led to a loss of life?
So then the next risk to consider
might be: what if a nation state actor
jettisoned debris into Earth’s lower
orbit? Or shot down an old satellite
creating more space junk, Gravitystyle, knocking out the comms
system. What’s our backup plan?
What we learned from the outage
in Ukraine and the scramble to have
Starlink rebooted is that we don’t
have a backup plan. Is this wise?
Over-reliance creates vulnerabilities
and becomes a single point of failure.
Can we put in place measures that

“Musk’s moral
wobble is at
bestunjustified,
at worst
disingenuous”

BELOW Former FTX
CEO Sam BankmanFried is back in jail
after breaching bail

are reliable, resilient and ensure the
continuity of a system?

US national security is
UK national security

Allow me one more question. Perhaps
more than one. In matters best left to
government experts, do we as a
society consider this level of
interference from a private citizen
tolerable? As Musk channels an oddly
constituted and diluted supervillain,
for all his wacky impulsive tweets and
mercurial ways, he isn’t an awful
human being. He’s not Putin.
But imagine for one moment that
Musk was just a little bit more chaotic,
a bit more unpredictable. Given the
important role that his company’s
technology plays in providing
Ukraine with some advantage,
society is at the mercy of his whims.
This is not a pleasant realisation but
it must be an awful reality.
Are we glimpsing a future where
mega-rich tech entrepreneurs gain
outsized control and assert undue
influence in wars? If the US
government determines that working
with SpaceX is a net benefit despite
the owner having great conversations
with Putin, how do smaller nations
navigate this complex question? How
do we as a society curtail the darker
inclinations of wealthy individuals
bent on toying with nations whose
fate hangs in the balance? We need to
think about this now. Because if we
find ourselves with our backs against
the wall like Ukraine, we might not
have the luxury later. We need to
sit down and catastrophise as if our
lives and livelihoods depend on it.
Because they do.
*One time Elon Musk liked one of my
tweets. One tweet, one time. Hence,
“my mate Elon”.
rois@redsift.io
113

Guest columnist
MARKPARVIN

“Thissorrytaleinvolves
TalkTalk,fullfibrebroadband
andthemother-in-law”
This month’s guest columnist, a roving IT repairer, is feeling grumpy about
rubbish laptops, email addresses on vans and ripped-up pavements

K

aren, a local yoga instructor,
contacted me with the familiar
tale of a slow computer. When I
arrived to take a look, she explained
she hadn’t turned it on, so I could see
just how long it took to start. Many
customers do this, and on most
occasions, it doesn’t help me one jot.
All I do is waste time watching paint
dry until it’s booted, and then – and
only then – can I dig in and see what
needs doing.
Having said that, I was glad Karen
had kept hers switched off: this laptop
was so sluggish that I could have
learnt to become a yoga master long
before it even hit the login screen.
Something was definitely amiss, so
while I sat and waited, I looked the
machine over for clues. The computer
was a generic Lenovo with an Intel
Core i3 sticker on the front and the
styling of a device that was getting on
in years, but not quite ready for the
retirement home. I knew the major
culprit for this slothfulness would
likely be a traditional hard drive in
need of an SSD replacement.
However, instinct told me there was
more to it than that.
When, at last, Windows lurched
into action, I could confirm it was
indeed a spinny hard drive but with
only 120GB of storage. That threw me:
the drive size in most laptops of this
age is usually in the terabytes, so I
thought Karen may have filled it.
On inspection, there was plenty of
spare storage, so I decided the next
step was to check the memory,
which gave me my second
surprise. Although the laptop
had 4GB of RAM installed, only
2.1GB was available. That helped
explain the additional slowness,
and a quick check also revealed it
was running the 32-bit version of
Windows. While this didn’t get to the

Mark has been solving
computer problems in
the York area for the
past 15 years
@mittasmark

“Oncefitted
withanewSSD,
64-bitWindows
10andextra
Email addresses on vans
RAM,thelaptop While I’m still in a grumpy mood, let
ranlikeadream” me tell you about something else that

RIGHT Karen’s laptop
was reasonably well
specced but had been
nobbled by Lenovo
114

bottom of the memory shortage, I
knew an update to 64-bit was on the
cards. So, after a chat, Karen agreed to
the upgrades I recommended, and I
took the machine away. Once fitted
with a new SSD, 64-bit Windows 10
and extra RAM, the laptop ran like a
dream – with the bonus of full access
to the 8GB of memory now installed.
When I returned it, Karen couldn’t
believe it was the same laptop.
Unsurprised, I learnt the machine
had run slowly from day one and got
worse over the years. What frustrates
me is that this was a reasonably
specced laptop in its day. Aside from
the small hard drive, if someone had
told me the specs over the phone, I
wouldn’t have hesitated to
recommend it for general use. So why
did Lenovo release it with such
bottlenecked capabilities? It makes
my head spin sometimes.

really gets my goat: email addresses
on vans. I’m talking about the
plumber or electrician I get stuck
behind daily while driving from job to
job. They often have a new van
showing off a witty name for the
business, such as “All Cisterns Go”
or “Ohm my God”. The van also
proudly displays the website
address that aligns nicely with the
business name. It all looks lovely
and professional until I spot the
email address. Instead of using
the domain name bought for the
website, I have to stare – blood
boiling – at something like
petesmith0307@gmail.com. Arrrgh!
Okay, I can’t blame the electrician
or the many other trades I see with
this monstrosity plastered on their
vans. Unless the business owner has
created the website, the responsibility
is solely on the web designer. It’s not
hard for them to host both the website
and the email – and charge for the
privilege. My apologies to any web
people reading this who do
recommend and offer email services
to their clients; it’s just that I see so
many of these vehicles with random
addresses it beggars belief.
I’ve often considered taking a
photo of the van and contacting the
owner to explain what they could do.
Sadly, I haven’t dared, as it likely
breaks too many Highway Code and
GDPR rules. There’s also a good
chance the van owner couldn’t give a
monkeys anyway.
So, instead, I’ll continue to sit in
my car, mumbling away.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Real world computing

UFO broadband

My next sorry tale involves TalkTalk,
full fibre broadband and the motherin-law. Okay, I could go all Les
Dawson on you now, but I think I’d
better just stick with some
background information instead.
York was one of the first cities to
get gigabit fibre on a large scale after
TalkTalk and Sky piloted a rollout
called Ultra Fibre Optic broadband,
or UFO for short. Apart from the
inconvenience of the footpaths
getting dug up, as many other cities
are currently enjoying, the system
worked well. But all good things
must end, and for reasons I wish I
knew, Ultra Fibre Optic broadband
is now obsolete. Thankfully, anybody
on UFO could move to a new system
and Mona, my mother-in-law, did
just that.
Mona lives on the other side of the
same village as me, and a few weeks
after getting the new service she
called in to tell me nothing was
working. I went round straight away
to find people at work on the footpath
outside her house. Putting two and
two together, I mentioned Mona’s
problem to one of the workers. He
explained, with a truthfulness you
don’t often see in these situations,
that they’d cut through the fibre
cable. He also explained that his
boss was trying to contact CityFibre –
the company responsible for the
cabling – to fix it.
I left them to it, expecting a quick
solution. However, the next day, the
workers disappeared with the cable
still cut, so I got hold of CityFibre
myself. The representative I spoke to
told me I had to contact Mona’s
broadband provider. In no mood for
an argument, I reached out to
TalkTalk, who initially floundered.
This was something well outside the
usual, and the general advice to turn
the router off and on wasn’t going to
solve anything.
In TalkTalk’s defence, I
eventually got a complaints
manager who worked hard to
solve the issue and keep me
informed. Within ten days,
Mona was back up and running
with a compensation of just
under a hundred pounds for
the inconvenience. It’s not ideal
for someone relying on her
landline, but you could say it
was an unusual situation. Or
was it? The contractors that cut
the cable were actually putting
in more of the same for Virgin.
It’s a given that demand for full
fibre will continue to grow; what

bothers me is that if other companies
can keep pulling up pavements
willy-nilly to lay their cable, then
we’ll see many more problems like
Mona’s. You have been warned!

ABOVE Companies
will continue to dig up
pavements for some
time to come yet

Stuck desktop

After all my whinging, it’s time for
something more cheerful. Judy, a
long-standing customer, emailed me
with a rather strange problem. She
explained she had changed her
screensaver and updated Windows.
Nothing out of the ordinary there, but
since then, she’d been unable to use
the desktop icons or remove a context
menu that seemed stuck at the far side
of the screen. At this point, I assumed
Judy had a frozen computer.
However, reading her email further
informed me that the Start icon,
taskbar and everything else were
working perfectly. She’d even
attempted a shutdown, restart and
system restore without success.
The email I received also contained
a photo of the strangely behaving
laptop. Sure enough, it showed me a
desktop with the usual icons and a
right-click context menu to the far

“With a foggy
memory of
Judy’s email
and the caffeine
hit, I saw the
answer”

BELOW Somehow,
Judy’s desktop had
been replaced by a
screenshot of the
desktop

right. As nothing looked out of place, I
decided the best option was to see the
machine, so I arranged a visit and
turned up a few days later.
Now, Judy must have a constantly
boiling kettle because every time I go,
there’s a cup of coffee in my hand
before I’ve had a chance to sit down.
Anyway, with the mug steaming at my
side, I started the laptop and clicked
on the icons on the desktop. I must
admit I tapped a few more times in
confusion before I noticed something:
the shortcuts didn’t highlight when I
moved the mouse pointer over them.
With this realisation, a foggy memory
of Judy’s email and the caffeine hit, I
saw the answer. I headed for the
personalisation section in settings
and changed the background picture
to a generic one offered by Microsoft.
Once I was back on the desktop, all the
icons and the stubborn context menu
had disappeared. A quick right-click
then allowed me to select the “Show
desktop icons” option, and with that,
the shortcuts reappeared in full
working order.
How Judy had taken a screenshot
of the desktop, set it as the
background, and then hid the real
icons to create this perfect storm is
anybody’s guess. She did confess to
fiddling around while trying to sort it
and was aware she’d made things
worse. I was grateful for her honesty,
as many customers are not so
forthcoming with what they may have
done. They’d rather blame the
machine and say it “just happened”.
Either way, I’ve no issue with people
attempting to solve their own IT
problems, but I’m often amazed at
how they end up where they do.
Okay, I realise I’m heading down
grumpy street again. I wonder if yoga
would help?
mark@mittas.co.uk
115

DAVEY WINDER

“Quantumcryptographyis
somethingyou’llhavetoget
usedtosoonerorlater”
This month, Davey has some nice things to say about Google.
Yes, you read that right…

B

e it a privacy issue or yet
another zero-day vulnerability
in the Chrome browser, more
often than not I’m pulling my
(imaginary) hair out while writing
about Google. But this month is
different. This month, I have
nothing but praise for the Big G. Let’s
start with quantum cryptography,
shall we? Yes, I know it’s something
of a Sheldon Cooper subject, but it
was delivered with much less
comedic intent.
No matter the complexity of
the underlying concepts or the
overarching hyperbole surrounding
vendor announcements, quantum
cryptography is something you’ll
have to get used to sooner or later.
Given the rate of technological
progress and the billions being spent
on it, I’d say sooner is a good guess.
I thought I’d check my work
archive and discovered the first time I
wrote an article about quantum
cryptography was back in 2010. A lot
has happened in the 13 years since.
Not least, the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST)
post-quantum cryptography (PCQ)
standardisation process (pcpro.
link/350NIST). The two primary
public-key cryptographic
algorithms selected to help protect
data as the quantum computing
era dawns were Cryptographic
Suite for Algebraic Lattices
(CRYSTALS) Kyber and Dilithium.
Kyber is a key encapsulation
mechanism, while Dilithium is a
digital signature algorithm.
At this point, I should say that, yes,
there is some humour to be found in
quantum cryptography, after all.
Star Wars fans may recognise kyber
crystals as the power behind the
lightsaber blade, while dilithium
crystals enabled The Enterprise to

attain warp speed in Star Trek. Google
is actually engaging both algorithms
in a bid to secure the post-quantum
future and doing so with immediate
effect when it comes to Kyber, at least.
So, let’s start there.

Davey is a journalist
and consultant
specialising in privacy
and security issues
@happygeek

“Star Wars fans
may recognise
kyber crystals
as the power
behind the
lightsaber”

RIGHT Enable Gmail’s
Enhanced Safe
Browsing if you’re
happy with the
privacy policy
116

In a galaxy, far, far away
(well, California)

Posting to the Google Chromium blog
(pcpro.link/350kyber), Chrome
security technical programme
manager Devon O’Brien confirmed
how Google is testing and deploying
the new algorithm. With Chrome 116,
Google has implemented support for
a hybrid of two cryptographic
algorithms, the aforementioned
Kyber-768 and an already oft-used
transport layer security (TLS) elliptic
curve algorithm in X25519. This is
where all the comedy gets flushed
down the pan, as Google has called
this hybrid X25519Kyber768.
Humourectomy aside, it’s an
important step as Chrome starts
supporting the output of the two
algorithms as the encrypting session
key for symmetric secrets in TLS.
“In order to identify ecosystem
incompatibilities with this change,”
O’Brien wrote, “we are rolling this
out to Chrome and Google servers,
over both TCP and QUIC and
monitoring for possible compatibility
issues.” Additionally, Chrome may
use this key agreement to connect to
specific third-party servers, such as
those operated by Cloudflare, when
support is added.

The idea of using a hybrid such as
this has plenty of upsides, not least
that it deals with the problem that any
quantum-resistant cryptography
must secure against “classical”
crypto-threats and quantum ones.
Across the past 18 months or so,
some algorithms contending for
standardisation have been
successfully attacked using relatively
cheap and commercially available
hardware. An IBM researcher, for
example, wrote a paper (pcpro.
link/350rainbow) detailing how the
Rainbow signature scheme was
successfully broken using a standard
laptop, with the average to extract the
secret key being just 53 hours of
computational time.
Back to O’Brien: “Hybrid
mechanisms such as X25519Kyber768
provide the flexibility to deploy and
test new quantum-resistant
algorithms while ensuring that
connections are still protected by an
existing secure algorithm.” What’s
also interesting is that although the
encryption algorithms protecting
TLS are thought to be plenty strong
enough to protect data in transit
now, and likely for years to come,
against quantum cryptanalysis
that’s not the weak point.
The weak point, dear reader, is
symmetric key creation. The use
of retrospective decryption, also
known as a “harvest now – decrypt
later” attack, could see currently
totally unreadable encrypted data
acquired and stored until such a time
as it becomes readable through
quantum cryptanalysis.

Warp speed, Mr Sulu

As for dilithium, Google cybersecurity
and AI research director Elie Bursztein
and software engineer Fabian
Kaczmarczyck have announced the
release (pcpro.link/350resilient) of
Google’s first “quantum resilient
FIDO2 security key” implementation.
This comes, they say, as part of
OpenSK, which is Google’s opensource security key firmware.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Dilithium is another hybrid
scheme, developed with the
department of information
technology and electrical engineering
at ETH University in Zurich, that uses
a “novel ECC/Dilithium hybrid
signature schema”. Again, this
provides protection against both
standard attacks thanks to the
Elliptic-Curve Cryptography
component and quantum attack
resilience courtesy of dilithium.
This is a pretty impressive feat
when you consider the challenges of
getting an implementation that was
of a suitable small size to run on a
security key. The solution came
through Rust memory optimisation,
meaning the implementation only
needed 20KB of memory. It’s now part
of OpenSK, and that supports both
FIDO2 and FIDO U2F standards.
Supports, not adopted as a standard,
of course. But it’s still early days yet.

More from the dark side

I thought about throwing in a
Highlander pun, seeing as this is
quickly turning into a sci-fi edition of
my ramblings, but actually there can
be a lot more than one. And, indeed,
there is. What am I talking about now?
Google One, the subscription service
that bundles up cloud storage with a
VPN, some Google Photos trickery
even if you aren’t using a Pixel phone,
and a kind of Google Play apps loyalty
scheme. OK, so there’s only one of
them, but there are lots of identity
monitoring services out there, so what
makes the dark web monitoring for
Google One subscribers different?
Just launched for UK users – it’s
been around in the US for a while now
– Google dark web monitoring is
pretty good, I have to admit. I mean,
I’m a big fan of Troy Hunt’s Have I
Been Pwned (haveibeenpwned.com)
service, which is free to use, but that’s
restricted to searching for your email
address and returning any signs of it,
along with passwords used, from
breaches. Google One dark web
monitoring digs deeper, assuming
you’re a paid-up Google One
subscriber and using a consumer
account. Once you’ve set up a
monitoring profile, you can let Google
dig into numerous dark web sources
and report back on any personal data
that it discovers, including:
Name
Address
Telephone
Email
Usernames
Passwords

You can have more
than one email
address in your
profile and more
than one telephone
number, for that
matter. Google will
send verification
codes to whatever
email or phone
before adding them
to ensure you are the
owner. Once that’s
done, you can scan
on demand to
generate a dark web
data report or sit
back and let Google
notify you when any
new data is uncovered.
On the privacy front, this being
Google, all monitoring profile data
is handled as per the overall Google
privacy policy and can be deleted
at any time, just as you can stop
monitoring at any time. The
information found within breach
results is redacted in the report, so
no complete credential pairs,
usernames and passwords are
displayed. Instead, these are redacted
to provide enough detail for you to
know what they are, but are pretty
useless to anyone else.
If you haven’t got and don’t want
a Google One account, then there’s
a cut-down dark web scanner
available for free. This only scans
for the email address associated
with your Google account.

Real world computing

ABOVE Google’s new
dark web monitoring
reports for One users

“Google’s dark
web monitoring
is pretty good, I
have to admit”

Gmail users get two
security boosts

There’s a reason why Google’s Gmail
service has 1.8 billion users, and
that’s the combination of interface
and ubiquity. It’s easy to use, and
it’s available on almost any device
you want. It’s also the target of
cyber-scumbags, from back

BELOW Critical
Security Alerts to be
sent if Gmail sensitive
actions ID check fails

bedroom chancers to organised
crime groups and, yes, even statesponsored threat actors.
I’ve written plenty about how you
should best secure your Gmail
account against threats over the
years, so I’m not going to cover that
ground again here. (Yell at me if you
want me to dedicate a column to it,
or maybe a feature, in the coming
months, though.) What I will talk
about are two recent announcements
from Google that will enhance the
security of Gmail users.
First up is enhanced safe browsing.
Yep, I know, it’s been available for
Chrome users since 2020. However,
it’s only now that Google has seen fit
to throw an avalanche of pop-up
notifications at Gmail users urging
them to activate the protection it
offers. I say an avalanche because
there were a few weeks when people
got multiple pop-ups even after they
had dismissed them.
That aside, the actual security
boost is a welcome one and something
that, for most Gmail users, I would
recommend. It’s a fully automated
feature, working in the background
to check for potential phishing or
malware threats by way of websites,
downloads or extensions.
It’s the kind of thing that should be
a default setting in Gmail; after all, the
upside of real-time scanning and
blocking of dangerous stuff is obvious
enough. However, this is Google, and
that means users are going to be very
aware of the security against privacy
implications of doing that.
So, what are the privacy
implications? When you’re signed
into your Google account using Gmail,
Google will “temporarily associate”
information collected during
enhanced safe browsing sessions to
help protect across Google apps. Then
there’s the original announcement
117

Continued from previous page

STEVECASSIDY

when enhanced safe browsing for
Chrome was first launched, which
confirms that the browser sends “a
small sample of pages and suspicious
downloads” to aid in the discovery of
new threats. Again, this is temporary,
and the information is anonymised
after what Google refers to as a “short
period”. Only you can decide if the
security benefit outweighs the
potential privacy negatives, and
it’s up to you to opt in. If you’ve not
seen the notification or dismissed it
and have now changed your mind,
you can activate the feature from
the safe browsing settings of your
Google account.
The second Gmail security boost is
a no-brainer, with no privacy
downside at all, as far as I can see. The
announcement was one of those very
brief ones that Google seems to
specialise in, posted to the Google
Workspace updates blog feed (pcpro.
link/350safeguard). Essentially, it’s
advising Gmail users to make sure
they have some form of two-factor
verification enabled to make a new
“sensitive actions” security function
proceed without hiccup.
The sensitive actions it’s referring
to are such things as adding a new
POP/IMAP forwarding address or
creating/editing a filter. And for the
admins out there, enabling IMAP
access status from settings. Do any
of these things, and you might,
depending on whether the Google
algorithm has determined “the
session attempting the action” to
be a risk, get asked for identity
verification. These are the standard
user verification style prompts,
requiring a 2FA code from Google
Prompts, an authenticator app, SMS,
phone call or hardware security key.
Fail to complete the check or get it
wrong, and a critical security alert
notification is sent to your trusted
devices to warn of the attempt. The
alert has the usual “yes it’s me” or
“what the heck, secure my account
now” options. Best of all, by the time
you’re reading this, it will have rolled
out to everyone and requires no user
action to enable it, as it’s a default
thing. Admins of Workspace accounts
can, however, temporarily turn off
the login challenge prompts.

“Wehavetogetthecomputing
businesstoownthisproblem
atadesignlevel”

davey@happygeek.com

118

Steve explains why people WFH should have a James Bond suitcase,
castigates the state of USB-C chargers and talks exploding batteries

T

hese days, minor disagreements
are often over-dramatised. Go
to the service formerly known
as Twitter, lay out your opinion and
wait for the backlash, which becomes
more important than the original
subject ever was. I’m one of those
anti-social networking people,
because I believe that, as Mr J Lydon of
Public Image Ltd once sang, “anger is
an energy”. By all means warm people
up to their subject, but don’t take the
conversation to places from which no
return is possible. You should always
aim to be able to shake hands after the
discussion is over.
If there was ever going to be a
subject that puts this rule to the test,
it’s the ticklish business of borrowing
a neighbour’s Wi-Fi when yours isn’t
co-operating. It ought not to be a
problem: many ISPs include a roaming
connection feature that uses VLAN
configurations to sequester a small
part of everybody’s bandwidth to
support passing users. Maybe that was
more assured when life was simpler
and only techies like you and me were
really fiddling about with Wi-Fi;
nowadays, some of the row of little
houses I call home have three
repeaters. That’s not much in a 3,000
square foot Victorian mansion, but
all our houses fit into a footprint of
23 feet by 11. I probably see over 50
SSIDs, on the rare occasions I stop
hiding behind the sofa and try to find
myself some unoccupied spectrum to
communicate over.
The people making allegations
about the risks of neighbour Wi-Fi are
VPN providers. Shouldn’t be a shock, I
guess. The old adage has it that when
all you have is a hammer, everything
looks like a nail, so I wouldn’t really
fall down in shock to hear that
security vendors think security is
needed. The similarity with bad
manners on social media takes on an
extra frisson here, with hints of dark
web aficionados next door and
innumerable varieties of intrusive
hackers who might be kept out by
your setup, but have been romping

Steve is a consultant
who specialises in
networks, cloud, HR
and upsetting the
corporate apple cart
@stardotpro

“Putting the
blame for poor
WFH security on
the neighbours
is more than a
little unfair”

BELOW Are your
neighbours using
their Wi-Fi for
nefarious means?

around next door’s Wi-Fi for years.
Accusing your generous bandwidthsharing neighbour of being a banned
porn collector or a cryptocurrency
guru is apparently not commonplace
out on the country’s front lawn, but
the thought is there, nonetheless.
I think quite a lot of this is wrongful
scaremongering, and I’m far more
peeved by the wrongfulness than I
am by the monger part. The fact is, a
lot of home workers are hitting
company web servers to undertake
the daily grind. Those servers are
outside the company network estate,
which means it’s quite hard to just
slip in a firewall, especially if they’re
cloud-hosted.
I’ve said before that pandemic
WFH was a bodger’s paradise (and I
speak as a bodger!), and if there’s one
thing that can be skipped when
measures are being taken in a hurry,
it’s attending to a security layer
when dealing with services protected
by no more than a username and a
password. I’m thinking of all those
times I sat in press rooms with
colleagues from around the world,
and watched them logging in to the
CMS of their publication’s web service
to upload their copy and pictures.
I know that WordPress has grabbed
this market in particular and I know
it implements HTTPS, but for every

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

one CMS I see that’s well protected I
count at least two that aren’t.
As such, putting the blame for poor
WFH security on the neighbours is
more than a little unfair. I’d love to see
everyone using heavy-metal point-topoint VPN designs for all their WFH
traffic, but even before the pandemic
my suggestion of a “James Bond
briefcase” for WFH workers, with a
hardware firewall, a VOIP handset,
laptop and headset always fell at the
budgetary phase. Despite the fact that
it swaps capital spend up front for
support and remediation spend, later.
The only bugbear I have with the
use of modern VPN software and
cloud connections is all to do with
performance. You’ll be doing well
to see more than 1Mbit/sec taking
up a regular domestic fibre or DSL
connection, and even though this is all
about contention ratios and not at all
about link technology, I have also yet
to see an unhappy customer. It’s very
rare for WFH to entail hoofing great
uploads of company data (note, cloud
VC solutions such as Zoom and Teams
don’t count as “company data”), and
most remote screen-sharing apps
these days are pretty efficient with
their bit rates.
Contention is just as much of a real
problem for WFH users as insecure
neighbours is an imaginary one.
Everyone used to moan when it got to
the kids’ bedtime and the adults
settled down to some guilty pleasure
or another (to clarify, I’m thinking of
Letterman or Time Team). In 2023,
the moan cuts in at 9am when the
local exchange finds every household
connected to it wants all the
bandwidth for themselves, just to
show their faces at their company
morning meeting. Perhaps a bit more
realism about where the bottlenecks
are and who is charged with fixing
them would do more good than
making up unproven neighbourly
sins and transgressions.

The unluckiest laptop

Having written extensively on the
near-miraculous escape made by my
review Yoga laptop from Microsoft’s
real-world version of “go directly to
jail, do not pass go”, you’re forgiven
for being surprised when I say I am
back on the old-school ThinkPad X1
Carbon for this month’s column.
What’s happened now? First, the
shamefaced bit. I was in a somewhat
vulnerable state earlier this year
following some dental intervention in
the lovely German city of Leipzig, and
as post-traumatic compensation, I
bought a nice, new, classy-looking

backpack. It was from a
large and reputable
continental brand, it had
a padded compartment
for laptops and it was
dazzlingly reflective in the
beam of a car’s headlight.
Still under the influence of
the dentist’s local numbing
(which had evidently
produced a global dumbing,
in retrospect), I flashed my
card and just about
managed to complete the
transfer of rucksack
contents ritual back in the
hotel, before the painkillers
wore off and I needed a nap.
Normally, such little presents-tooneself are harmless indulgences.
That’s not quite how I felt a couple of
weeks later, on discovering that the
Yoga’s USB-C charging cable had
snapped off while the device and
charger were riding inside the new
rucksack. I’ve never managed to do
this before, in three and a bit decades
of humping computers around the
world, from the UK’s first IBM
convertible, through Stella
McCartney’s old PowerBook G4 (still
working!), over 20 diverse ThinkPads,
17in tablets with 4K screens, DEC
Alpha CPU-equipped prototypes...
you name it, I’ve carried it.
On this occasion, I’m not going to
blame the laptop. Much. My ire is
reserved principally for the backpack.
What’s the point of a design that is so
mean with protective padding that a
major physical impact can reach right
inside and exert snapping forces on an
industry-standard connector?
Though I think we’re stretching a
point by calling USB-C a standard.
Certainly where the Yoga is
concerned, my efforts to find an
alternative charging connection were
severely frustrated. You can’t plug in
any old charger – not even a USB-C
charger for another Lenovo product
would light up the charge indicator.
One of the stated advantages of USB-C

Real world computing

ABOVE There’s little
point in a backpack
that doesn’t protect
what’s inside

“Is it really so
hard to have
a few status
LEDs on the
charger?”

BELOW USB-C has
failed to live up to
Steve’s expectations

is that it’s capable of requesting and
delivering very high amperage
charging, but I have yet to find any
device that actually instruments this
in a way that you, the user, can
sensibly read off and act accordingly.
Yes, I know mobile phones will tell
you about fast/slow charging and the
like, but this has now turned into an
uncontrollable mess of “Do not
disturb” notifications that now
include “do not charge either” and
various opaque statements about
charging being paused, just when you,
the humble owner, plugged in a
charger because you wanted your
device to actually, you know, charge.
This has somewhat annoyed me. I
had great hopes for USB-C because
eBay and Amazon are chock-full of
USB docking stations: not only can the
standard ship amps down the lead
with aplomb, it can also shovel data at
rates perfectly good enough to run a
decent-sized screen, gigabit Ethernet,
keyboard and mouse, all at once. The
experience with this laptop and a
couple of other, rather older examples
from HP has made me disenchanted
with the whole platform.
Is it really so hard to have a few
status LEDs on the charger? Or a bit of
narrative being whispered up the
cable and shown on the laptop screen?
Especially when the outcome can be
that you come home to a charred and
blackened shell that a few hours
earlier was your house with a modern
battery being boosted by a modern –
assumed trustworthy – charger.
And the Yoga managed to fit these
trends, all at once and in the worst
way. I found a general-purpose
charger, copiously annotated as
providing anything up to 20A over its
sole USB-C port but strangely unable
to tell you exactly how much was
being asked for or provided. It made
the charge light on the laptop come
right up, for which I was duly grateful.
The next morning, my partner wanted
119

@PCPRO

to charge her smartphone and popped
the cable out, only to discover that we
had an ex-charger. No hum, no
warmth, no vibe, no light, no way of
being anything other than a stonecold dead lump of plastic.
I expect this is for our safety, but I
must say I can’t figure out how a
charging laptop can pull enough
power down the line to kill the
charger. It’s also impossible to be
sure that the charger wasn’t at
death’s door already: after all, this
is only 2023 and it will clearly be
some time in the 2060s before the
business figures out how to retrieve
health and consumption information
down an USB lead.
So we’re back to a dead laptop. I
really don’t want to buy a series of
high-power chargers on the
assumption that one of them might
withstand whatever the hell this
problem is, or at least be able to tell
me it’s in distress and in danger of
imminent meltdown. There are little
drop-in devices on Amazon and eBay
(see pcpro.link/350ebay), and while
Jon Honeyball has made good use of
such things in the past, I’m concerned
that the market is lagging badly
behind demand here – yes, some of
these little blobs have alarms, but
when it comes to house fires, I want a
more proactive solution than some
weedy little beeper going off.
Time to revive some connections in
the R&D sector of the UK fire alarm
and prevention business, I think.
Well, after I’ve ditched my overly
trendy rucksack and found myself a
more robustly designed laptop, that is.

UPS follow-up

I am indebted to David Peters, who
managed to confirm what I said about
automating the shutdown of multiple
devices when using a UPS with a USB
port monitoring connection. Of
course, his 50-odd lines of code
spread around four languages and
scheduling platforms look “easy” if
you are a seasoned and inquisitive
coder, as David clearly is. But even for
that level of specialist, the amount of
time devoted to finding out that
“Event 1047” is just what you need
to look for is wholly disproportionate
to the benefit realised – at least,
while power delivery remains
reasonably consistent, and while
batteries remain unregulated.

120

There’s effectively no
barrier to buying any size
or shape of battery the job
demands, through various
online warehouse sellers.
I must have half a dozen
third-party laptop batteries
here, in regular use and
performing every bit as well
as the ones they replaced.
However, almost all those
good batteries are from
the mid-2010s, with my
scribble on the battery
casing with a paint marker
to remind me of the incept
date. There is, sadly, no
reason to expect the quality
commonly achieved in the mid-2010s
to be kept up in the more volatile
world of the 2020s.
The most arresting warning sign
came from a genuinely unexpected
source: inside my family. I’m
honour-bound not to identify them,
but I can say they are disabled and a
mobility scooter user. The news that
brought me up short was that it is no
longer the case that mobility users
can just plug in and charge up in any
old spot. Apparently, this is because
the fire brigade don’t distinguish
between lead-acid battery vehicles
and lithium-ion scooters and
suchlike. Most mobility scooters use a
lead battery; most modern whizzo
scooters use li-ion. Why does the fire
brigade have a say in this matter?
Because they’re getting one house
fire a week – and rising – caused by
exploding, sub-par scooter batteries.
This matters because of the
evident blunt instrument approach
being taken, and because the forensic
reason why scooter batteries go bang
seems to come down to shoddy
manufacturing, poor materials and
poor circuit design.
The battery business can’t wait to
deliver on massively popular uses
like scooters, and this is making
things noticeably more dangerous,
especially in first world economies
with a tendency to live
on the bleeding edge.
Perhaps the most
obvious outcome to
this is regulation,
followed by rising
prices and a
technological response:
I can see batteries
being mandated as
“outside only” objects
just for starters, which
will make the formerly
casual business of
UPS provision in

ABOVE Many of the
still-functioning
laptop batteries I use
date back a few years

“There’s one
house fire a
week caused
by exploding
scooter
batteries”

BELOW Scooters are
now considered a fire
hazard thanks to some
exploding batteries

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small to medium-sized businesses
much more involved.
Essentially, a battery deemed
unsafe while charging will be handled
like the evaporator stage of an HVAC
installation, probably situated in a
little external “doghouse” that can
withstand a minor explosion and fire
without taking the rest of the
premises with it.
An entirely laudable aim, I’m sure
you would agree, but this isn’t a good
example of well-drafted regulations,
nor is it coming from any of the
business sectors whose products
are involved. It’s a case of the blunt
instrument of the law, and we have to
get the computing business to own
this problem at a design level.
I’d love to see some experiments
from the Raspberry Pi or Arduino
universes, seeing how long you can
actually run a reasonably wellperforming NAS or DNS host for a
small business LAN on batteries small
enough to put in your pocket. Just
thinking over what I can buy as a
phone booster-charger, it seems to me
pretty straightforward to get to the
kind of battery life now expected of a
decent tablet or laptop without major
R&D. It’s simply a matter of the
industry realising which way the
arrow of progress is currently
pointing, and what that’s likely to
mean for both power delivery from
the grid, and power consumption
inside your home and
business. Don’t be grabbing
those Tesla shares just yet.
If you want to see all this in
action, Bing Video hosts a
video that shows how a scooter
set fire to a house. Watch it at
pcpro.link/350fire. With
outcomes like this, I have to
admit that the annoyance of
being lumped in with less
well-designed battery users
fades a bit.
cassidy@well.com

Inspirational stories from computing’s long-distant past

The 38-year review:
Amstrad CPC 6128
Fired or hired? David Crookes explains that Lord
Sugar’s Amstrad CPC 6128 is still a sweet buy
SCORE
PRICE Around £120 (if you can find one)

N

ight after night for a few
weeks in the late 1980s, I
would gaze longingly at a
photograph in a copy of
Smash Hits magazine. To see this
object of my desire, I needed to flick
past numerous images of Debbie
Gibson, Patsy Kensit, Belinda Carlisle
and Kylie, but there was so much to
take in and admire.
For starters, there was a sleeklooking computer with a built-in 3in
disk drive, a sturdy-looking joystick
and a collection of 17 games with
familiar names such as Monopoly and
Trivial Pursuit. There was a colour TV
monitor and a clock/radio, all sitting

122

upon a smart desk. Lying in a bed in a
room bereft of entertainment, it felt
like the stuff of dreams.
At the time, I knew very little about
computers. I’d played a couple of
games of Chuckie Egg on a BBC Micro
at school and my attempts at typing
had been typically laborious. It meant
I didn’t know that 3in disks were an
expensive anomaly nor that bundled
joysticks tended not to last more than
a couple of sessions of Daley
Thompson’s Supertest.
I didn’t even know what was under
the hood of this machine – the advert
merely stated that it had the memory
of a whole star system! All I remember
is being absolutely thrilled that my
parents went on to generously buy me
this amazing-looking computer for
Christmas. And I’ve been in love with
the Amstrad CPC 6128 ever since.

ABOVE From the
old to the new,
there are plenty of
games to enjoy

Pale not stale

Today, that exact same computer still
sits on my desk and it has been a
constant presence in my life. It has
seen me through school, college,
university and even work. I regularly
power it up, buy games and hardware,
and visit forums such as CPCwiki.eu
for the latest news and chatter.
In many ways, that’s
“It was clear a lot of
going to make this review a
thought had gone into its tad biased at times but, as
you’ll see, Amstrad’s early
creation, allowing for a
computer was packed with
lifespan years beyond
potential. Although the
Amstrad’s expectations” designers made some
frustrating decisions
(opting for a 3in drive over a 3.5in
version being the primary one), it was
clear a lot of thought had gone into its
creation, allowing for a lifespan years
beyond Amstrad’s expectations.
When the CPC 6128 was launched
in 1985, the computer was riding on
the back of the success of the CPC 464,
Amstrad’s debut machine, which had
64K of memory, a Zilog Z80A CPU and
a compact built-in tape deck. Amstrad
had also launched a disk-based
LEFT The CPC
computer called the 664 that used the
instantly detects
same processor and memory, but that
when ROMs are
had only been on sale for six months.
plugged in

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The 6128 was, in essence, a
re-cased, better-looking 664
with 128K of memory, created in
response to a growing demand from
retailers for a computer with a greater
capacity than machines such as the
Commodore 64. It debuted in America
(and flopped) but grabbed attention in
Europe, especially in the UK, France,
Spain and Germany. Crucially, it also
turned heads among serious computer
users, attracted by the comfortable,
full-sized keyboard and ability to run
the CP/M+ operating system. Amstrad
wanted its computer to appeal to all.
Look at the CPC 6128 today and you
can still see the attraction. This is a
machine that wouldn’t look entirely
out of a place in a contemporary
office. The keyboard is particularly
alluring. Unlike the 464, which
separated the cursor keys and
numeric pad from the main Qwerty
layout, the 6128 bunched the keys far
more closely. Amstrad also dropped
the scattering of red and green keys
that made the 464 look almost
toy-like. Instead, the 6128’s pure
grey keys gave the computer a more
professional appearance.
But what’s it like to use? Touch
those satisfyingly springy concave
keys and you’ll feel the distinct
upwards curve towards the left
and right edges, allowing even the
most sausage-like of fingers to slip
effortlessly into the dip and back
out again.
As a modern user, you’ll have no
trouble finding your way around.
There are no C64-esque symbols
printed on the side of the keys here,
nor lots of additional functions as on
the ZX Spectrum. Yet the sensation of
hitting the edges of those keys as you
glide your fingertips across them
could annoy some users and, since the
keyboard is also elevated by 3cm to
accommodate the computer that sits
beneath, typing on the 6128 will take
some getting used to.
That said, it is perfectly possible to
tap away for hours without tiring
– something I’ve done many times
over. One of the biggest concerns is
whether or not your eyes can take
the strain.
When I first began using my CPC
6128, I had no problems staring at the
bundled Amstrad CTM644 colour
monitor (there was a GT65 green

screen alternative). But, as time has
gone on, it has felt less comfortable
and less enjoyable – more so when
switching focus from a crisp Apple
Retina display.
Luckily, you aren’t restricted to
using the official CRT monitor, even
though it packs the power supply
needed to run the CPC 6128. Some have
tried using a different CRT display by
picking up an Amstrad MP2 modulator,
but that’s unlikely to solve the problem.
I suggest you visit a reputable retailer
such as coolnovelties.co.uk and pick
up a TV connection kit for less than
£30. This lets you connect the
computer to a television with a Scart
socket, and you’ll also get a power
supply to provide juice to the main
unit and disk drive.
For anyone buying a CPC 6128
online without a monitor this is a
great solution, but there’s also a way
to connect the machine via HDMI so
long as you’re willing to invest in a
HDMI converter box (visit pcpro.
link/350noob for details). In
either case, the upshot will
be a crisper, more readable
display and more room on
your desk as well. So what
fun actually awaits?

The basic stuff

When you turn on the CPC
6128, you’re greeted with a
command line interface and,
in general, you have two
options: load software or start
to code. If you fancy doing the
latter you can get straight
down to work, but it would
help enormously if you had

Retro AmstradCPC6128

the brilliant official instruction
manual to hand (a tome you can
view by going to pcpro.link/
350manual if you don’t have a
printed copy).
Unlike many modern manuals,
it’s very comprehensive. As well as
giving you the lowdown on how to
use the CPC 6128, it attempts to
teach you the fundamentals of
BASIC programming while delving
deep into the workings of the
machine with great clarity. As you
read, you can feel the passion of the
writers shining through – writers
such as Roland Perry, a computer
engineer who had a leading hand in
designing the CPC.
ABOVE The advert
Perry told me that the manual was
that captured my
always considered to be an important
imagination!
part of the CPC 6128 package. “I was
interested in the CPC as an affordable
replacement for the BBC Micro and I
wanted youngsters to learn about
computers too,” he said. “Much of that
could be done by writing better BASIC
and having an instruction
“Find a copy of the manual book which explains things
properly. Neither of those
that isn’t well thumbed
costs a penny extra to
and you’ll have someone
manufacture.”
who didn’t really get to
The CPC’s BASIC
grips with the CPC”
language was among the
very best of the era.
Developed by Locomotive Software
and influenced by BBC BASIC, it had a
host of graphic and sound commands
and a simple memory management
interface. It’s possible to create
complex programs and perform
BELOW Protext is
tasks that, on other machines,
the finest word
would require assembly language.
It’s still worth learning.
processing tool on
the CPC 6128
To assist, the manual
gives an introduction to the
language’s keywords, easing
you in gently with the usual
stuff such as print “hello”. It
then shares lots of examples,
shows how programs can be
edited, explains how
colours and graphics work
and demonstrates how you
can create sound. There’s
also a list of keywords with
explanations for each one,
making the manual an
excellent teaching and
reference guide. Find a
copy that isn’t well
thumbed and you’ll find
123

Amazon
an owner who didn’t really get to
grips with their CPC.

Game on

Of course, you won’t just tap away
producing your own programs. As
with any computer you’ll acquire,
whether contemporaneously or
years after its release, you’ll
inevitably want to see the fruits of
other people’s labour. In that sense,
you’re very much in luck.
The 6128 was, and is, very well
supported. To start with, there’s a
whole range of programs available to
run via CP/M+ (a copy of
which is essential if only
because it lets you format and
copy disks). A lot of software
has also been created
specifically for the computer.
Some of those titles –
games, educational software
and utilities – were published
under Amstrad’s own label,
Amsoft, but third-party
publishers also flocked to the
machine, leaving reviewers
working for the platform’s
leading magazines, Amstrad
Action and Amstrad Computer
User, very busy indeed.
The upshot is that you’re
unlikely to be bored when fiddling
around with the computer today.
Even if you only intend to play games,
then you’ll certainly be well served.
The CPC’s vast catalogue of games
is arguably the main reason why
people are still using a 6128, and they
can help to showcase just what the
computer can achieve.
Although many titles were straight
ports of games created for the ZX
Spectrum – titles that generally didn’t
go down well among CPC owners –
those that were created from scratch
had the potential to stand out. It’s
worth checking out the fantastic
arcade conversion of Chase HQ
complete with digitised speech and
the stunning exclusive that was the
Pang clone Zap’t’Balls.
French developers had a knack for
getting the best out of the computer
with the likes of B.A.T. and Crafton &
Xunk (known as Get Dexter in the UK).
And many more jaw-dropping titles,
including Gryzor, Nigel Mansell’s
World Championship, Prince of
Persia and Head Over Heels, made
good use of the CPC’s capabilities.
Some games were 6128 exclusives.
Many titles for the CPC were
released on disk but some – most
notably those sold at budget prices
from the likes of Mastertronic and
Codemasters – were only published
on tape, generally earmarked for
play on the 464. Don’t worry, though.
By hooking a cassette deck to the 6128
via the tape port on the side of the
124

using Mode 2, which allowed for
640 x 200 pixels but only displayed
two colours. This was generally
reserved for developers of serious
software, although some text
adventures made great use of it.

Voyage of disk-overy

computer, all of those cassettes can
be enjoyed, even if it can entail
fiddling around with the volume
buttons to prevent the game from
crashing. You may also find that
some games take advantage of the
6128’s extra memory. Codemasters’
budget title Spellbound Dizzy, for
example, had more animations,
while Striker in the Crypts of Trogen
loads additional data in the extra 64K
of memory before the game starts.
One thing’s for sure, CPC games
tended to look good. Done right,
developers had a lot of power at their
fingertips when compared to other
8-bit computers. They could use a
generous palette of 27 colours, for
instance, and if they were making
games in the CPC’s Mode 0, 16 of those
colours could be used on the screen at
once. The downside was that the
160 x 200 pixel resolution meant the
graphics would
look chunky,
with each pixel
having a 2:1
aspect ratio, but
they certainly
burst with colour.
To make games with
more detailed graphics, a
good number of game
developers compromised and
opted for Mode 1, making a
trade between fewer colours
(four on screen at once) and a
higher resolution (320 x 200
pixels). The vast majority
stopped short, however, of

TOP To the right of
the keyboard is a
handy guide to key
numbers and
colour codes
ABOVE The CPC
had a nicely laid
out, professionallooking keyboard

BELOW The CPC
Serial Port allows
software to be
loaded from a PC

As if to show the extent of the CPC’s
capabilities, modern-day developers
have been pushing at the boundaries
of the 6128’s underlying technology.
Spanish demosceners going by the
name of Batman Group created a
spectacular port of the Amiga classic
Pinball Dreams in 2019 that boasted
smooth scrolling visuals, accurate
ball physics and fast action across
four tables. They’re currently
working on a driving game called
Vespertino, which wouldn’t look out
of place on a 16-bit machine.
Developers have also been
bridging gaps. The 1989 platform
game Toki never made it to the
Amstrad CPC but last year another
group, GGP, created a beautiful 6128
version complete with detailed
backgrounds and wonderful
animation. Their next project is
Mighty Street Fighter, which may
finally put to bed the disappointment
felt when Street Fighter II failed to
materialise on the machine. It
promises different fighting styles and
eight playable characters.
Games such as these help to
keep the CPC 6128 exciting
and relevant, extending the
life of the computer well
beyond its commercial
heyday, which ended
around 1993. From
smooth-running run-andjump The Abduction of
Oscar Z and the platform
shooter The Adventures of
Timothy Gunn to the
point-and-click adventure
Orion Prime and a remake
of the scrolling space
shooter R-Type utilising
128K of RAM, the CPC
continues to satisfy
gamers. It’s helped to a

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large degree by an annual developers’
competition called #CPCRetroDev,
which attracts dozens of entries.
Playing games and running other
software on the 6128 is easy, despite
– like on many 8-bit systems – it not
being entirely intuitive. When
running from a disk, you need to
insert the floppy, type CAT, press
Return and look at the list of files. If
you’re lucky there will be just one file,
but if there are lots, you’re typically
looking for one that ends .BAS. You
then need to type RUN"[filename].
Tapes run a little differently. First
you need to tell the computer that you
want to use a cassette by typing |TAPE
then you type RUN", press Return,
press play on the tape deck and hit any
key. Cassettes take an absolute age to
load so you may want a huge flask of
coffee by your desk at this point. Read
errors are common, too, leading to lots
of teeth gnashing and tearing of hair,
but that was always a problem with
such an unreliable medium.
That’s not to say the disk drives
never come unstuck. When CPC 6128s
age, they start claiming you don’t
have a disk in the drive, despite your
eyes telling you otherwise. This
usually means the drive belt needs
replacing, but it’s an easy enough job
(I’ve done it twice without issue) and
the belts can be picked up cheaply
online (try pcpro.link/350belt).
Trickier to resolve are disks that
just won’t work. I’ve found more and
more files are becoming corrupted
and that error-free 3in disks are rather
rare – even the genuine Amsoft
CF-2DD ones. When commercial
software gives up the ghost, I’ve
managed to find replacements on
eBay. But when a disk full of personal
documents corrupts, it can be a
disaster if you haven’t backed it up.
One way of future-proofing the
6128 is to purchase a Gotek drive
costing around £50. This floppy
simulator replaces the 6128’s disk
drive and allows you to insert and
use a memory stick packed with DSK
files (images of physical CPC disks).
You just need to find and download
these files online using a PC or Mac
before saving them to the stick and
using it on the CPC. The required
DSK image is found by pressing
buttons on the Gotek panel, and a
display tells you exactly which disk
you’re working with.

Waxing lyrical

Gotek drives offer a more elegant
solution to the method often used in
the past: the addition of a 3.5in disk
drive. Back then, anyone serious
about computing with their Amstrad
would have bought a 3.5in drive,
mainly because the disks were
cheaper and could be formatted to the

CPC standard via CP/M+,
ensuring they’d work in the
exact same way as the 3in
variety with a maximum
storage of 360K.
It was also possible
to transfer files between
MS-DOS and the CPC’s disk
operating system AMSDOS
using a program called
DOS-Copy; something I did
regularly when I was at university. In
fact, with the right selection of
utilities, the CPC can be turned into a
powerful, useful workhorse.
At the very least, grab a copy of
the computer’s finest word
processor, Protext, along with
spellchecker Prospell. You can
also run spreadsheet and database
programs, file managers and DTP
apps, the best being Stop Press
and PowerPage, which was once a
big hit with fanzine editors.
You can even create some stunning
pixel art using The Advanced OCP Art
Studio or GPaint, or compose a
musical chiptune masterpiece
courtesy of Soundtrakker or STarKos.
While the CPC’s sound capabilities
were less impressive than the
Commodore 64 and its famous SID
sound chip, the 6128 still provides
three channels to play around with.
You could also seek out the The Music
Machine by RAM Electronics, which is
a digital sound sampling and playback
device adding MIDI capabilities.

Room for ROMs

The Music Machine was one of many
peripherals created for the CPC. As
well as a second disk drive, you can
connect a printer with Centronics or
parallel ports, which means getting
hold of an old dot matrix and then
searching for ribbons. Amstrad only
added a 7-bit printer port so just half
of the CPC’s character set can be
outputted (unless you fit an 8-bit
printer port). You also need to tape
over pin 14 to avoid large gaps being
printed between every line of text!

Retro AmstradCPC6128
You can also use
the expansion port,
opening a world of
possibilities. A great
addition is a
Multiface II, which
lets you view and
edit the contents of
the CPC’s memory,
add cheat codes, save
screenshots and save
tape games to disk.
They’re not cheap these days
and can be hard to pin down,
but they’re still worth the
investment if you want greater
control of your CPC.
It’s also worth getting hold
of a ROM board. These let you
ABOVE The
insert ROM chips containing
Multiface II can
programs such as Protext, the
copy software
assembler language program Maxam
from tape to disk
and even an alternative GUI-based
operating system (SymbOS and
FutureOS being the main picks). By
entering a command, apps load in a
split second. It makes tasks such as
word processing so much more
convenient.
Thanks to a small cottage industry
that still surrounds the CPC, you can
also pick up other goodies
“Thanks to a small cottage such as extra RAM. There
was a time when dk’tronics’
industry that still
256KB memory expansion
surrounds the CPC, you
was the limit, but you can
can pick up other goodies go much further than that
today, with 512KB
such as extra RAM”
expansions proving a good
buy for £30 (pcpro.link/350RAM) and
others going up to 4MB.
It’s also worth checking out the
Universal CPC Serial Interface, which
lets you run games and programs on a
CPC directly from a PC or the M4
board, created in 2016. This lets you
connect a CPC to Wi-Fi to download
files, using an SD card as a mass
storage device. The latter has become
BELOW You can still an essential part of my setup, making
buy ROM boards
the workflow of the 6128 feel more
such as the Rombo
seamless in the office.
Redux Deluxe
It’s all a far cry from the capabilities
of the 6128 when it launched, and it
shows a steely determination among
CPC enthusiasts to keep their
favourite machine relevant and usable
today. And that’s the attraction above
all else. Yes, modern machines do
everything the CPC can, and so much
more, but seeing how far the
technology can be pushed just never
grows old. And that makes the 6128 a
machine to hire not fire, as Lord Sugar
would say.
David Crookes has edited a
one-off special edition of
Amstrad Addict dedicated to
the CPC. Available now at
pcpro.link/350addict for £8.

125

Futures
We explore the trends and technologies that are set to shape the future

Novelistsdeservetobe
paidfortrainingAI
Tech giants used pirated books to train their large-language
models, but that doesn’t mean you can ask ChatGPT for your
own personalised Margaret Atwood story, says Nicole Kobie

126

S

tep aside Margaret Atwood
and Stephen King, here’s a
dystopian horror story for
you: imagine spending
years of your life toiling over a
keyboard, carefully crafting
sentences, paragraphs and chapters
of a book that weaves together a plot,
brings characters to life and enthralls
readers for hundreds of pages. Now,
watch as an AI eats it and spits your
garbled works back at you.
Ever since OpenAI’s ChatGPT
brought large language models (LLMs)
to the wider world’s attention, it’s
been suspected that writers’ work has
been used to train them. LLMs are
deep-learning systems with hundreds
of millions of parameters that are
taught to assemble sentences by
hoovering up massive text datasets.
Datasets such as most of the Englishlanguage internet, including Wikipedia.
Writers are speaking up. In June
2023, the American Authors Guild
published a letter signed by thousands
of members: “Millions of copyrighted
books, articles, essays and poetry
provide the ‘food’ for AI systems,
endless meals for which there has
been no bill. You’re spending billions
of dollars to develop AI technology. It
is only fair that you compensate us for
using our writings, without which AI
would be banal and extremely
limited.” The UK’s Society of Authors
(SoA) has also submitted evidence to a
House of Lords inquiry into the
subject, calling to protect copyright.
In July 2023, a trio of writers –
Christopher Golden, Richard Kadrey
and Sarah Silverman – sued
Facebook’s parent company, Meta,
and OpenAI for copyright
infringement over the use of their
books to train their AI models. The
Meta case is particularly interesting as
the Facebook owner has revealed
some of the datasets it used to train its
LLaMA LLM, including both the
copyright-free Project Gutenberg
collection of ebooks and a publicly

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available dataset known as “The Pile”,
the suit notes (pcpro.link/350suit).
And digital copies of their books are
contained in that “pile”, which wasn’t
compiled by Meta but was apparently
used to train its LLM.
The Atlantic worked with a copy of
that dataset to uncover if other
authors were included, infringing
their copyright – you won’t be
surprised to hear that it does. By
searching for ISBNs, the identifying
numbers used by the publishing
industry, journalist Alex Reiner
uncovered at least 170,000 books in
the collection, from Zadie Smith and
Elena Ferrante to Haruki Murakami
and Margaret Atwood.
Some authors have said they’re not
all that bothered. King says he’s not
nervous, having seen the quality of
output so far and being aware of his
own advancing age – he’ll be gone
before the machines are good enough
to replace him. Atwood would simply
appreciate being paid, even if just the
cost of her books – doesn’t she deserve
at least her royalties? Buy the lady a
cup of coffee before stealing her work.

It is possible to get an inkling of
what’s been included by asking very
pointed queries; that’s what the trio of
authors did for their suit against
OpenAI. But it’s a difficult task
because of the sheer quantity of text
data, so it would be useful for
companies to be more open about
what datasets they do use – and they
need to make an effort to ensure
there’s no copyright infringement
before they use it, rather than later.
However, France isn’t optimistic:
“They don’t have any incentive to be
open about any of this.”

Bigger doesn’t mean better

Making models ever bigger and
feeding them from ever-expanding
data collections has another problem:
it’s just plain lazy.
Deep learning has long worked
to the axiom that more data means
more accurate results, and to date
that’s held true. But what happens
when we run out of data to feed these

Futures AI authors
sales presentation if you work for one
heck of a horrifying company.
But writing better models and
using curated datasets may not solve
the problem. The “hallucinations” and
other factual errors spat out by these
LLMs are core to their operations. The
only way to get something new from
them, and not just the same sentences
repeated over and over, is to dial up
the randomness in the model.
“But that’s exactly what’s injecting
utter nonsense a lot of the time,” said
France. “It’s quite hard-baked into the
way that these things work. It’s not
like we can just sort that bug and it
will be fine.” To fix that, we need to
add decision-making and reasoning
capabilities, not just chuck more data
into the mix.

Can AI write a novel?

Atwood is wrong on one point. In her
Atlantic essay, the Canadian literary
giant notes: “Once fully trained, the
bot may be given a command – ‘Write

How did this happen?

Payment and consent is – at the
moment – at the core of this training
quandary. We’ve long known that the
datasets used to train the largest LLMs
have hoovered up everything they can
from the English-language web, and it
will come as no surprise that plenty of
pirated books are out there.
Whether Meta, OpenAI or Google
have used datasets that included
pirated content, and whether that was
knowingly or not, is likely an issue for
courts to unpick. Indeed, newspapers
including the New York Times are
reportedly also considering legal
action (pcpro.link/350nyt).
That’s part of the problem: we
don’t know what datasets were used
to train these machines or how they
work. “They’ve been made behind
closed doors, so we can’t really check
what they’re doing and we can’t look
down the microscope and see what’s
happened in the background,” said
Lydia France, a research data scientist
at the Alan Turing Institute. “There’s
so much it’s been trained on that we
can’t actually get back to the original
data – it’s a bit like an egg that can’t be
unscrambled. You can’t actually see
what’s gone in.”
Compare that to proper academic
science, which, through the peer
review system, ensures there are
plenty of eyeballs on new research,
be it from a methodological or
ethical standpoint. “With these
big companies, they’re just kind of
free to do what they want, which is
not great,” she added.

machines? “[This is] the issue of
‘model collapse’, which means that
without human-authored works to
learn from, we could get to a stage
where AI-generated content forms the
majority of the dataset ingested for
future learning,” said Society of Authors
chief executive Nicola Solomon.
“Researchers have found that this
leads to ‘irreversible defects’ in the
content that the model generates.”
Isn’t there a better way to operate?
Big models processing big datasets
chomps through energy. Cleaning up
these datasets is nasty, manual work
– sifting through hate speech and
other disturbing content – that is
handed to moderators in Kenya paid
$2 an hour (pcpro.link/350kenya).
Eating up everything leads to bias
but also waste; after all, the
collected works of Stephen King
will only help you write a better

a Margaret Atwood novel’ – and the
thing will glurp forth 50,000 words,
like soft ice cream spiralling out of its
dispenser, that will be indistinguishable
from something I might grind out.
(But minus the typos.)”
That’s not possible now and
perhaps never will be in the future.
For a start, ChatGPT’s word limit is
around several hundred words, as it
runs the older model, GPT-3.5. The
newer model, GPT-4, can reportedly
handle as many as 25,000 words in
one go. But such AI systems cannot
hold the thread of a novel for 50,000
words, let alone develop the plot,
character and the rest – there’s more
to writing a novel than simple word
count, after all.
These models take your queries as
input and spit out a probable sequence
of words. ChatGPT can pull in previous
queries and large blocks of text as
127

Futures AI authors
input, known as tokens, to inform its
response, which is certainly
impressive. But the more text that’s
pulled in, the more intensive and
complex the computation, leading to
potential errors. And a novel has myriad
names, places, character arcs and plot
points, alongside the changes that are
essential to a good story. “These
language models, they’re just not up to
that level of complexity,” France said.
What’s more, they write variations
on what’s already been written. “We
don’t just want novels to feel like
every other novel that’s ever been
written,” she added.
However, France says that if you
did want to write a novel using the
limited AI systems of today, they can
be helpful tools, helping to brainstorm
or conquer writer’s block by dumping
something onto the page. “They can
be interesting tools, but they’re not
going to replace human creativity any
time soon.”
In short, it’s certainly possible to
ask an LLM to write a novel in one go,
but it’ll come out terribly – dull,
repetitive and nonsensical. Call it a
new experimental style all you’d like,
but it will be gibberish. Using AI as a
limited tool while acknowledging its
downsides may prove more fruitful.
You’ll have to do so in chunks,
perhaps plotting out your own story

and creating your characters, while
asking GPT or LLaMA to spit out the
words. PC Pro asked the Bing AI tool,
which uses GPT-4, to write a short
analysis of this topic, a pair of
AI-themed jokes, and short stories in
the style of Atwood and King; they
were consistently terrible.
So AI could help write a story, but
the would-be novelist still needs to
supply the idea, develop the story
and characters, and then edit the
subsequent text spat out by the LLM.
It sounds a lot like doing most of the
work to get a substandard result.

End the guesswork

Authors shouldn’t have to rely on
guesswork to know if their copyright
has been infringed. And if we’re going to
trust these LLMs with our businesses,
creativity and the rest, we need to
know how the sausage is made. These
systems can’t be black boxes fed by
unknown sources. The CEOs at Meta,
OpenAI and Google have warned about
the existential risk of AI, yet won’t
share their recipes or ingredients so
others can spot such dangers.
Regulators are considering action,
while experts at the Turing Institute,
where France works, are calling for
academic openness in AI development.
What would help authors? “Taking
[legal] action against AI developers

Novelexperience:thewriters’view
Not all those who are au fait with the finer details of AI can appreciate
creative work. And not all novelists understand the inner workings of
an LLM. Handily, PC Pro has two alumni who have left technology
journalism for successful careers as award-winning novelists. We asked
Stuart Turton and Thomas McMullan for their thoughts on the AI versus
writer war.

Thomas McMullan

Author of The Last Good Man (winner of the
Betty Trask Prize)
There is an urgent need for regulation on
this. Copyright should be able to protect
writers and their labour, forcing
developers to disclose exactly
what works they have used to
train these models, and if there is
any infringement of copyrighted
material that needs to result in legal
consequences. There should be automatic opt-out for
published works, with the onus on consent and
remuneration of authors whose works are being used.
I don’t care if it slows down how quickly these systems
can learn to write. They don’t learn how to write, they
learn how to parrot. On a moral level, the soulless s***
that these AI systems regurgitate is damaging not just
for writers and artists but for how we think about the
world in general, turning the act of human expression
into a funhouse of mirrors, constantly reflecting
distorted versions of the past back to us.

128

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is one approach, but it is just as
important – if not more important – to
engage with industry and government
about this issue, and to ensure that
our members’ interests are at the
forefront of decisions that they make
about future policy and practice,” said
SoA’s Solomon, calling for guidelines
on using AI-generated content that
includes attribution, remuneration
and full adherence to copyright law.
“Many SoA members are concerned
about the impact of generative
technologies – many of
“It’s certainly possible to
them unhappy that their
ask an LLM to write a novel work is being used
permission, but
in one go, but it’ll come out without
with an increasing
terribly – dull, repetitive
number raising concerns
and nonsensical”
about the direct impact AI
is already having on their
ability to earn a living,” she added. “It
might be a while before an LLM can
generate a publishable literary novel
without human editing, but AI is
already being used commercially to
produce illustrations and
photorealistic images, translations
and journalism, in ways that push
aside and devalue human input.”
In the meantime, “novelist” may
be one job that remains despite the
threat of AI. Because so far, it’s even
worse than most of us at writing a
great book.

Stuart Turton

Author of The Seven
Deaths of Evelyn
Hardcastle, The
Devil and the Dark
Water and next
year’s The Murder
at the End of the
World. He’s won the
Costa First Novel
award and Books are My
Bag Readers award.
Sigh. Shrug. F*** me. That’s how I
feel about all of this. Am I bothered
by AI one day churning out Stu
Turton clone books? Yup, but I’m
more bothered by the ever-shrinking
advances that increasingly make
this job a hobby for the rich. I’m
bothered by celebrity authors
who automatically get a publisher’s
entire marketing budget even
though their face is marketing
enough. I’m bothered by the
dwindling numbers of readers, and
the knowledge that my career could
be sunk by one bad book. AI’s the
shark in the distance. It’s really
scary, but the likelihood is that I’ll
have been eaten by piranhas long
before it gets anywhere near me.

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AnewAtariconsolehasgoneonsale,so
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129

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JonHoneyball
tellsthetaleofa
spywhocamein
withthecold

I

t seemed innocent enough. The
air-conditioning system needed
its annual service. This was never
particularly onerous: check the
pressure levels, clean the air filters,
give it a good spray of some suitably
pungent smelling gloop. Move on.
So there was no reason for the MD’s
secretary to believe this booking was
any different. It had been made with
the usual company. The van arrived,
the chap got on with his work.
Everything was working just fine, he
said. All was good, and the director
hadn’t been disturbed because he was
away at a client meeting. Possibly on a
golf course.
It was only a few months later that
strange things started to happen.
Quotations to established clients
weren’t turning into orders. A
surprise, but perhaps that’s just the
economy. But when that usual big
quarterly order didn’t materialise, it
was time to phone the client to ask
what had happened. It seems a rival had
undercut the firm. Not by much, but
enough that it was hard to convince
the financial director at the client to
stay with the established supplier.
Disappointed, the firm continued
work on its new design. This was going
to be a significant improvement in the
product, quite a step change. New
materials tech, better CAD. Higher
efficiency and lower cost, too.
They were ready for the big launch
at the annual trade show. The stand
was looking immaculate, and the new
product was ready to be unveiled.
And then something unexpected
happened. The rival to whom they had
lost the account had a new product.
The similarities were striking. Only
theirs was made in China, not
Canterbury, and the price was
shockingly low. The MD scrambled to
look at costings spreadsheets to see
what margins could be trimmed
before the launch in a couple of hours.

130

It came to nought. The company,
already under big financial pressure
from the ongoing effect of the Covid
shutdown, increased supplier costs
and difficulty in obtaining key items,
couldn’t continue. Within a few
months, the doors closed when the
money ran out.
Stripping down and clearing out
the offices and workshop was never
going to be a pleasant experience. Too
many hopes and dreams loaded into
skips. Items of high value were sold off,
but often made pennies in the pound.
It was when clearing the director’s
office that the IT crew spotted
something odd. Something
unexpected. A small box, not
much bigger than a box of
matches, inserted into the
Ethernet feed to the desktop
computer. It was powered
by a second, smaller inline
box that took power from
the power over Ethernet
feed, and fed it on USB to the main
box. This was hidden away, under
the director’s desk, taped to the
underside with some gaffer tape.
Closer inspection showed it was
the new Mark2 version of the Hak5
Squirrel. It had been inserted
seamlessly between the desktop
computer and the network. The scope
of its packet sniffing, redirection and
tunnelling was as subtle as it was
devastating. The remote access via a
VPN tunnel for the outside actor
allowed for unhindered network
access and packet capture on the wire.
It wasn’t clear if the data had gone
straight to the competitor or whether
it had been sold on the black market
and then picked up by the
competition. Nevertheless, it was
clear that the scope of the data
exfiltration was all encompassing.
And the actions of the competitor,
by being ahead of every move they
took, were quite a smoking gun.

Options for legal redress were
considered, and abandoned. Getting
hard evidence wasn’t easy. Linking
the compromised air-conditioning
engineer to the competitor would be
near impossible. It was just too late .
This might seem a fanciful tale of
Bond-esque espionage. But the
equipment is there today and costs
peanuts. Getting such a unit into place
isn’t difficult, if you consider the lack
of security at the average office and
the number of people going in and out.
There’s a reason why people visiting
my office, for routine tasks such as
servicing the alarm system or
checking the fire extinguishers, are
kept under observation. Ask yourself

It was when clearing the director’s
office that the IT crew spotted something
odd. A small box in the Ethernet feed
if you would be happy having an
unsupervised person in your office for
a couple of minutes, if they could
bring in a box like the Squirrel. And
think of the access it could provide to
your network, and the data flows.
As always, the biggest risk in any
secure environment is the human
element. A few grand of crisp fresh
cash in a duffel bag will tempt many
people. And you don’t have to be
MI5, MI6 or GCHQ to be a target.
An engineering company could be of
deep interest to many competitors,
including foreign state actors.
So how well do you know your
physical network? Who do you let
into your offices, and who has
unattended access? And what might
you find taped to the underside of a
desk if you were to go looking?
Jon Honeyball is a contributing editor to
PC Pro and is more Johnny English than
Jason Bourne. Email jon@jonhoneyball.com