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75 Articles

We all love PCs, right? In between hating them, that is… If you are a child of an earlier time, like me, then you likely got into computers around the time of the great technological transformation. That period when magical things appeared in short order, transforming the world. Things like mobile phones and the internet. The perspective that comes with straddling a period before, during, and after these things arriving is something precious that I value. I think we all remember the excitement of getting our first PC. The sense of wonder and the keenness to get stuck in immediately and have a play with it all. But what was it? And what technology surrounded it? Did you plug yours into an analogue modem to connect to a BBS? Did…

EVERY DAY IS A NAS DAY I was reading your article in the January mag regarding NAS usage and I’d like to share how I use mine, it might be different as the general public. I am using my NAS almost every day and love it. I have backed up five laptops and one business PC. All prior (dead PCs) are on it as well. I created a docs library over the years where store all manual, receipts, tax, warranties, important docs etc. Basally everything on paper is scanned in and stored on the NAS. As well as, I converted all old video tapes, music CDs, DVDs, which de-cluttered greatly our house. Only downloaded videos are not on it, due to space issues. I need to upgrade to a 4-bay…

RESPONSE TO CHIP SECURITY CRISIS “CHAOTIC”

Chip makers, system builders and software companies are still trying to come to terms with the wide-ranging consequences of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities – with the industry’s response to the major threat described as both “a mess” and “garbage”. First discovered in June 2017, the two critical weaknesses could allow attackers to sniff data as it’s processed and they affect almost every mobile and desktop processor. But, to date, fixes have been randomly applied, glitch-ridden and confusing. Patches for the problems – which affect Intel, AMD and ARM processors to varying extents – started being rolled out days after they were publicised in early January, but many of these had a significant impact on performance. One Windows patch effectively bricked PCs running on AMD processors. The response has been…

RESPONSE TO CHIP SECURITY CRISIS “CHAOTIC”

10 CROWNS IS A NEW EPIC STRATEGY GAME

M ohawk Games’ first game was the excellent Offworld Trading Company, a kind of strategic resource management sim with plenty of sci-fishinies to distract you from all the number crunching. But the people at Mohawk are best known for their work on the Civilization series, including company founder Soren Johnson, who was the lead designer on Civ IV, and Dorian Newcomb, who was the art director on Civ V and thus chiefly responsible for that game’s stately optimism. Mohawk has just announced its next game and it definitely looks like it’s building on that Civ pedigree, while possibly adding in a dash of Crusader Kings - or rather that’s how we interpret the scant details in the press release. 10 Crowns is “an epic-scale turn-based strategy game that lets players…

10 CROWNS IS A NEW EPIC STRATEGY GAME

FIVE CLOSE COMBAT GAMES TAKE COVER ON GOG

Close Combat is a mostly highly regarded realtime strategy series that began in the 1990s. They were pretty hardcore, taking into account cover and suppression, fatigue and morale, among a range of systems that went deeper than other popular RTSs of the era. Three of those games from the original series are now available on GOG: Close Combat 2: A Bridge Too Far, Close Combat 3: The Russian Front and Close Combat 4: Battle of the Bulge. Curiously, there’s no sign of the first game. But to be honest, A Bridge Too Far is by far the best in the series, so I wouldn’t worry too much. GOG has also nabbed two more recent Close Combat games, 2012’s Panthers in the Fog and 2014’s Gateway to Caen. They’re okay and,…

FIVE CLOSE COMBAT GAMES TAKE COVER ON GOG

CPU THE PINNACLE OF SOLDERING Intel has copped some flak recently for using less effective thermal paste under the integrated heater spreaders (IHS) on its high-end processors. Removing the IHS (“de-lidding”) to put better performing paste under the IHS has come into fashion of late with super-enthusiasts, due to this, resulting in temperatures some 20°C cooler. Using solder to directly connect the IHS to the CPU die is the much-preferred attachment method when it’s done at the factory, and it turns out that Pinnacle Ridge, aka Ryzen 2 processors will get this treatment. Being produced on a newer 12nm node (compared to the current 14nm) AMD should be looking to push Ryzen 2 clock speeds as hard as possible to close the gap to Intel’s superior single thread performance numbers.…

DESKSPACE You have a dilemma. You want one of those awesome oldschool box-of-minerals collections (you know, with the quartz and the iron pyrite you told your friend was gold), but you also want a model of the solar system. And you’re a busy executive. How are you going to solve this dilemma? With Deskspace! MOST WANTED: It’s a set of the planets, with each planet made out of some kind of interesting mineral. Mercury is Labradorite (which displays a beautiful inner labradorescense this is not a joke); Venus is nephrite; Earth is sodalite; Mars is mahogany obsidian obviously; Jupiter is Tiger’s Eye; Saturn is calcite (“Used in World War II for gun sights!” cries an odd footnote); Uranus is amazonite; Neptune is a synthetic cat’s eye silicate; and there are…

$ 4,000. That’s about the price of a top of the line gaming PC these days. Crazy right? It wasn’t all that long ago (less than a year actually) that a little over $3,000 would get you the best of the best. It seems we’re in something of a perfect storm in the PC market with multiple pressures influencing the price of various components all at once. The biggest and most obvious culprit is the crypto mining craze that is creating a high degree of demand for all high-performance graphics cards for use in multi-GPU mining rigs. To the point where retailers are limiting sales to one or two per customer, if they even have stock in the first place. The demand is so high that a graphics card I…

JAIMIE, LEADER COMPUTERS: “We have actually seen massive growth in component sales due to the Crypto frenzy happening in the market. Leader is trying to keep as much stock allocation as possible for genuine system builders and channel partners, so they can still get systems built but the rising price of GPU, PSU, RAM and SSD are all driving the average system price up at the high end of town. For entry level systems there has been a small increase due to RAM and SSD pricing, but it has not affected unit numbers. There are shortages on mainstream CPUs as well, with Intel bringing 8th Gen to market sooner than expected with fairly low initial yields. This had a trickle-down affect across the i7 and i5 ranges, making it hard…

SCORPTEC FOCUS G 1060 $1,499 • https://tinyurl.com/yar2xykr Looking to beat high PC costs due to the crypto craze? Going mid-range is still a respectable option. While the quad core CPU here is missing hyper-threading, for most games that’s still all you need and with turbo speeds of 3.8GHz is shouldn’t have any trouble keeping up. The 6GB GTX 1060 will happily run anything at 1080p with all the details cranked up too, so as long as that resolution is your target, this system is prefect. Mass storage follows the common place 250GB SSD + 1TB HDD template. So, adequate. The only real downside of this build is the 8GB of RAM. While it’ll get by don’t expect to run many things in the background while playing triple A titles. KEY…

BEWARE SUBSCRIPTION SOFTWARE

In the old days, you’d visit the local store, buy a box with a CD (or floppy disks for me – I’m glad the days of installing Corel Draw from 5.25in floppies are behind me) and install your software. Unless there was a compelling reason, you didn’t repeat that ritual for another three or four years. But the software business has undergone a revolution. Instead if paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for software every two or three years, we now pay a few dollars each month for “access” to software and services. Similarly, we’ve become conditioned to paying for other things each month as well. Perhaps the most popular subscription service in the country, at least until recently, is Foxtel. Each month, families shelled out around $100 each month…

BEWARE SUBSCRIPTION SOFTWARE

VIEW TO A THRILL

Google Glass was before its time. The iconic wearable promised a new way of interacting with our digital lives -- one that was seamless, overlaid on our vision as we moved around the world. I wanted one. Badly. But alas, before it could even trickle down to consumer land it was beaten under the oppressive heel of public opinion – the ability to record video surreptitiously, not to mention the unintended pretentiousness of its look, led to Google Glass users being coined ‘glassholes’. Wholly undeserving, one would think. It reflected not a problem with the technology, but its timing – society just wasn’t ready to add this level of integration to the mix just yet. GLASS STILL LIVES Google Glass in its original form quietly died, and was later resurrected…

VIEW TO A THRILL

WHY THE 2.4GHZ BAND IS STILL IMPORTANT

In last month’s column, I spoke at length about the next-generation Wi-Fistandard, 802.11ax, which was showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. A lot of the resulting feedback was based around whether the venerable 2.4GHz Wi-Fiband, which has been in use for well over a decade now, staring off with 802.11b, continuing into 802.11g, a, and n, is finally on the way out to pasture given the far higher bandwidth possibilities that 802.11ac, let alone 802.11ax can provide, utilising the 5GHz bands. Firstly though, a recap from last month, in particular the fact whereby the higher the frequency the shorter the distance the signal can travel, without exponentially increasing the power required. Obviously, the 5GHz band is more than twice the frequency of the 2.4GHz band,…

WHY THE 2.4GHZ BAND IS STILL IMPORTANT

Ladies and gentlement what we have before us here is a dinosaur. The IBM 5150, the sort of stone-age piece of hardware that makes young people pick up sticks and start poking at it It was born in 1981, which is eight years after this author, and has been loved ever since. The big grey box was embraced in classrooms and by early tech aficionados. Big Blue saw it as a replacement for the multimillion-dallar lwge-array cnmpuling machines that industry was using, butonethatwas built and priced for the home. IBM remembers the thing fondly; in fact, you'd have to go some distance to find anyone who doesn’t “When the IBM Personal Computer (IBM 5150) was introduced to the world 25 yeaiS ago, it was dramatically clear to most observers that…

THE AWARD WINNERS

AMD RYZEN PRO MOBILE PROCESSORS Price: Not applicable Available: Q2 2018 2017 was a brilliant year for buyers of desktop PCs thanks to AMD’s Ryzen chips: stunning power for an equally stunning price meant Intel had to react by lowering its prices and bringing out its range of high-end processors in double-quick time. Based on the conversation we had with AMD at CES, we see every reason for the same thing to happen to the laptop market. We’re not just talking about consumer laptops, either. Thanks to the new Ryzen Pro series of mobile chips, those businesses looking for greater security and manageability should finally have a reason to buy a non-Intel-based laptop – and it’s the first time we’ve ever published those words in PC & Tech Authority. BLAZE…

THE AWARD WINNERS

BEST OF THE REST

ASUS LYRA VOICE Price: Not yet announced Available: Not yet announced While all the mesh routers in this month’s Labs are great, they do consume precious space in your home – so why not double them up as an Alexa-enabled speaker? That’s what Asus has decided to do with the Lyra Voice, a tri-band AC2200 router that can interact with other Lyra hubs spread around your home. In addition, the Lyra offers built-in security courtesy of Trend Micro. ASUS ZENBOOK 13 Price: Not yet announced Available: Not yet announced Asus is making big claims for the ZenBook 13: “This ultralight marvel is the thinnest laptop on the planet with a high-performance discrete graphics chip,” it shouts. Precise figures? 13.9mm thick. 1.12kg. 13.3in touchscreen with up to 4K resolution. 100% sRGB…

BEST OF THE REST

DELL’S JEWELLERY COLLECTION Yes, you read that correctly. The purveyor of some of the world’s most ordinary laptops has dived into fashion, although it’s really only providing the raw materials. Dell is supplying gold recovered from its motherboards for a new collection of jewellery designed by actress Nikki Reed, which is available from bayouwithlove.com. Rings start from $78, although Reed is refusing to comment on rumours that you need to flash the BIOS of your trinkets. SELF-MOVING CHESS BOARD If you’re lacking a mate to put into check mate, the Square Off chessboard might be the answer. This delightful piece of science fiction moves its own pieces, saving you the (admittedly gentle) effort of having to shuffle the rook to wherever the LEDs of traditional computerised chess boards tell you…

SWITCH BACK TO FIREFOX

Switching to Firefox might feel like a step backwards. Back in 2010, Mozilla’s lightweight browser commanded a solid third of the browser market, but today its share has fallen to just under 14%. Then again, it’s still bigger than Internet Explorer (13.13%) and miles ahead of Microsoft Edge (3.64%) – so it’s no stranger a choice of browser than either of Windows’ defaults. And if you’re one of those who have switched away, there are plenty of good reasons to give its new browser a try. We’ll discuss some of the most practical ones later, but let’s start with something more fundamental: Mozilla’s ethics. Firefox is built and maintained by a non-profit organisation, whose stated purpose is to “ensure the internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to…

SWITCH BACK TO FIREFOX

Firefox in the enterprise

If you’re planning to roll out Firefox across a business, read Mozilla’s guide to deploying the browser in an enterprise environment (tinyurl.com/l457uwb). There’s also a dedicated Enterprise Working Group mailing list you can sign up to (tinyurl.com/cty84rw) and, as well as receiving updates, you can mine the enterprise archives for advice and information (tinyurl.com/y9awvglx). For those who need to schedule updates, Mozilla maintains a public release timetable, which at the time of writing runs to late November 2018 (tinyurl.com/5uzucu4). For a business, you’ll probably want to focus on the Extended Support Release (ESR) versions, rather than Rapid Release (RR) builds. ESR editions of Firefox generally remain stable for a full year, allowing organisations to minimise any disruption associated with upgrades and compatibility tests – you just need to make sure…

Firefox in the enterprise

Have you got a talking machine helper in your home yet? I do. My new robot housemate is a JBL Link 10. She’s very nice, and wants nothing but to help me with things I would ordinarily have to spend five seconds doing myself. And it is a she because the default voice is female. I don’t have a name for her yet, mostly because she only responds to “Hey Google” or “Ok Google”, so as much as I’m open to personalising my tech, when it comes to the one bit of tech that actually behaves somewhat like a human, or at least attempts to, I can’t give her a name because I’m never able to say it out loud. So, Ok Google it is, then. Sadly it can’t even…

2D TESTS Desktop PCs and laptops are tested using our own custom bench testing suite, which has been carefully designed to test all aspects of a system and rate them in a way that’s useful to you. Our benchtesting cover three main tests: a typical video editing test, a demanding 4K video editing test and a multitasking test that stresses all aspects of the system. We look at the time it takes for each test to run, which is then compared to our reference PC to produce a normalised result. This score is shown on a graph, and to help you understand just where the PC we’re reviewing sits in the grand scheme of things, we will often include other system’s scores. On occasion we will run publically available bench…

AMD RYZEN 5 2400G AND RYZEN 3 2200G APUs

A MD had a very successful 2017 beginning with the release its Ryzen series of CPUs, firmly bringing the company back to a welcome competitive position not seen for the last decade. Not stopping there, AMD continued to execute its plans with Threadripper, Epyc, Ryzen Pro and finally Ryzen Mobile all being well received. As we moved well into 2018 there was always the glaring omission of the company’s shining light; its APU range. For many years AMD’s processor division saw most of its success come from the sales of its range of so called APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) which merge the functionality of a CPU and GPU onto a single die. It’s the one area where AMD have consistently outclassed Intel. This last piece of the first generation Ryzen…

AMD RYZEN 5 2400G AND RYZEN 3 2200G APUs

HP SPECTRE - 13-AF008TU

With the release of Intel’s new 8thgeneration CPUs, there’s never been a better time to be in the market for a thin and light laptop, that also has four cores. HP have realised this and updated their popular Spectre 13 ultrabook with the latest chip from Intel, the i5-8250. This CPU makes what was a great laptop in 2017, into a spectacular laptop in 2018. From the moment you unbox the Spectre 13, you can feel the premium material and attention to detail. HP’s marketing material claims that the Spectre 13’s “seamless design is carefully chiselled from machined aluminium and carbon fiber”, that the hidden coaxial hinge “draws from inspiration from high-end cabinetry”, the speakers are “tuned” by Bang & Olufsen and the exterior comes in either a minimalist white…

HP SPECTRE - 13-AF008TU

ALCATEL PLUS 12 2-IN-1

A lcatel’s area of expertise is cheap and cheerful products that get the job done for a reasonable price. Their smartphones are a great example of this mindset. The Plus 12 tablet however, is an awful example of Alcatel’s commitment to value for money. Frankly, the Plus 12 is one of the poorest performing computers to come across our testing lab. The Plus 12 is a rather standard 12-inch tablet, with a 1080p touch screen, running Windows 10 and is based around the 1.1 GHz, dual-core Intel N3350 Celeron CPU, 4GB of RAM and 32GB eMMC for storage. There’s plenty of devices on the market like this and they all suffer the same problems as Alcatel’s implementation of it. For starters, the N3350 is a weak CPU. Surfing the web…

ALCATEL PLUS 12 2-IN-1

ASUS BLUE CAVE WI-FI ROUTER

To reach the large market for people that want an aesthetically pleasing Wi-Firouter as an alternative to ugly arachnid looking black and red boxes, Asus developed the Blue Cave. That’s literally the reason it exists - a router that looks nice. There’s no amazing new features, no technological breakthroughs, no value for money. Just a nice-looking router that won’t upset your home’s decor and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting that sort of product. Specs wise, the Blue Cave is like any other mid-range Wi-Firouter in 2018. 802.11ac Wave2, MU-MIMO, 4 gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, 1 gigabit Ethernet WAN port and a USB 3.1 Gen 1 post for sharing printers or the contents of external hard drives across a network. Let’s get the obvious out of the way: the hole…

ASUS BLUE CAVE WI-FI ROUTER

When it comes to multiroom audio, Sonos stands head and shoulders above the competition. The reason for its success is simple: Sonos’ family of speakers blend superb sound quality, an easyto- use mobile app and mesh Wi-Finetworking to create a truly smart, whole-home sound system. The Sonos One takes that one step further: it combines Sonos’ multiroom talents with the latest in voice control from Amazon Alexa and, coming later this year, Google Assistant. STYLISH DESIGN A single power cable trails neatly out of the rear, four rubber feet give the One a firm grip onto the surfaces beneath, and a single Ethernet socket allows for wired operation where Wi-Fiisn’t a viable option. The only fundamental difference between the Play One and the Play:1 is that Sonos has removed the…

ASUS DSL-AC3100

Asus’s routers are some of the best in the industry for home users wanting a little extra than simply getting online. Known for their performance and wide feature set, the DSL-AC3100 is the latest in that tradition and does not disappoint. Denoted by the DSL in its product name, the DSL-AC3100 is a Wi-Firouter with a built-in ADSL, ADSL 2/2+ and VDSL2 modem. Perfect for NBN FTTN users. Interestingly, Asus has added support for G.Fast, which doesn’t exist in Australia yet, but could one-day be used on the copper portions of the NBN. Wi-Fion the DSL-AC3100 is one of its unique selling points thanks to the inclusion of 1024-QAM technology. Asus calls it NitroQAM, and claim it can provide over 2.1 Gbit/sec over 5GHz to devices that also support 1024-…

ASUS DSL-AC3100

QNAP TS-677-1600-8G NAS

The QNAP TS-677 is so much more than a mundane NAS to store files on. It’s an extremely capable server thanks to its full-blown AMD Ryzen CPU and PCIe ports. The best way to think about the TS-677 is that it’s a desktop computer, squished into a little cube, that only runs QNAP’s QTS operating system so there’s minimal configuration required. If you’ve ever used a QNAP NAS, the TS-677 works pretty much the same way as they all do with QTS installed, but this one has an incredibly powerful CPU to handle the most demanding tasks. The TS-677 comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 CPU that has 6-cores and 12-threads, running at 3.2GHz and can boost to 3.6GHz. By default, the TS-677 comes with 8GB of DDR4 RAM…

QNAP TS-677-1600-8G NAS

MSI INFINITE X GAMING PC

Gaming continues to be the shining RGB light of the PC market and if you want to game in the age of 4K and high refresh rate monitors, you need a beast of a PC, and that’s exactly what we have in the form of the MSI Infinite X. BEAUTY. BRAINS. BRAWN The MSI Infinite X is a high end PC by any measure. Several different configurations are available and you can go all the way to a GTX 1080 Ti and 64GB of RAM if you like. Our test system came equipped with a GTX 1080 Gaming X 8GB graphics card, i7-8700K processor, 32GB of DDR4- 2400 RAM, and a 256GB NVMe SSD plus a 2TB hard drive. We’d like to see faster RAM to be honest, but the…

MSI INFINITE X GAMING PC

AMAZON ECHO SPOT

The Spot is the fifth speaker in Amazon’s Echo range - and arguably the cutest. Finished in a soft-touch plastic, available in either white or black, it’s so adorable it makes you want to reach out and tickle it under the chin. Even the 2.5in circular touchscreen is beautifully integrated. It’s set back at a slight angle, making it comfortable to read whether the Spot is nestled on the desk next to you or on the kitchen table a few metres away. A resolution of 480 x 480 works well on that size of screen, too. So what does the Spot do, other than sit in the corner making eyes at you? Essentially, all the same stuff as the larger Echo Show. That means, in addition to the usual Alexa…

AMAZON ECHO SPOT

ACER PREDATOR TRITON 700

N ot too long ago, only Razer was mass producing thin and light gaming laptops, but thanks, at least in part, to the Nvidia Max-Q design philosophy, every month we’re seeing more and more machines that combine portability and power into a very appealing package. The design philosophy throttles down the GPU reducing the heat output so the laptop doesn’t require bulkier and heavier cooling to offset the extra heat. It’s a clever philosophy but one of compromise – it’s unlikely a Max-Q laptop will ever be as fast or powerful as a desktop replacement style gaming laptop, but the more powerful machines will never be as portable. The 15.6in Triton 700 comes in two versions; one sporting a 1060 and one sporting an 8Gb 1080. We’ve reviewed the more…

ACER PREDATOR TRITON 700

ASUS ROG STRIX GL503 SCAR EDITION

We’ve seen our fair share of gaming laptops over the years. Some are better than others but with a few exceptions, one of the traditional weaknesses of gaming laptops are the screens they come with. If you’re dropping a few grand on a laptop, a generic 1080p screen just makes the whole experience poorer. Asus know this and has introduced something every serious laptop gamer must have: A genuine IPS 1080p 120Hz screen with G-Sync, powered by a GTX 1070. Hoorah! The Asus GL503 Scar is a serious laptop. Its design is somewhat understated in an era where RGB lighting and brash styling is the norm. The lid is metallic, but the shell is plastic which lacks the premium feel of the likes of the MSI GS series. It still…

ASUS ROG STRIX GL503 SCAR EDITION

FRACTAL DEFINE R6

It’s no secret that a number of our writers are fans of Fractal cases and have them for their personal machines. In many ways, Fractal cases occupy the same space that Lian-Li cases did in the early naughties, offering beautifully built enclosures with plenty of space to build in and a clean, minimalist aesthetic that looks great in an understated way. The Define R6 is the latest in the Define line, and we can safely say that it’s quite possibly their best so far. Standing at just over 50cm high, the Define R6 comes in a few different flavours – black, white and gunmetal, each with the option of a tempered glass side panel. The version reviewed is black with a tempered glass panel, but aside from the outside colour…

FRACTAL DEFINE R6

SAMSUNG 49-INCH CHG90 QLED GAMING MONITOR

Monitors don’t get any bigger than Samsung’s behemoth 49in CHG90 QLED curved gaming monitor. It’s so big that it didn’t even fit on my desk when I unboxed its gigantic frame from the surfboard sized box it arrived in. As a result, Samsung’s LC49HG90DMEXXY (aka CHG90 for short) ended up on the kitchen table for this review, much to my partner’s chagrin. If you have any interest at all in this big boy, you really need to get the measuring tape out before splashing the cash, otherwise you’ll end up in my embarrassing situation. The dimensions of the CHG90 and its stand, if you’re wondering, are 1203mm wide, 525mm high and 381mm deep. Despite the size of the screen, unboxing it simple and attaching the stand is a piece of…

SAMSUNG 49-INCH CHG90 QLED GAMING MONITOR

RESISTANCE BEAST AiO

It’s rare to find an all-in-one computer designed for gaming that is actually up to the task thanks to the size, power and cooling requirements of desktop graphics cards forcing manufacturers to compromise on performance in order to keep the machine cool and not unreasonably bulky. Well, Resistance, the gaming arm of Leader Computers hasn’t compromised on power to deliver a sleeper all-in-one computer. The Beast AiO is very aptly named. It’s huge and bulky, allowing for both a massive screen as well as some powerful innards. Built around a Samsung 21:9, 34in curved 3440x1440, 60Hz panel, the Beast measures 863.6mm wide, 127mm deep and 431.8 mm high and weighs in at 13.6Kg. As such, it needs a fairly deep desk, but if you have one, there’s a lot to…

RESISTANCE BEAST AiO

SAMSUNG 860 EVO 1TB AND 860 PRO 1TB SATA SSD

It seems like it’s been forever since the legendary Samsung 850 Pro and Evo SSDs launched. Almost unbelievably, we have to go all the way back to 2014 since we saw the first iterations of the 850 series. The competition never really managed to catch up and when you’re the top dog in the market, there’s little commercial reason to shake things up. The 850 Evo in particular is probably the best consumer SATA SSD ever made due to its unrivalled combination of value, performance, reliability and brand recognition. The 850 Pro has been the long time performance leader which makes it equally important. Now we’re well into 2018 though; the competition has finally caught up and a behemoth like Samsung is not known for allowing any challenge to its…

SAMSUNG 860 EVO 1TB AND 860 PRO 1TB SATA SSD

DRAYTEK VIGOR2862VAC VDSL2 WI-FI VOIP ROUTER

As the National Broadband Network spreads around Australia, people are finding themselves in the market for a new device that lets them connect to it. Those in a Fibre to the Node (FTTN) area need to throw their ADSL 2 modems in the bin and upgrade to a VDSL 2 modem, like the DrayTek Vigor2862Vac. The Vigor2862Vac not only supports VDSL 2 so it’ll work on the FTTN portion of the NBN, but has a gigabit Ethernet WAN port, four gigabit Ethernet LAN ports and 802.11ac Wave 2 dual-band Wi-Fiwith support for MU-MIMO, beamforming and four spatial streams. Standard stuff for 2018. Where things get interesting with the Vigor2862Vac is VoIP support and two USB ports. The USB ports can be used for sharing a printer or an external hard…

DRAYTEK VIGOR2862VAC VDSL2 WI-FI VOIP ROUTER

GPD WIN POCKETABLE GAMING PC

All PC gamers share a common dream. At least, when they see someone playing on a Nintendo Switch. They imagine a handheld, pocketable device, with gaming control, but which can run full-fat Windows 10 and thus any PC game. The GPD Win cannot run any PC game. But it can run any PC game released before, say, 2010, and more than a few that have come after. It ships with a full install of Windows 10 Home. When you push the power button, it boots up like a tiny laptop. Because it is a tiny laptop. Pleasingly, the GPD Win fails to disappoint. It has a sturdy, all metal (as of a 2017 revision) case, an excellent 5.5-inch 1280x720 capacitive 10-touchpoint display, thumbsticks, a D-pad, Xbox face buttons with alternate…

GPD WIN POCKETABLE GAMING PC

CORSAIR H115I PRO AIO WATER COOLER

Water cooling a high performance PC used to be a fairly terrifying experience, but advent of the allin- one or AIO cooler has made modern water systems simple to install. The H115i is Corsair’s dual-fan, 280mm radiator kit. It’s a big and bold system for running a sustained overclock (i.e. for months, set and forget), but the real benefit here is acoustic. The H115i uses Corsair’s magnetic levitation fans. Impressively, they are silent up to 900rpm, and on a big radiator like this, 900rpm is plenty fast enough. The pump in the water block is audible at default settings. But this cooler comes with a USB interface. Hook it up to the motherboard, and Corsair’s LINK software allows the user to put the pump in “silent mode” (and mess with…

CORSAIR H115I PRO AIO WATER COOLER

The Doro 6520 is a throwback to a bygone era of physical buttons and clamshell designs and does so while putting the needs of our older generations first. At first glance, it looks like the sort of flip phone you may have had in the early 2000s, and for its target market, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The phone is plastic but very light, and the flip mechanism is a cinch to open. Simplicity is key, with a backlit numeric keypad containing large, easy-to-read buttons, 4-way directional keys, two menu buttons, and a number of shortcut keys, two of which are programmable. The QVGA screen is bright and easy to read, and there are a number of display settings available to increase brightness and font sizes further for those…

Oppo has continued its trend of providing a flagship experience on its range-topping phones for a mid-range price with the new R11s. The phone looks remarkably like the iPhone 8 both front and back, save for the mid-mounted fingerprint sensor on the back. This time round, Oppo has adopted the increasingly popular 18:9 aspect ratio for its AMOLED display and is a bright and pretty thing. Its Snapdragon 660 CPU and 4GB of RAM is more than enough for everyday use, and the 3200mAh battery is charged in no time with the included VOOC fast charger, although with only a micro USB connector. The headline act for Oppo’s flagships has always been its cameras, and the tradition continues here, with a rear dual-camera setup at 20MP and 16MP both available,…

While all its major rivals jumped aboard the 18:9 screen bandwagon in 2017, HTC decided to go slow: it launched the squeezable HTC U11 last June, and we’ve had to wait until 2018 for the 18:9 ratio U11+. You might think this seven-month gap would mean internal upgrades too, but no such luck: this is a refresh not a rehash. This isn’t cause for concern. It means the same excellent Snapdragon 835 processor, same squeezable edges and same UltraPixel 3 rear camera – although, oddly, the front camera is downgraded from 16-megapixels to eight. In tandem with the appearance of Android 8 Oreo, HTC has updated Edge Sense. Now, squeezing brings up a rotary wheel of shortcuts to your favourite apps, and it’s more customisable too. The U11+ is currently…

BLACKBERRY MOTION

The BlackBerry KEYone was one of the most memorable phones of 2017, albeit not one of the best. It offered BlackBerry enthusiasts an Android-based route to the brand’s traditional strengths of strong security and physical keyboard. So what does the BlackBerry Motion offer? Simple. Much of the same, but without the keyboard. INDUSTRIAL DESIGN As with the KEYone, BlackBerry (or, to be strictly accurate, TCL Communications, which now manufactures BlackBerry-branded phones while BlackBerry itself focuses on software and services) has its eye on corporate buyers rather than consumers. That’s reflected in a piece of industrial design. Instead of following the crowd and adorning its latest handset with a glass or aluminium rear, the Motion features a soft-touch plastic back, inlaid with a textured carbon fibre-style pattern and the trademark BlackBerry…

BLACKBERRY MOTION

EPSON ECOTANK ET-4750

Epson’s EcoTank system has always been a promising concept. Instead of costly and wasteful ink cartridges, EcoTank devices have enormous tanks, come with generous bottles of ink and slash print costs to a fraction of conventional levels. It’s a great idea, but none of the previous EcoTank printers I’ve tested have been good enough t o recommend. The new EcoTank ET-4750 finally delivers on the promise. It’s immediately clear that Epson has improved the EcoTank system itself. This MFP’s ink tanks are neatly integrated into the front, where you can view their levels at a glance; just like a car’s petrol tank, it’s important not to let them run dry. More significantly, Epson has overhauled the filling system, introducing keying to eliminate the risk of misfuelling. The new system appears…

EPSON ECOTANK ET-4750

ALIENWARE ADVANCED GAMING KEYBOARD

The Alienware Advanced Gaming Keyboard is quite an attractive bit of kit. Given Alienware’s general aesthetic it’s a little understated; a black, angular slab of plastic with lighting around the edges and the blue alien head situated in the top right, but that understatement is what we like about it. We’re less pleased about the barebones packaging – there is a padded wrist rest that slides up against the oddly angled front of the keyboard, but you have to buy it separately – and the lack of any backlighting, which is very disappointing at the price point. So do we like the Alienware Advanced Gaming Keyboard, or not? The answer is a little of both. First the good stuff. The keyboard is well built and features Kailh Brown switches, giving…

ALIENWARE ADVANCED GAMING KEYBOARD

ALIENWARE PRO GAMING KEYBOARD

The naming of the Advanced and Pro keyboards from Alienware sounds a little topsy-turvy to us, but the Pro is a more appealing prospect, even though it costs $80 more. One of the problems we had with the Advanced keyboard remains with the Pro – the wrist rest is an optional extra that costs more – but it does feature backlighting. It also features the same Kailh Brown switches. Rather disappointingly, although the top plate of the keyboard has a metallic sheen, it’s just different coloured plastic. The build quality is still good, but for the price of a premium keyboard some aluminium for added rigidity isn’t much to ask. The only real change to the overall design of the Pro is that the three volume buttons of the Advanced…

ALIENWARE PRO GAMING KEYBOARD

RAZER BLACKWIDOW CHROMA V2 TOURNAMENT EDITION

To keep things simple I’ll start by saying that I love this keyboard. It is the best we’ve seen from Razer to date, combining the excellent performance and feel if the standard Chroma V2 but fitting it into a tenkeyless package. The model we reviewed featured Razer Yellow switches, the silent, linear switches with a shorter throw and actuation distance than the more common Orange and Green switches. They feel similar to the excellent Cherry Speed switches if slightly firmer – an odd fact given that both switches feature a 45g actuation force. At any rate, the Yellow switches feel great and fast, for both gaming and typing. Making the keyboard feel even faster is a technology Razer calls I.T.T. Instant Trigger Technology sends the key activation to the PC…

RAZER BLACKWIDOW CHROMA V2 TOURNAMENT EDITION

COOLER MASTER MK 750

It takes a little while to get used to the keyboard commands for changing the lighting on the MK 750. F1-F8 all have different functions for the lighting when combined with the Fn key, from changing the intensity of a hue to changing an actual effect, making it all too easy to turn your keyboard into a strobe light. With that out of the way, however, we can definitely say that Cooler Master has delivered a great looking, feeling and performing keyboard with the MK 750. Our review model came with Cherry Brown switches but the MK750 also comes with Cherry Red and Blue skus. Construction of the keyboard is nice and solid, using a combination of an aluminium top plate and plastic for the base. The comfortable if somewhat…

COOLER MASTER MK 750

THERMALTAKE TT PREMIUM X1 RGB

If it weren’t for the existence of a Tt Esports mousepad, the X1 RGB would be more aptly titled the XL RGB. It’s a big keyboard – full sized with a large bezel on each side, a fairly large magnetic wrist rest and dedicated AV keys and controls for game mode, a windows lock and lighting. The thing has a footprint that takes up a large part of a desk – 465 x 170 x 40mm (approximately). Despite the fact that the keyboard is much bigger than we usually prefer our keyboards to be, we can’t but help sing the praises of this well-built board, Rather than offering the full range of Cherry MX switches (or Kailh switches that have appeared in previous Thermaltake keyboards), the X1 RGB instead focusses…

THERMALTAKE TT PREMIUM X1 RGB

GAMDIAS HERMES P2 RGB

We’ve been really keen to check out our first dedicated optical switch keyboard for quite a while now, and our first experience has turned out to be quite the surprise. We don’t know about you, but when we think optical, we think quiet. Light isn’t known for making too much noise. Imagine our surprise then when we discover that the Hermes P2 RGB is just about the loudest, clickiest keyboard we’ve ever heard. The keyboard features optical switches, yes, but they are Blue optical switches. Noise aside, the Hermes P2 RGB is an excellent keyboard. The keys have a nice resistance and tactile feedback and feel extremely quick under the fingers thanks to the relatively short actuation distance. The build quality of the keyboard is excellent, with a big slab…

GAMDIAS HERMES P2 RGB

UPGRADE TO PERFECT WI-FI

Fed up with flaky Wi-Fi? Treat yourself to a whole-home mesh networking system and enjoy a superfast connection in all corners of your home. These clever extensible kits cover a huge area, and since you can locate the nodes wherever you want – and even add extras as needed – you can be certain of getting a strong signal where it’s needed. Performance is top notch too, leaving traditional wireless repeaters and powerline extenders in the dust. This month, we’ve rounded up every major whole-home Wi-Fikit on the market, and subjected them all to extensive testing to find out which provides the best range and the fastest coverage. Most of these systems can replace your home router, so we’ve also checked out their advanced networking features to help you make…

UPGRADE TO PERFECT WI-FI

MESH NETWORKING YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

WHAT’S THE FUSS ABOUT MESH NETWORKING? You’re probably already familiar with wireless repeaters – low-cost devices that typically sit a room or two away from your router and act as a go-between for devices that are too far away to connect directly. Mesh systems work on the same basic principle, but with a few key differences. One is that, where traditional repeaters piggyback on your existing wireless network, mesh systems use a private radio channel – the “backhaul” – to talk to each other. This means less contention, and better performance, on the public network. (To be clear, though, the speeds you will see advertised are very much theoretical maximums; a system may claim a data rate of 833Mbits/sec, but in actual use you’re unlikely to see a quarter of…

MESH NETWORKING YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Asus’ Lyra mesh networking system is one of the most expensive kits on the market – partly because it comes only as a set of three nodes. Like most mesh extenders, Lyra can be used as a simple wireless bridge, but it’s really intended to replace your existing router. Once you’ve hooked up the power, and connected one of the discs (it doesn’t matter which) to your modem, setup is very easy, thanks to an app for Android and iOS that walks you through the process. Some of the instructions are in slightly broken English, but it’s all pleasingly clear and unambiguous. Then it’s just a case of positioning the other two discs around your home. The app includes a helpful signal strength meter, so you can quickly sniff out…

Google’s own-brand Wi-Fisystem scores points right away for its elegant design. The nodes look like chunky little layer cakes, with a coloured LED strip sandwiched tastefully between two white plastic pucks. The power and Ethernet sockets are discreetly hidden away on the underside, and each unit measures just 104mm in diameter, so they’re easy to squeeze onto busy work surfaces or shelves. Setup is a breeze too. Having unboxed ten different mesh systems this month, I can confidently say that Google’s process was the slickest. The Android app found my nodes almost instantly, and connected by simply scanning a QR code on the base of the one connected to my fibre modem. Once up and running, you can browse connected devices with a tap, monitor their bandwidth usage and even…

Most whole-home networking systems operate two 5GHz wireless networks in parallel. There’s the public Wi-Fisystem, which is the one your personal devices can see and connect to – and then there’s a second invisible, private network called the backhaul, which the router and nodes use to forward traffic to and from one another. Splitting traffic up helps minimise contention, and it can also have a significant impact on performance. While backhaul bandwidth certainly isn’t the only factor affecting wireless speeds, a fast, dedicated backhaul tends to correlate with a fast overall connection. And, if you really want to get the very best out of your mesh system, it’s possible to give it an extra boost by replacing the wireless backhaul with a wired connection. Clearly, this isn’t always an elegant…

DEVOLO GIGAGATE

Devolo’s GigaGate isn’t a typical mesh networking device. For one thing it’s an extender-only design that partners your router, rather than replacing it. That means you don’t need to reconfigure your LAN IP settings, and the simpler design keeps the cost down, too. What’s more unusual is that it’s designed with more of a focus on wired clients than wireless ones. The satellite unit offers five Ethernet sockets, but only broadcasts 802.11n Wi-Fion the 2.4GHz band: the 5GHz band is entirely reserved for the backhaul connection. As a result, while the GigaGate certainly managed to extend wireless coverage all over my home, it was far slower than the 802.11ac networks provided by other mesh kits. Indeed, if your internet connection is rated at 40Mbits/sec or above, it’s likely that a…

DEVOLO GIGAGATE

The Velop was one of the first home mesh kits to arrive on the scene, and it feels like a mature bit of networking hardware. Although you can’t customise the IP range, it defaults to 192.168.1.x, so your existing assignments should continue to work. Advanced features like port forwarding are supported too, plus port range triggering, so applications can communicate on custom ports without manual configuration. Internally, the Velop has a similar arrangement of radios to the Asus Lyra – that is, a dedicated 867Mbits/ sec wireless backhaul, serving up a 400Mbits/sec 2.4GHz network plus 867Mbits/sec 802.11ac wireless over a claimed area of 560m2. Unlike the Lyra, though, the Velop lets you split up the two bands into separate SSIDs, rather than trusting the unit’s built-in band-steering technology. The Velop…

Uniquely, Netgear’s Orbi system comes in two sizes: the smaller RBK40 kits promise 370m2 of dual-band coverage over a 867Mbits/sec backhaul, while the larger RBK50 units – the ones we’ve tested here – increase coverage to 460m2 with double the backhaul bandwidth. They’re imposing things, standing a full 8in tall. They’re not exactly ugly, though, and the upright design means their footprint isn’t difficult to accommodate. Bigger also tends to mean better when it comes to radio performance, and I got a good signal between the two nodes even when placed at opposite ends of the house. While overall the Orbi’s wireless connection wasn’t quite this month’s fastest, performance was very strong almost everywhere. Download speeds dropped off a little in the bathroom, but even there I got a great…

TP-LINK DECO M5

The Deco branding suggests artistry – but, if you ask me, TP-Link’s bland little discs look like cheap smoke detectors. Nor did they dazzle with their performance: the Deco M5 system did succeed in banishing wireless dead spots in my home, but other kits gave far better performance, including several two-node arrangements. The issue, it seems, is to do with the architecture of the Deco M5 network. A single 867Mbits/sec 5GHz connection is used for both clients and backhaul, meaning there’s a limited amount of bandwidth to go around. This also has an impact on Ethernet performance: the node in the kitchen gave me wired download speeds of a mediocre 36.6MB/sec, and the disc at the back of the house could manage only half that data rate. The Android app…

TP-LINK DECO M5

UBIQUITI AMPLIFI

While most mesh kits consist of two or three identical units, Ubiquiti’s AmpliFiHD system partners up a sophisticated router with two mesh nodes. The former features a nifty circular touchscreen, which lets you check up on your network status with just a few taps. Round the back you’ll also find five Gigabit Ethernet sockets, one of which connects to your modem. The nodes are much more basic, with just a few LEDs showing signal strength. Surprisingly, they don’t even have Ethernet: if you want to use wired devices, the official solution is to buy a pricey second router. Setting up the AmpliFiHD system was easy enough, but once everything was in place I noticed that the node at the rear of the house had decided to connect directly to the…

UBIQUITI AMPLIFI

REPLACING YOUR ROUTER

1 Before you even unbox your new mesh system, skim through your existing router’s administration pages and make a note of any important-looking settings – such as your broadband username and password details, if your ISP requires these to connect to the internet. You don’t want to get halfway through the installation process only to have to reinstall your old router to dig out a missing piece of information. 2 If you have devices on your network that are using static IP addresses, set them to DHCP before installing your new mesh router. Many whole-home systems insist on using custom IP ranges, and devices with hard-coded IP addresses in a different range won’t be accessible. This is easy to resolve before you’ve decommissioned your old router, but a pain afterwards.…

REPLACING YOUR ROUTER

VIEW FROM THE LABS

It’s little more than a year since I put together our last round up of Wi-Fi extenders – but a lot has changed in that time. Back then, your choice was between a wallmounted repeater and a powerline system; there was no such thing as a domestic mesh networking kit. Now there are enough mesh systems on sale to warrant an entire Labs of their own. The appeal of the mesh approach is obvious. The multi-node topology ensures you’ll get a good Wi-Fisignal in the locations that matter most, while a dedicated backhaul channel makes for unbeatable performance. Mesh gear has a downside, though, and that’s the price. Our Labs Winner back in 2016 was the TP-Link RE450 repeater, which can nowadays be had for just $110. It’s not quite…

VIEW FROM THE LABS

TAKING SPORT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

We know technology has flaws: security experts have been hacking connected cars for years. But that requires uncommon skills, knowledge and nerve; why not just paint a circle of road markings around it, trapping it? That’s an idea from artist James Bridle, whose Autonomous Trap 001 is simply a circle in salt, with broken lines on the outside and a continuous line on the inside – which a driverless car would interpret to mean it can enter the circle, but not leave. Watching elite athletes run, leap and score, it’s hard to imagine there’s much room for improvement, but the Internet of Things, Big Data and virtual reality are shaving milliseconds from sprinters, extending the jump of Olympians – and helping your favourite striker put the ball in the net.…

TAKING SPORT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

THE WORLD’S MOST TECH-SAVVY OLYMPIC GAMES

The Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, not only featured the best skiers and skaters, but top-end tech, too. Here are the highlights of the robots, networking and more on show at what is surely the highest-tech Olympic games yet – helped along by a partnership with Intel. ROBOTS EVERYWHERE The Olympic torch relay signals the beginning of each round of the games, but day 41 of the march to Pyeongchang wasn’t quite the norm: a robot dubbed HUBO made by the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology punched through a wall, picked up the torch, and carried it a few steps before passing it off to its own designer, professor Dennis Hong. The robot has voice recognition, a vision system, and can roll around or climb stairs, helping…

THE WORLD’S MOST TECH-SAVVY OLYMPIC GAMES

CIVILIZATION VI: RISE AND FALL

Rise & Fall isn’t an overhaul of Civ VI. Instead its core new features are additions to the mix that are not intended to fundamentally reconfigure your strategies, but rather encourage players into considering different approaches. Overall, I think, the design goal is to introduce a little more push and pull between the competing systems, a little more flexibility and even unpredictability to the arc of a single play session. The new feature that best reflects the expansion’s title is the Golden Age, in which players rack up points for their empire’s achievements - e.g. eliminating a barbarian camp, circumnavigating the world, building a unique unit, and so on. Qualify for a Golden Age and you’re rewarded with bonuses and a lovely yellow hue to your empire. Fail and you…

CIVILIZATION VI: RISE AND FALL

WHERE THE WATER TASTES LIKE WINE

Stories grow with the telling. What may start out as 100% true warps over time, becoming mythologised and far grander than it once was. A story can, through retelling, become a legend, and that myth can then go on to influence other stories in turn, creating a new mythology. At its core, this is what Where the Water Tastes like Wine is all about. Sometime in the early 1930s, a hobo loses a card game to a wolf and becomes its servant, travelling America collecting and telling stories in the hopes of finding a true, important story that can affect the myth that is America. It’s a somewhat bizarre premise for a game, but one that leads to some rather wonderful moments. Stripped of flesh and appearing on the map…

WHERE THE WATER TASTES LIKE WINE

KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE

When you nominate “realism”, “authenticity” and “historical accuracy” as core pillars of the design philosophy upon which your open world RPG is built, you inevitably invite scrutiny. The real world can be a cruel yardstick against which digital simulations almost always fail to measure up. Yet at the same, as players, we tend to be easy to impress. When it comes to realism, close enough can be good enough. Kingdom Come: Deliverance cuts it fine a lot of the time, and misses the mark by a wide margin in some areas, but when it really hits it’s a triumph. Developer Warhorse Studios is based on the Czech Republic and they’ve chosen to explore a part of their own history here, recreating the rolling green hills, thick forests and mud-soaked villages…

KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE

There are two updates this month, we see the HP Spectre 13 (review page 42) replacing the still excellent HP Spectre x360 15, while the Epson Ecotank ET-4750 (review page 64) replaces the Kyocera Ecosys P5026CDN. PREMIUM LAPTOPS DELL XPS 13 Ultraportable from $1,599 Dell only needed to refine its brilliant XPS 13 design to keep top spot, and that’s what it does: it’s slightly quicker and adds more options, but it’s the edge -to-edge 13.3in display and compact chassis that lift it above the opposition. Oh, and it’s now available in Rose Gold. ALTERNATIVES MICROSOFT SURFACE BOOK 2 A unique and versatile laptop with a screen that detaches to become a tablet. From $2,199 from microsoft.com/store LENOVO YOGA 920 An ultra-thin convertible from Lenovo that not only looks great,…

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THE ACCESS KEY HOW TO GET YOUR FREE APPS Simply visit www.apps.pcauthority.com.au and enter the unique Access Key for this issue of PC & Tech Authority, along with your email address. The access key for this issue is: qNGjyha3RP. You can then view the current apps and download, install and register (if required) them. That’s it, simple. We hope you get good use from the apps! TROUBLESHOOTING AND CONTACT INFO We have general help information on the PCTA Apps site (www.apps.pcauthority.com.au). If you are having trouble using the Access key or are having issues registering the Apps please contact us via feedback@pcauthority.com. au. Please note that we can’t help you with any issues you might have using the apps themselves, but each app has specific contact information for the company…

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“APPLE IS DOING EXACTLY WHAT EVERYONE IN THE PC MARKETHAS BEEN DOING FOR A DECADE OR MORExs”

The news has well and truly broken: Apple is varying the CPU speed of older iPhones to preserve battery life. The first inklings of this came from geekbench.com, where you can download and run its excellent benchmarks. We use them in my lab all the time: they’re a reliable, repeatable set of performance evaluation tools. The benchmark uploads the results to the Geekbench site, where you can compare the performance of your device to thousands of others. And it was from this that researchers at Geekbench noticed something odd. Not all devices from the same family of Apple model were running at the same speed. As they aged, a proportion were running at slower CPU clock speeds, with some samples running considerably slower than the majority of identical products. There…

“APPLE IS DOING EXACTLY WHAT EVERYONE IN THE PC MARKETHAS BEEN DOING FOR A DECADE OR MORExs”

“THERE’S PLENTY OF SCAREMONGERING ABOUT GDPR, ESPECIALLY BY FIRMS TRYING TO SELL COMPLIANCE ‘SOLUTIONS’”

Do you know what GDPR is? I doubt that many readers of my Australian readers of this column will be familiar with it as it is a European initiative, but it’s an interesting topic that could well influence the way we ecommerce is conducted in further reaches around the world. That said, I’m also sure that if I asked a hundred of my European friends exactly what GDPR – or General Data Protection Regulation – entails, I’d end up with a hundred different responses. Examples would include: “firms will have to ensure data is held securely”, “firms can’t automatically opt you in to receiving marketing emails, or use pre-ticked boxes on contact forms”, “there will be bigger fines for companies when data breaches happen”. All are true, but there’s more…

“THERE’S PLENTY OF SCAREMONGERING ABOUT GDPR, ESPECIALLY BY FIRMS TRYING TO SELL COMPLIANCE ‘SOLUTIONS’”

“IT WASN’T THAT SEARCHES WEREN’T RETURNING RESULTS; THEY WERE RETURNING TOO MANY RESULTS”

“Whenever somebody tells me the information I need is on SharePoint, my heart sinks” began one focus group participant: “I know I’ll never find it”. There were nods of agreement around the room, with comments that SharePoint was making teamwork harder rather than easier. This was part of a workshop I was running for a client to see how its teams could work more effectively. The client had introduced Microsoft Office 365 18 months ago, driven by expectations that it would streamline work. Now disillusionment had set in, with low levels of adoption and a fear that the organisation was creating a sprawling mess of information without a clear plan or governance. My consulting company had been asked to help get things back on track. When employees say they can’t…

“IT WASN’T THAT SEARCHES WEREN’T RETURNING RESULTS; THEY WERE RETURNING TOO MANY RESULTS”

“I’VE DISCOVERED THAT THE ISRAELI CYBER INDUSTRY IS A CLOSE-KNIT COMMUNITY – AND IN EFFECT FEEDS ITSELF”

I appreciate that life as a journalist-cum-consultant can be perceived as being at the glamorous end of the tech occupation spectrum, and that work trips to far-flung destinations do little to dilute that viewpoint. The truth, of course, is less exciting: arriving at airports earlier than Theresa May on a Brexit mission; long transatlantic flights in cattle class; and listening to men in suits telling you the same thing other men in suits told you last week. On occasion, however, things are different. As it was when I found myself travelling not to San Francisco or Las Vegas, but to the Silicon Valley of the Middle East: Tel Aviv. How successful is Israel in cybersecurity innovation exactly? As 2017 drew to a close, there were around 500 startups in Israel…

“I’VE DISCOVERED THAT THE ISRAELI CYBER INDUSTRY IS A CLOSE-KNIT COMMUNITY – AND IN EFFECT FEEDS ITSELF”

“IT’S STAGGERING HOW FEW PEOPLE HAVE FOLLOWED UP THIS STORY WHEN YOU CONSIDER HOW LARGE A THREAT IT POSED”

I ’m surprised there hasn’t yet been a round in a TV quiz show based on ransomware. The field of knowledge required to understand the threat is varied and quirky, while it’s popular enough that weird, twisted myths circulate about what you should do when an infection becomes apparent. This is a clear marker that we should help people understand how to combat malware when it reaches them – and the traditional forms of mass communication aren’t working. Having a newspaper quote a public sector manager saying that the infected PC “shook, and smoke came out” when the infection took hold isn’t going to help anyone understand anything – except possibly the number of public sector managers who would, under pressure, kneel before their PC and beg its forgiveness. My…

“IT’S STAGGERING HOW FEW PEOPLE HAVE FOLLOWED UP THIS STORY WHEN YOU CONSIDER HOW LARGE A THREAT IT POSED”

JON HONEYBALL WONDERS WHETHER THE IPHONE X IS A WORK OF GENIUS OR A HUGE MISTAKE

Before moving to the iPhone X, I was a very happy user of the 7 Plus. The screen was superb, the battery life good, the storage immense and the fingerprint reader worked so well I didn’t think about it. Along came the iPhone X, and I managed to resist the temptation of buying one at launch. I thought I’d wait awhile. Then it became clear that several iOS apps were having problems with screen layout on the X, which meant I needed to buy one for the lab. One such package, from a well-known company, claimed it had been “optimised for iPhone X” for two versions before its developers held a physical phone in their hands. Would this train crash be repeated amongst the broader developer community? I moved my…

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