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79 Articles

AND THE WINNER IS...

I have a request to make of you. Being, if you don’t mind, some of your time please. That, and for you to share with us your opinions. For it is time to vote in the inaugural Australian PC Awards! If you work in the industry, or have a friend that does, you know just how much blood sweat and tears go into creating a product. The months or even years of design, engineering and production time, potentially involving hundreds or people, all add up to create the thing you use and like. You may have met some of these people, perhaps at one of our Upgrade Australia events. You know their passion, you’ve seen their care and commitment. There are people behind every product and if those people see they’ve won…

AND THE WINNER IS...

UPDATING DOWNWARDS First up - love the new look. And I don’t miss the DVD! As a regular subscriber (for at least 15 years!), I like to read comparisons between similar products. It makes it easier for future purchases. But here comes the Tablet Megatest! Awesome - until I found out that Samsung only make one tablet now. What!!??? You explain four different iPads (OK not a fan of Apple) and only one Samsung Tablet. Where are the rest of the tablets being compared? Megatest? Minortest maybe. While I like Samsung tablets (fav is the Galaxy Tab S2 8.4) over the others I have used, I’m pretty sure there are more Android tablets out there than Apple... To the Fall Creators Update - or why break things that don’t need fixing? I have had…

INTEL’S SECRETIVE OS COMES UNDER ATTACK

THE LATEST TRENDS AND PRODUCTS IN THE WORLD OF TECHNOLOGY In the wake of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, Intel and motherboard makers are also fighting a battle to fix a series of vulnerabilities that have shed light on a secretive, controversial operating system that runs in the background of Windows and Linux machines. The Intel Management Engine (IME) and its server relatives are largely undocumented pieces of software that run outside Windows or Linux, but play a significant role in machines sold since 2008. Researchers from security firm Positive Technologies first discovered some of the vulnerabilities, but kept them quiet until Intel had completed a review and eventually prepared fixes for ten vulnerabilities, eight of them classified as high risk. “The vulnerability [we found] lies in the Intel Management Engine, a subsystem built…

INTEL’S SECRETIVE OS COMES UNDER ATTACK

WHY BATTLEFIELD ROYALE IS THE ONLY LOGICAL PUBG CLONE

THE NETCODE IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE PUBG has a terrible netcode. Game updates seem to shift between making it markedly better and identifiably worse, but the fact it’s built on a 20Hz tickrate means you take damage (or die) behind cover. It’s impossible to trade kills (unless you throw/drop a grenade before dying), the hit registration is iffy at times, and I swear shotgun ballistics are a single circular projectile instead of a circle of pellets. BATTLEFIELD IS ALREADY DIFFERENT TO PUBG For Battlefield Royale to feel like a Battlefield game, it should have infantry and vehicular combat, destructibility, more of a class-based approach to soldiery, and neat little features like 3D spotting. Out of the gate, a battle royale mode or spin-off would feel different to PUBG than cheeky modes like…

WHY BATTLEFIELD ROYALE IS THE ONLY LOGICAL PUBG CLONE

CPU MELTDOWN AND SPECTRE Speculation. Every modern processor for the past decade and longer uses it to run multiple possible future code paths simultaneously. The benefit being that whichever decision the software or the user ends up taking the CPU has already calculated the next result and simply discards the wrong/undesired path result, allowing the CPU to effectively run ahead and get ready, making it appear as though it is executing faster. This is a widely used function that is in most architectures and processors from PC’s to your phone. While this is a secure process, two vulnerabilities dubbed Meltdown and Spectre where revealed by Google’s Project Zero that shook that perception. While a CPU is running these speculative paths the state of the processor changes enough that by analysing this it’s possible…

PETCHATZ HD If we don’t occasionally celebrate wanton abasement of technology, how can we appreciate all the good things? PetChatz HD is almost offensively ridiculous, yet in a world where Nissan offers the X-Trail 4Dogs (with built-in dog shower and treat dispenser), PetChatz HD will most likely make a brazilian dollars. MOST WANTED: Does your dog suffer from anxiety? Does it need automated aromatherapy to help alleviate that? Does it need a little remote with a picture of a pawprint on it, so your dumb dog knows if it presses the remote with its own paw, whatever irrelevant non-dog-doting thing you are currently doing will be interrupted by the PetChatz HD app on your smartphone so you will be able to reassure your dog via full colour hd IP video link? Then…

Ah CES. The annual tech fair that rarely disappoints in showing off new and upcoming tech and products. There’s a plethora of products and tech that could easily fill this entire magazine with if we’re to cover it all, but these three things caught my attention the most. First cab off the rank is the huge 65in monitor revealed by Nvidia. Yes monitor, not TV, it has no tuners inbuilt. If you live in a world where your monitor needs to be bigger than your desk this thing brings just about everything to the table, so to speak. It has: 4K resolution with up to 120Hz refresh rates, quantum dot technology enabling HDR support with 1000 NITS peak brightness, variable refresh rates via G-sync, ultra-low latency, Display Port and HDMI inputs, and…

JOHN, TI COMPUTERS: “CES 2018 is full of surprises with future technologies. We are especially interested in the new AiMesh technology introduced by Asus. We are excited to be able to offer custom built MESH network solution to suit the very need of our customers utilizing AiMesh. On the other hand, we also see significant improvements in display technology, whether that is colour with new backlight technologies or size. One thing we found quite interesting is the ASUS bezel-free kit that makes multi-monitor setups seamless. It is exciting to finally see monitor vendors working on something to make the multi-monitor setups seamless. I am sure this will be an interesting option that we can offer to our customers when they are ready to order.”…

PLE COMPUTERS CRUSADE INTEL CUSTOM HOME PC $1,353 • https://tinyurl.com/y7phe9eh Needing a family computer or home office PC? This could be it. With a dual core processor this isn’t designed for heavy lifting compute work but with its static 3.9GHz clock speed it’ll be snappy and responsive for any generally light tasks like browsing or office document manipulation. The included SSD is a nice size for an operating system, programs and whatever you might want to put on the desktop or document folders, letting you save the slower 1TB hard drive for longer term mass storage. The sleek case will keep this system looking nice in a shared user space. The strange part of the build is the GPU. It’s the lowest end Nvidia card so you won’t be doing much gaming. KEY SPECS CPU:…

LOOKING INTO BENCHMARKS

Benchmarking the performance of systems has been part of product reviews for a couple of decades. Whether you’re looking a PC, smartphone, NAS or tablet, one of the easiest ways to compare different products is to use standardised tests across different devices in a class to make comparisons easy. Apple’s recent battery life and performance woes were revealed after benchmarks were carried out on devices before and after a battery replacement. This led to the revelation that Apple was throttling device performance as battery life diminished. We saw a different type of benchmark, emissions testing, “gamed” by Volkswagen in 2015 when the German car-maker rigged a bunch of vehicles to put out false results that made the cars seem that they emitted less nitrogen-based oxides into the atmosphere. Look at reviews in PC…

LOOKING INTO BENCHMARKS

So. Crypto. It’s been a bit in the news lately, primarily because Bitcoin -- and in turn the altcoins -- have been crashing. Every man and his economist has been coming out the woodwork commenting on how it’s a bubble and cryptocurrency is dead and all it’s been a vast, interesting, but none-the-less waste of time experiment. Which is of course, absolutely not the textbook reaction to change. The truth is all pundits -- myself included -- are not equipped to prophecise the future of cryptocurrencies. The reason is simple: the world has never seen them before. There is no prior art, no prior guide. While human behaviour gives us some insight into traditional predictive movements on the wild-west markets where cryptocurrencies are currently traded, this does not mean they behave…

802.11AX EXPLAINED

Happy New Year to all our readers, hope you each managed to get in some relaxation over the Christmas holiday period, and are refreshed and back into the swing of things for 2018. Samantha sent in an email over the break asking whether she would need to purchase a new router in the next few months as she spotted some of the announcements out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in Las Vegas in early January. She has just purchased a new 802.11ac router, but saw announcements for the new 802.11ax technology and wants to know whether her new product is obsolete! I was lucky enough to attend CES and got to see first-hand these new products using this latest draft WI-FI standard, but I’m happy to report that, whilst 802.11ax…

802.11AX EXPLAINED

MAKE YOUR HOME SMARTER

The big problem with talking about the smart home is the damage that predictive articles have done. Read about how the world is getting smarter, and it’s full of examples of things that we’ll be able to do in the future, such as a robot to do the cooking for you or a fridge that re-orders food. We’re not interested in what the future might hold, but rather the smart products that you can buy today that genuinely make your house smarter, more efficient and more secure. There’s not been a better time to kit out your home. Thanks to fast, alwayson internet connections and ubiquitous Wi-Fi, we’ve all got the backbone to run everything from smart thermostats and lighting systems to powerful security systems. More importantly, the way we control devices has…

MAKE YOUR HOME SMARTER

HOW A SMART HOME WORKS

SMART HOME COMPONENTS First, and most important, are the actual smart home components. These are the devices such as smart thermostats, smart light bulbs, video cameras, smart plugs that you can turn on and off, and even robotic vacuum cleaners. A smart device is one that you can communicate with via your home network and over the internet. Every smart device is controllable via a dedicated smartphone app, giving you full access to each product’s full set of features. Over the next few pages we’ll help you choose the products that will work best for your home. OBSERVING PROTOCOL To be controlled from your phone or a voice assistant, smart devices have to connect to your home network. For some that means they have a built-in Wi-Fi connection, connecting like a traditional laptop or…

HOW A SMART HOME WORKS

SMART LIGHT BULBS PHILIPS HUE $144 Philips Hue is the best-known smart light bulb system, and the best. The cheapest starter kit gets you the Hue Bridge and two white bulbs; you can buy more expensive kits with temperature or colourchanging bulbs. Philips supports most light fittings (bayonet, E27, E14 and GU10, plus there are LED strips), and has the widest range of wireless strips. There’s a range of wireless controls, including a remote light switch and motion sensor, too. Every voice assistant is supported, as is IFTTT. SMART OUTDOOR CAMERA NETATMO PRESENCE $499 Netatmo Presence is a great outdoor security camera. It can tell the difference between people, animals and cars, cutting down on the number of false alarms you get. Its recognition skills mean that you can set it to have the…

BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS

Building a smarter home should result in something useful, rather than something elaborate that you use only occasionally. For that reason, we believe that the best way to get started with a smart home is to begin with the core components: lighting, heating and security. Each offers advantages over their ‘dumb’ compatriots, ranging from better cost management and efficiency to easier methods of control. With these bits of kit, you’ll notice key advantages over older types of product. We’ll walk you through each component in turn. SMART LIGHTING As well as making it more convenient and easier to set your light levels (who wants to get up from the sofa anyway?), a smart lighting system has lots of benefits over traditional lighting. For starters, it’s more secure, as you can have lights…

BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS

VOICE ASSISTANTS

Voice assistants are big business, with Apple, Google and Amazon all keen to give you voice-activated control of your life. The table opposite gives you an overview of each system, but here we’ll talk you through what they’re capable of. SOUND OFF Voice assistants for the home usually come as a smart speaker system, which looks like a Bluetooth speaker. The main difference is that these devices have an always-on microphone that lets you control the device by talking to it. To activate the speaker, you say the wake-up phrase or word, followed by a command. For example, “Alexa, what’s the weather like today?” will get you a local weather forecast. Both Google (Hey, Google) and Apple (Hey, Siri) use two-word wake-up phrases, which cuts down on false activations; Alexa can go off…

VOICE ASSISTANTS

How to control your home with Alexa

Using Alexa to control your smart home is straightforward and easy once you know all of the tricks. To follow this guide, you’ll need an Echo device and a compatible smart home device. We’re using Philips Hue light bulbs for this demonstration. 1 ADD YOUR SKILL Open the Alexa app and tap the menu bar (three horizontal buttons) and then Smart Home. Tap Smart Home Skills and select Enable Skills. Scroll through the list or use the search bar to find the Skill you want. 2 ENABLE SKILL Tap your selected Skill and choose Enable. At the login page, enter your authentication details for your chosen service. Follow the instructions to authorise Alexa. When complete, you’ll see a message saying you can close the window, so tap the ‘X’ icon. Alexa will now prompt…

How to control your home with Alexa

IFTTT AND SMARTTHINGS

One of the biggest issues with the smart home is that devices largely act by themselves, controlled via their distinct apps. While voice assistants can help unify control, talking to a speaker isn’t always easy, and the current assistants don’t work with all devices, or give you any automation controls. Fortunately, there are other options for unifying your smart home: IFTTT and Samsung SmartThings. IFTTT If This Then That (IFTTT) is a great way to make your smart home devices talk to each other. This cloud-based service is free; you can sign up for your own account at ifttt.com. IFTTT uses Applets, which make things happen in your home. The ‘if this’ part is known as a trigger, and the subsequent action is the ‘then that’ part. For example, you can create an…

How to create an IFTTT Applet

The best thing about IFTTT is that it’s exceptionally easy to use and control, but here we’ll show you how to create your first recipe to help you understand the system. In this guide, we’ll show you how to automatically turn off your heating when it gets too warm outside; other recipes follow a similar structure, so get creative to get the results that you want. We recommend reading through the list of triggers and actions for all your devices to see exactly what they can do. 1 CREATE A NEW APPLET Go to the IFTTT site and log into your account. Click My Applets and then click New Applet. This will give you the main Applet screen, which says, ‘if +this then that’. 2 ADD A TRIGGER Click the +this link to add…

How to create an IFTTT Applet

The ‘mini PCs’ we have in this month’s Labs are certainly diverse. It’s an odd category and we have lumped in together some products that, on face value, really don’t belong under one umbrella. But it’s the shared versatility of these devices that brings them together. Many people, many of you, perhaps, may use these as a media controller of some sort – a task these quiet, low power and compact devices are particularly well suited to. We also know how popular these are as a form of desktop replacement. Excluding the hobby boards, of course. For simple productivity needs that don’t ask much of the PC’s power they meet the needs of many at a very affordable cost. They’re deployed in enterprise in a big way, where a fixed set…

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 testing software,…

INTEL OPTANE 900P 280GB

Having waited eight months since Intel’s tantalising but ultimately lacklustre tiny Optane Memory SSDs, we’ve finally got our hands on the consumer product that 3D Xpoint (“cross point”) deserved from the start in Intel’s newest Optane 900P series, which is currently selling in 280GB and 480GB capacities. Now an add-in card (and later in U.2 form factor), the newest Optane line-up now has four lanes (up from two) of PCIe 3.0 bandwidth to play with and a rather beefy full-length passive heatsink onboard that hides the fact that these drives use the same controller as the enterprise grade P4800X Optane drives Intel launched at the same time as the consumer Optane Memory products. With an enterprise controller you’d think that this drive might sacrifice some performance for endurance and stability that…

INTEL OPTANE 900P 280GB

MICROSOFT SURFACE BOOK 2

The original Surface Book was an odd fish in a sea of 2-in-1 convertibles. Microsoft’s first attempt at building a “proper laptop”, it was an innovative design for an expensive price. While gaining plenty of plaudits for the unique way its lid detached from the keyboard base, it never matched the Surface Pro for breakthrough popularity. So, after the Surface Laptop’s release last year, you might have forgiven Microsoft for shelving its ambitious detachable and focusing on devices with more established mass market appeal. Not a bit of it: the Surface Book is back for another bite of the do-everything laptop cherry, and it’s just as mad, bad and expensive as before. What’s different? Well, the new 15in version is the most interesting development – but that’s the version we don’t have…

MICROSOFT SURFACE BOOK 2

LENOVO YOGA 920

With a 13.9in Full HD screen, Dolby Atmos sound, an eighth-generation Intel Core chip and looks to kill, Lenovo’s Yoga 920 is a premium convertible with plenty of attractions – not to mention a special edition with a 4K screen. The $1,899 version of the Yoga 920 include a Core i5- 8250U processor and 256GB, but an extra $600 buys you a Core i7-8550U and 16GB of RAM as tested here. Whichever you choose, there’s no way to upgrade the RAM later. The 4k screen and 512GB SSD model goes for $2,999. Pick up the Yoga 920 and it feels like a premium laptop. Despite shaving 1mm from the design of its predecessor, the Lenovo Yoga 910, the all-aluminium unibody chassis is rock-solid. It’s tastefully slim at 14mm and weighs a…

LENOVO YOGA 920

HP ENVY X360 15-BQ100AU 15.6IN 2-IN-1 LAPTOP

For a decade, if you wanted a laptop with decent specs and useful battery life, it was going to have an Intel CPU in it. AMD was missing in action when it came to laptop CPUs, releasing a handful of lukewarm chips that ended up in budget machines. With AMD’s new Ryzen platform, they’re back in the laptop game and HP are amongst the first OEMs to release a laptop using it. The laptop in question is the HP Envy x360 2-in-1, which besides the internals, is practically identical to the Intel based HP Envy x360. Same dimensions, same weight, same Bang & Olufsen speakers, backlit keyboard and 15in 1080p touchscreen with stylus support that can fold all the way around. An SD card reader, 1x USB 3.1 Type-C, 2x USB…

HP ENVY X360 15-BQ100AU 15.6IN 2-IN-1 LAPTOP

D-LINK DSL-5300 COBRA AC5300 MU-MIMO WI-FI MODEM ROUTER

The D-Link Cobra DSL-5300 is not an aesthetically pleasing Wi-Fi router. The weird triangle shape, the colour, the eight (yes, eight!) external antennas fit into absolutely nobody’s home decor, unless they live in a dungeon where it can co-ordinate with the other arachnids. With that out of the way, we can take a proper look at the technical features of this high-spec unit. Inside the DSL-5300 is an NBN FTTN VDSL modem, a four-port Gigabit Ethernet switch and three discrete Wi-Fi radios. One for 2.4GHz and two for 5GHz. Why two 5GHz radios? Consider this scenario: Six devices in your house, all on 5GHz. Instead of all six using the one radio, the devices are automatically spread across both radios, three on each. This reduces the load on a single radio…

D-LINK DSL-5300 COBRA AC5300 MU-MIMO WI-FI MODEM ROUTER

QNAP TS-453BT3 NA

QNAP’s latest 4-bay NAS is best described as the hot rod of the NAS market. There’s an insane amount of I/O bandwidth on the TS-453BT3, as it packs dual Thunderbolt 3 ports, space for two M.2 SATA SSDs and a 10 Gigabit Ethernet port in one little package. Interestingly, the Intel J3455 CPU included in the TS-453BT3 is rather midrange, considering the crazy amount of I/O and the 8GB of RAM (2x DDR3-L SO-DIMMs). The ideal scenario for the TS-453BT3 is in a video production workflow. Those Thunderbolt 3 ports on the front are there so the NAS act in practice as a big & fast external HDD for the computer connected to it. With up to 40 Gbps of bandwidth, no matter which disks you install in the NAS, you’ll…

QNAP TS-453BT3 NA

SYNOLOGY DISKSTATION DS118

The DS118 is a mid-range ARM based NAS, which means it’s cheaper to make, uses less electricity (a meagre 9.4W when accessed, 4.22W when idle) and generates less heat, but is generally less powerful than an Intel CPU based NAS and has a slightly smaller selection of apps. For most people, this isn’t an issue, but if you have a specific app in mind to run on your NAS (i.e: Plex Media Server), check there’s an ARM version before you take the plunge. Despite it only has a single drive bay, the DS118 is like virtually every other Synology NAS out there. It runs the latest version of Synology’s classleading DiskStation Manager operating system and is full featured, again, except for the bits that don’t work on ARM (i.e: BTRFS support).…

SYNOLOGY DISKSTATION DS118

CRUCIAL MX500 1TB SSD

Technologically speaking, the SATA SSD market has been pretty stagnant over the last couple of years. NAND flash shortages in 2017 have also somewhat bottlenecked the industry. The rise of PCI Express based NVMe drives with their performance advantages means that older SATA based drives typically don’t grab the headlines anymore. SATA drives still make up the largest part of the SSD market though, and competition remains fierce. Now that the supply situation is improving, the conditions are ripe for a market shakeup and Crucial has fired the first shot of 2018 in the form of the aggressively priced MX500 SSD. Even at launch the MX500 is one of the cheapest 1TB drives on the market. That alone makes it a solid recommendation, though the MX500 is far from being…

CRUCIAL MX500 1TB SSD

The jump from 1080p to 1440p may not sound much, but actually doubles the number of pixels. That’s why 1440p monitors tend to be substantialy more expensive than Full HD alternatives, especially 32in monsters such as this one. Even if the AOC Q3279VWF had such shocking image quality it made you want to cry, for only $380 you’d still feel like you grabbed something of a bargain. Especially considering the panel natively runs at 75Hz and comes with AMD FreeSync, providing a smoother experience for gamers compared to a regular 60Hz monitor. Before you buy, though, make sure you have space. This display consumes 730 x 425 x 153mm at its most compact, and compared to the Philips opposite it’s a shot putter versus a gymnast: the stand only tilts by…

ACER WINDOWS MIXED REALITY HEADSET AND AND MOTION CONTROLLER

Here’s a game. Think of a technology company, any company. Got one? Then chances are it will be launching a virtual or augmented reality headset in 2018, if it hasn’t already. But it’s Microsoft that hopes to be the beating heart at the centre, with Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung all building headsets for its mixed reality platform on Windows 10. I’ve already played with the Dell Visor and Lenovo Explorer, but the eloquently named Acer Windows Mixed Reality Headset is the first to go on sale here – and the first one we’ve been able to properly test, away from a demo booth. It makes a good start: Acer’s headset is lightweight and has enough space inside to slip comfortably over my glasses. Build quality feels a little cheap,…

ACER WINDOWS MIXED REALITY HEADSET AND AND MOTION CONTROLLER

XIAOMI MI MIX 2

First, let’s address the elephant in the room. Right now, the only way to buy the Mi Mix 2 is through an international Chinese gadget retailer: we found the best prices from GearBest, which at the time of writing – prices jump up and down – charged $616 for the 64GB model, $763 for 128GB and $883 for 256GB. One caveat is that this product is being shipped from China, so it won’t arrive overnight. So why bother? Simply because this phone – based on an original design by Philippe Starke – is gorgeous, from its ceramic body to its gold-coloured trim to its edge-to-edge screen. It’s fast, too, powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with 6GB of RAM. After the Apple A11 Bionic chip, the 835 is the…

XIAOMI MI MIX 2

ASUS AIMESH IS MESH WI-FI THE CLEVER WAY

Mesh Wi-Fi is a fantastic way to make sure your home or small office is fully covered in Wi-Fi goodness. No messy or expensive to install Ethernet cables. No worrying about which electrical circuits run where so you can use finicky Ethernet Over Power devices and no separate Wi-Fi networks that take ages to switch over with wireless range extender. If you’ve got dead spots or unreliable signal, mesh networking is the quick and easy answer. With AiMesh, Asus is bringing this game changing technology for free to a range of its wireless routers, opening the upgrade path for your existing investments. AiMesh makes the most of your existing hardware, mixing different Asus router models to create a mesh of devices, so when you upgrade your router, just add the compatible…

ASUS AIMESH IS MESH WI-FI THE CLEVER WAY

PLANNING FOR MESH

SOME TIPS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN PLANNING YOUR AIMESH NETWORK INCLUDE: MINIMISING NODES TO REACH THE PRIMARY NODE. When a node must talk to another node to reach the primary node, speeds take a hit. Whilst this scenario works fine, best practice is to make sure each node can communicate directly to the primary node. SOLID 5GHZ RECEPTION BETWEEN NODES. Considering AiMesh utilizes both 5GHz and 2.4GHz at the same time to form a large backhaul, while 5GHz band offers significantly higher bandwidth than 2.4GHz, having better 5GHz reception between nodes yields a better throughput. CHOOSE THE ROUTER WITH THE FASTEST PROCESSOR AND MOST RAM TO BE THE PRIMARY NODE. Managing a mesh network requires more computing resources than usual, so by using the fastest device to be the primary node, throughput will be maximised.…

GOOGLE PIXEL BUDS

At times, using Google’s Pixel Buds feels like gazing into the future. When you press your ear and ask how to say something in Russian, and Google Assistant chirps back a phrase, it’s hard not to be impressed. Not that I’m in any position to tell if this is an accurate translation – for all I know, it might just be saying “Google Plus is better than Facebook” – but the magic is there, and the magic feels real. The trouble with things feeling like the future, though, is that they’re demonstrably not cut out for the present. Google’s Pixel Buds shouldn’t be in your present. Not yet. Not in their current form. There’s potential here, but as things stand, this feels more Google Wave than Google Docs. Here’s why. LOOPY DESIGN Like…

GOOGLE PIXEL BUDS

$220 •www.apple.com/au •Score: 5/5 Just like the original white iPod earphones, the AirPods have a unique, recognisably Apple design. There’s no physical connection between the two pods, with each sitting individually in your ears, with no physical controls at all: you pause audio by tapping on a pod and invoke Siri by double-tapping. The audio cleverly pauses if you remove either AirPod from your ear. Apple gives a rough guideline of five hours battery life, which is fair in my experience. However, they come with a nifty little charging case, shaped like a stubby TicTac box, that flips open to hold the earphones and incorporates its very own battery. Expect around 24 hours of continuous use. You also get “smart” Bluetooth pairing: to pair them with your iOS device, simply flip open the…

$150 •www.beatsbydre.com/au • Score: 4/5 The BeatsX’s two earpods are connected via a cable that wraps around your neck. Two plastic blobs sit either side of your neck that contain batteries, the on/off button, and a Lightning port for charging (you get around eight hours per charge). Also on the left is a set of physical controls in a plastic lozenge that houses the microphone. To my ears, the BeatsX offer a superior – and definitely louder – sound than the AirPods, in part because they’re a true in-ear design. This setup also gives better audio isolation and makes the buds less likely to fall out during exercise. Beats are tuned specifically to have heavier bass and, to my ears, high frequencies. Middle is a bit lacking – there’s no attempt to achieve…

BOSE SOUNDSPORT WIRELESS

$200 •www.bose.com.au •Score: 4/5 With so much competition, they’re doesn’t seem much to recommend this set. Battery life is unexceptional at around six hours. They’re sweat-proof, but not IP-rated. And there are only three pairs of ear tips supplied in the box, so you may not find a snug fit. Most people do, though, and you’ll find the way they sit outside the ear canal – so you can hear what’s going on around you – a sensible approach. In my experience, the rubber wings that hook them into place mean they never fall out. My one caveat is that the battery, remote control and microphone box sits on the part of the cable that leads out from the right-hand earpiece, so, as you bounce down the road, it pulls the cable…

BOSE SOUNDSPORT WIRELESS

SOUNDMAGIC E10BT

$34 • www.amazon.com • Score: 4/5 SoundMagic had already gained many plaudits for its brilliant E10 budget earphones, so it surprised precisely no-one when it released this Bluetooth version. This adds $10 the price, but in return you have a fantastic build quality, a good set of accessories (including a huge selection of eartips and a semi-rigid carry case) and, most importantly, the award-winning sound quality traits from its wired siblings. Its emphasis is on bass and highs, with a warm sound that means you lose subtlety when it comes to vocals. Nor do they support the aptX codec. But thanks to Bluetooth 4.2 support, they do play back 24-bit audio files, have a range of 10m and, ultimately, have an undeniably exciting sound. The right earbud cable has a three-button remote used…

SOUNDMAGIC E10BT

DOCKING STATIONS

USB-C’s adoption has been a little slower than many of us had hoped. The promise of the one cable that can do everything — from networking to displays to data transfer — sounded so good in theory, but the reality has been a little different. In 2018, many popular smartphones, cameras, microphones, and displays are still shipping with legacy cables and ports, so those on the cutting edge of USB-C adoption have found themselves carrying yet more cables, and docks and dongles to go with them. And then there’s the limitations of the port itself. While some docks feature support for multiple monitors or a plethora of peripherals, in real world use, all that data flowing through just one USB port will eventually bottleneck, resulting in slow or dropped data. I’ve had…

DOCKING STATIONS

HUAWEI MATEDOCK USB-C MULTIPORT ADAPTER

I’ve included the Huawei MateDock USB-C Multiport Adapter, despite the fact that Huawei don’t ship the product to Australia. The MateDock was designed to be accompany the Huawei MateBook, and while that isn’t available in Australia, you’ll can import this dock. But it is the dock that lives in my bag at all times. There’s a small USB C cable built into the dock to connect to your laptop, and a USB C port to provide power through to your laptop. On one end are two USB A ports and a Gigabit Ethernet port. On the other side are VGA and HDMI connections. The inclusion of VGA is quite rare in USB C docks, but very handy, considering conference rooms around the country still use this older connection. The unit is around the…

HUAWEI MATEDOCK USB-C MULTIPORT ADAPTER

ATEN USB-C MULTIPORT MINI DOCK

Like the Huawei Dock above, the Aten Mini Dock features VGA for PowerPoint professionals. Also included is Gigabit Ethernet, USB A, and HDMI, for more modern conference rooms. The Aten Multiport Mini seems to live halfway between a backpack dock and a permanent desk solution. It’s a little too bulky to fit nicely in a bag, but is great simple dock to hide behind a monitor, and provide connections to just a keyboard, monitor and wired internet. There’s no USB C power pass-through here, so if you want to use this permanently on your desk, you’ll need to supply a power adaptor for your laptop – and if you have a laptop with just one USB C port, you should look elsewhere. KEY SPECS 1 USB-C Passthrough • 2 USB-A • 1…

ATEN USB-C MULTIPORT MINI DOCK

ATEN USB-C MULTIPORT DOCK

The Aten USB-C Multiport looks like a blocky knock-off of Belkin’s design, and features many of the same ports. There’s three USB A ports in all, Gigabit Ethernet, support for HDMI 2.0 with 4K output, and audio in and out. The dock has its own power supply and can charge over USB C, and features a second USB C port for input. Also included is Display Port, which supports 4K output. In an odd design choice, only one USB A and audio port are front facing, meaning the USB C port to connect to your laptop must snake around from the back – strange for a device designed to reduce clutter on your desk. KEY SPECS 2 USB-C • 3 USB-A • 1 Gigabit Ethernet • 1 DisplayPort • 1 HDMI • 1…

ATEN USB-C MULTIPORT DOCK

LASER USB C MULTI PORT HUB

There are hundreds of USB-C docks that look identical to Laser’s pocket sized multi-port hub, I assume they all roll of the same production line in Shenzhen, only to be rebranding but companies around the world. I’ve included Laser’s version because the Australian company provides an Australian warranty, and stock is easy to find in places like Big W, or on Laser’s online store. Once again, the design mimics the MacBook Pro, the unit is exactly the depth of Apple’s laptop. The dock provides two USB A ports, a MicroSD and Regular SD card reader, and a USB C port that supports power through to the laptop, handy for laptops with just one USB-C port. I used to keep this in my backpack purely for SD Card transfers, and while transfer…

LASER USB C MULTI PORT HUB

BELKIN USB-C 3.1 EXPRESS DOCK HD

Beautifully made, with the power to charge a laptop with no extra adaptors needed, the Belkin is a good choice for those who want a permanent desktop solution with a single 4K monitor Belkin have a close relationship with Apple, and this dock looks like it was designed with the MacBook Pro in mind. The USB-C 3.1 Express Dock HD is a remix of Belkin’s Thunderbolt 3 Dock, and provides almost as many features, at a lower price. It supports one monitor at 4K HDMI output, 60watts of power, three USB A ports and Gigabit Ethernet. Finally, there are two audio in ports. I was able to test this, briefly, with a 4K monitor, and the dock worked without a hitch. Belkin’s key feature is the dock is smart enough to…

BELKIN USB-C 3.1 EXPRESS DOCK HD

ALOGIC TRIPLE DISPLAY HYBRID DOCKING STATION

The bigger brother of the Alogic dock features USB C, allowing connections to Apple’s MacBook Pro line, and highend PC laptops like the Dell XPS series, and HP’s Elitebooks. The Alogic Triple Display loses none of the enterprise aesthetic of the smaller Universal Docking station, right down to the colour coded microphone and headphone ports on the front. Rounding off the front of the device, for easy access, are two USB A ports, and one USB C port, that connects to your laptop. If you connect via traditional USB 3.0 type A, you’ll need a separate power adaptor for your laptop. USB C users will get the added benefit of power over the port. Around the back of the unit are two more USB A ports for printers and keyboards, another USB…

ALOGIC TRIPLE DISPLAY HYBRID DOCKING STATION

ALOGIC 3.0 UNIVERSAL DOCKING STATION – USB 3.0 TYPE A DOCK.

This vertical standing docking station seems to be built as the perfect corporate hot desk solution. Its no-frills plastic design screams enterprise - the kind of device that could be bought in bulk, but still feels sturdy enough to survive daily usage. Modern MacBook Pro users are out of luck, this is a USB 3 Type A dock only, but will still provide most PC laptop users a clean and uncluttered desk. With just one USB 3 connection out to your laptop, you can connect to Gigabit Ethernet, 5 USB devices, a microphone and headphones, and up to two monitors via separate HDMI and DVI ports. You’ll still need a separate power supply for your laptop though. On my test laptops, I was able to power one standard enterprise monitor (a 1080p…

ALOGIC 3.0 UNIVERSAL DOCKING STATION – USB 3.0 TYPE A DOCK.

SMALL TALK Mini PCs

As great as beefy desktop PCs are, there’s one problem that applies to almost all of them: their size. It can be easy to forget when they’re hidden under a desk, but compared to other computing devices such as smartphones and laptops, most PCs take up an awful lot of room. Even many Mini ITX and microATX builds can struggle to fit beneath a monitor or TV, and portability often isn’t even considered. Luckily, there is an alternative, and it doesn’t involve spending a premium on a laptop. Mini PCs have been around for a few years now, replicating the full-size desktop experience but with truly tiny form factors. Many may actually use laptop components, such as low-power processors, but because you’re not also paying for an attached display or keyboard,…

SMALL TALK Mini PCs

THE BEST MINI PCs

BOARD-ONLY RASPBERRY PI 3 Although newer alternatives have arrived with their own strengths – such as the budget-friendly Pi Zero W or the markedly more powerful Asus Tinker Board – the flagship Raspberry Pi 3 remains the overall best choice for occasional hobbyists and serious makers alike. Its dinky ARM Cortex-A7 CPU shouldn’t be underestimated, having the horsepower to run office software and even some retro games, and its built-in Wi-Fiand Bluetooth support greatly expands what you can do with it. Besides being cheaper than the Tinker Board, it also benefits from a far more active community of users, who can help newcomers with their projects. FULL WINDOWS PC ASUS VIVOMINI No other mini PC balances value, performance and design as well as the VivoMini. A reliable home office contender with added graphics power from its…

THE BEST MINI PCs

ASUS TINKER BOARD

Not many major tech firms have made a serious challenge to the raspberry Pi series’ hold on the single-board computer market, with even Intel’s Arduino 101 being discontinued recently. Perhaps Asus will have more luck with the Tinker Board, a more powerful and expensive rival to the Pi 3. For compatibility reasons, Asus has used the same layout as the Raspberry Pi 3. From the 40-pin header (with 28 GPIO pins) to the CSI connector and USB, HDMI and 3.5mm audio ports, everything is where you’d find it on the Pi 3, and even the physical dimensions are identical. This allows the Tinker Board to fit into most Raspberry Pi cases, making it viable as a swapped-in replacement. While ports and connectors may be in the same place as the Pi, Asus…

ASUS TINKER BOARD

It may have sold more than eight million of its Pi mini-computers, but the Raspberry Pi Foundation wasn’t resting on its laurels when it came up with its latest flagship model. The Pi 3 can claim an impressive list of features of features and upgrades from the Pi 2, including a speed boost (the Foundation claims a 50% increase) as well as built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capability. The inclusion of Wi-Fi is particularly handy, as it means you’ll no longer need to take up one of your precious USB ports with a Wi-Fi adaptor. There have also been some changes to the physical layout of the Pi 3’s motherboard, although it remains physically the same size as the Pi 2. The power and activity lights have migrated from the top left…

RASPBERRY PI ZERO W

The original Raspberry Pi Zero was quite the creation: essentially a smaller Raspberry Pi, it only cost a mere $10, and was even the first computer to be given away for free with a magazine. Getting the Zero down to its diminutive size (5x65x30mm) meant that a fair few things had to be cut out. Still, progress is an unstoppable beast, and now we have the Raspberry Pi Zero W, an improved model with integrated wireless capability: both Bluetooth and 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi. This may not be the latest flavour of Wi-Fi, but for the types of jobs that you’re likely to use the computer for, it’s more than enough. In fact, having integrated network access can’t be applauded enough. With the old Pi Zero, adding network access meant buying a Wi-Fi…

RASPBERRY PI ZERO W

The VivoMini family has about as many different configurations as a Rubik’s Cube, starting with the Intel Celeronbased UN45 and scaling all the way up to i5 CPUs. This sits very close to the top of the line, with a dual-core Intel Core i5-6200U and even a dedicated graphics chip, Nvidia’s GeForce 930M. BALANCE OF POWER This GPU is, like the CPU, a relatively lowpower laptop component, however is an awful lot cheaper, not to mention far more compact, and still puts up a very competitive performance in our 4K benchmarks. Its multitasking score of 14 is unfortunate (despite active cooling from a fan, we wouldn’t be surprised if there was some throttling going on), but its image score of 81 and video score of 56 point towards a system that can…

2015 saw the release of the Acer Revo Build, a modular PC that allowed you to add various bits of hardware by stacking block-shaped, clip-on modules on top of each other like an expensive sandwich. The idea never really took off (it certainly hasn’t changed how we customise and upgrade traditional PCs), but the concept was sound. Perhaps the sleeker, flatter, more powerful HP Elite Slice will have better luck. This is, strictly speaking, a business PC, which means you get Windows 10 Pro instead of Windows 10 Home, and security features, such as built-in drive encryption. Performance has also been prioritised, as there’s both a 256GB NVMe SSD for faster booting and application loading, and a quad-core 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-6500T CPU. The latter is a full-fat desktop processor, rather than…

INTEL COMPUTE STICK

Not counting board-only computers such as those in the Raspberry Pi family, mini PCs don’t come much more miniature than the Intel Compute Stick. Measuring 11x35x114mm, it’s about the size of a muesli bar. Believe it or not, this is actually an increase in size on the first-generation model that launched back in 2015. The idea behind the Compute Stick is that it can plug straight into the HDMI port of a monitor, or even a living room TV, and instantly turn it into a Windows PC. This can be handy in a business environment – for instance, you could use the Compute Stick to work on a presentation at your desk, then unplug it, put it in your pocket, and walk over to a meeting room, where you can quickly…

INTEL COMPUTE STICK

MSI CUBI 3 SILENT

Cubi is one of the most reliable subbrands in the mini PC market; we particularly liked the original MSI Cubi for its low price and tiny form factor. Fast forward two years and we now have the Cubi 3 Silent, a brand new model that’s both bigger and more expensive but comes with a fanless case that runs without so much as a whisper. It is, like previous Cubi models and the Asus VivoMini, a barebones system. In other words, it arrives with the CPU already installed, but you’ll need to provide your own storage, operating system and RAM. This can make the initial setup a lot more time-consuming (especially when it comes to installing Windows) than simply buying a complete system at retail, but it shouldn’t be something to be…

MSI CUBI 3 SILENT

BECOME A DROPBOX MASTER

Dropbox is one of the web’s most popular cloud services, and has now been around for more than a decade. Since its launch, it’s matured and expanded enormously – but the chances are you’re not using half of its features. There’s no shame in that – the software does such a good job of fuss-free file synchronisation that you’ve probably never felt the need to pore over the documentation and discover what else it can do. It’s time to put that right. Over the next few pages, we’ll introduce some of the most useful tips and tricks that will transform you from a Dropbox novice to a box-smart storage master. SAVE SPACE By default, Dropbox syncs all your files across every computer on which it’s installed. That’s not a problem on a fast…

BECOME A DROPBOX MASTER

Chrome OS THE POWER USER’S GUIDE

I think we can get this wrapped up in about ten seconds,” said Darien, while we were discussing the latest batch of gear to arrive. “Barry, it’s a Chromebook and it costs around two thousand dollars” “Cold.” That was my gut reaction to the announcement of the Chromebook Pixel. Yes, it looks fabulous and the screen’s lovely, but if I’m going to pay a couple of grand for a laptop, I want more than a glorified web browser. I want it to actually do stuff. Unperturbed, Darien kept going. These things run full-blown Android apps now, he explained, and it’s got a Core i5 processor and 8GB of RAM, so it won’t run aground the moment you ask it do something more than check your email. For another $200 you can buy…

Chrome OS THE POWER USER’S GUIDE

ANDROID APPS ON Chromebooks

1 WORD As you would hope and expect, the Word app is perfectly at home on a Chromebook. If you’re a OneDrive or Dropbox user, your accounts can be automatically integrated into Word, solving the problem of where to save documents – albeit restricting offline access. Unlike on the desktop, documents autosave by default, which takes a little getting used to. The app’s mobile roots are also apparent in the behaviour of the Ribbon interface. The Ribbon is hidden by default and only revealed when you click the down arrow in the top right-hand corner. This might be a bonus for those who favour the uncluttered approach, but it’s an irritating extra click for those of us who constantly dip in and out of menus. And who do we have to bribe…

ANDROID APPS ON Chromebooks

COOK YOUR OWN CHROMEBOOKS

It’s not strictly necessary to go to the expense of buying new hardware to get yourself a Chromebook. If you’ve got an old – or even not so old – laptop lying around, that can easily be pressed into service as a Chromebook with software called CloudReady. In the same way the Chrome browser is built on the open-source Chromium browser, Chrome OS is built on the open-source Chromium OS. CloudReady is effectively a fork of the Chromium OS and comes in several different versions. There’s a Home version that you can install for free for personal use, although you can forget about anything in the way of support or management features. Then there’s the Enterprise version, which costs $99 per year, per machine, which includes support for centralised Chrome Device Management…

FORGET SMART CITIES - THIS IS THE FUTURE OF URBAN INNOVATION

Toronto’s Eastern Waterfront district is hundreds of acres of former ports and warehouses – but soon it will be flooded with self-driving cars, sustainable housing and public spaces. That’s the plan according to Google’s Sidewalk Labs, which is redeveloping the area into a living lab to trial its smart-city tech. Just don’t call it a “smart city”. Nowhere in the release documents – yes, new neighbourhoods have those these days – does Sidewalk Labs mention the phrase, instead favouring “urban innovation”. No wonder, with Tom Saunders, principal researcher at innovation thinktank Nesta, saying: “A lot of people have moved beyond using that term... it comes from a bit of a corporate world of Big Data and sensors and things like that.” Futurist Tom Cheesewright prefers the idea of “living cities”, which he…

FORGET SMART CITIES - THIS IS THE FUTURE OF URBAN INNOVATION

What Sidewalk Labs is promising

Starting with a few streets now redubbed Quayside, Toronto’s Eastern Waterfront district is becoming a test ground for Sidewalk Labs, the urban innovation company owned by Google’s parent firm, Alphabet. But what does that mean? “This will not be a place where we deploy technology for its own sake, but rather one where we use emerging digital tools and the latest in urban design to solve big urban challenges in ways that we hope will inspire cities around the world,” said Dan Doctoroff, CEO of Sidewalk Labs, in a statement at the launch. Residents can ditch their cars, trading in their personal vehicles for a mix of walking, cycling, public transport and self-driving tech. This creates “a mobility system that is safer and more convenient than the private car at much lower…

What Sidewalk Labs is promising

Digital crossings for safer streets

Crossing the road is a decidedly old-fashioned pursuit: you’re directed by faded paint on the asphalt, obtuse signs, and lights that flicker from green to red regardless of traffic. What if instead the road reacted to the needs of its users, be they drivers, cyclists or pedestrians? That’s the idea from design firm Umbrellium, with its smart digital crossing informed by sensors and guided by machine learning to pop up a crossing only when it’s needed, instantly painting the zebra stripes using animated LED lights. “It responds dynamically in real-time to pedestrians, cyclists and drivers to create the optimum crossing layout and road markings for a given time of day or a given situation,” Usman Haque, a founding partner at the firm, told PC Pro. At quiet times, the crossing may only appear…

Digital crossings for safer streets

WHAT IS... SMART PILL?

Doctors will no longer need to ask if you forgot to take your pills – they’ll already know. That’s thanks to edible sensors on your meds, which alert an app when they’ve been ingested. The smart pills have been trialled by the NHS in the UK and have now been approved by the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA). WHAT IS A SMART PILL? Sadly, smart pills won’t make you smarter. The “smart” refers, as is often the case with tech, to connectivity and sensors. Swallow the pill, and the edible sensors will log that it’s been taken, for tracking on a mobile app by you or your doctor. HOW DO SMART PILLS WORK? Systems differ between manufacturers, but the pill will generally have a tiny sensor that sends a signal to a wearable device.…

SORRY BOTS, BUT HUMANS ARE BETTER JERKS THAN YOU

Automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning are coming for our jobs, but some of us can out-bot the bots, it would seem. Headlines have been full of terrifying tales of Russian propaganda spread by bots via social media, influencing the US presidential election as well as the Brexit referendum. Tweet your thoughts on Brexit, whether you favoured Leave or Remain, and you could very well expect a flood of responses, but not all of it would be from humans. The US Senate’s investigation into Russia’s attempts to use social media to sway the election led to an admission by Twitter that it had identified 36,746 bots linked to the country, which had tweeted 1.4 million times in the run-up to the vote. That’s led to a flurry of research into bots and…

SORRY BOTS, BUT HUMANS ARE BETTER JERKS THAN YOU

PILLARS OF ETERNITY II: DEADFIRE

With Pillars of Eternity, a niche, Kickstarted title, Obsidian Entertainment sought to recapture the glory days of the Infinity Engine games. If you’re not familiar with the term, the Infinity Engine was the core of a number of isometric PC RPGs, including Baldur’s Gate II, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment, lauded as some of the best RPGs of all time. Initially asking for $1.1 million, the Kickstarter for Pillars of Eternity wound up raking in around $3.9 million. The resultant game was critically lauded and commercially successful, blending the style of the Infinity Engine games with modern storytelling and a campaign that was at once intimate and epic. A sequel was all but inevitable. “We had made enough from Pillars that we could have made a sequel that was relevantly modest”,…

PILLARS OF ETERNITY II: DEADFIRE

Over the last few years there have been a number of indie games released that sought to emulate the look and feel of old-school shooters like Quake, Doom and Blood, but for the most part, these have failed to achieve the desired goal. Strafe, the most recent of these games nailed the look, speed and shooting of these original games, but fell flat on level design, opting to use procedurally generated levels rather than the meticulously designed maps that made up the games Strafe aimed to imitate. Dusk, the brainchild of designer David Syzmanski, is different to the other tributes to the 90s. It successfully captures the look and feel of the original games while still managing to have a few nods to modern FPS mechanics at the same time, but…

RIPPED PANTS AT WORK

Sometimes games have ludicrously overwrought names that give no hint of what the experience might entail. In the few months alone, we’ve had such treats as, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, Duralumin Wind, Ye Fenny – Revenge of the Evil Good Shepherd, and Antimony of Common Flowers. Sometimes, however, a game does exactly what it says on the tin. Ripped Pants at Work, a simple but enjoyable stealth game definitely lives up to the title. The concept is simplicity itself. You’re a new employee. It’s your first day at work and you’re looking to make a good impression. Unfortunately, as soon as you enter your cubicle at work you reach down to pick up a pencil and rip your pants. There are other pants in the city, and you have…

RIPPED PANTS AT WORK

Out with the Apple Macbook Pro and HP Elitebook X360 1030 G2 and in with the Microsoft Surface Book 2 (review page 40) and Lenovo Yoga 920 (page 43)! 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 NEW LENOVO YOGA 920 An ultra-thin convertible from Lenovo that not only looks great, and has supreme power, but lasted for over 12 hours in our battery tests. From $1,899/au…

MINI For lounge room gaming and streaming CPU + COOLING Intel Core i5 7500 w/ stock cooler $259 intel.com MOBO ASRock Z270M-ITX/AC Motherboard $179 asrock.com.au GPU Asus DUALRX480- 4G $338 asus.com.au MEMORY 16GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance LPX Low Profile $185 corsair.com/en-au STORAGE Crucial MX500 SSD +2TB HDD (any) $389 + $50 crucial.com/au CASE Fractal Design Define S Nano $125 fractal-design.com PSU SilverStone SFX Gold 500W SX500-LG $129 Silverstone.com SOUND Your sound system What you paid for it DISPLAY Your TV What you paid for it KEYBOARD Roccat Sova $299 www.roccat.org MOUSE Roccat Kone EMP $99 www.roccat.org TOTAL: $1,489 BUDGET The perfect entry-level gaming PC CPU + COOLING Intel Core i5 7500 w/ stock cooler $259 intel.com MOBO ASRock B250 Gaming K4 Motherboard $145 asrock.com.au GPU MSI GTX 1060 Aero ITX 6G OC $429 msi.com MEMORY G.Skill Ripjaws 4 DDR4 2400MHz 16GB Kit 2x 8GB $135 gskill.com STORAGE 2TB HDD (any) $50 www.staticice.com.au CASE Corsair Carbide SPEC-02 Mid Tower Gaming Case $85 corsair.com/en-au PSU SilverStone Strider Essential 500W ST50F-ESB $55 Silverstone.com SOUND Cougar Immersa $59 cougargaming.com DISPLAY AOC e2450Swh $158 aocmonitorap.com/anz KEYBOARD Tesoro Tizona G2N $55 tesorotec.com MOUSE Cooler Master MM530 $59 coolermaster.com TOTAL: $2,044 It’s all moving on the SSD front. This issue sees us replace the Performance PC’s Samsung 960 Pro with Intel’s new Optane 900P (review page 38). Over…

HOW TO GET YOUR FREE APPS

REGISTRATION FOR THESE APPS CLOSES ON 01/04 /18 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: NSLhMfsydA. 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 providing the app, and…

HOW TO GET YOUR FREE APPS

YOUR PCTA EXCLUSIVE FREE APPS WORTH $161.36

REQUIREMENTS: Windows 7, 8, 10 32/64-bit • 40MB hard drive space LIMITATIONS: Registration required. www.abelssoft.de/en/windows CLEVERPRINT 2018 While the price of printers continues to drop, the overall cost of ownership is something that many people simply to not think about. Ink cartridges are far from cheap, so anything that can be done to reduce the amount that is used is to be welcomed. When printing out documents, you always have the option of using draft mode, but CleverPrint includes even more options. It is not just ink that is expensive, there is also paper to consider. The most obvious way to reduce these costs is to use less paper and ink. CleverPrint enables you to print multiple pages of a document on a single sheet of paper. This means that you not only use less…

YOUR PCTA EXCLUSIVE FREE APPS WORTH $161.36

“I REALISED THAT IT WAS HAVING TO REBUILD THE ARRAY ACROSS A HUGE SPAN, AND THIS WAS TAKING A LONG TIME”

JON HONEYBALL is the MD of an IT consultancy that specialises in testing and deploying hardware The problem with having a lot of disk storage is that you end up using it all. It doesn’t seem to matter how many terabytes are there, data expands to fill it, in a rather “reverse zip” way. The primary NAS in the lab is a Synology DS1815+, which takes eight physical disks. It has an addon DX513 unit that takes a further five. I’d set it up in a rather lazy way initially, dropping two 128GB Samsung SSD units in slot 1 and 2 for cache purposes, and then filling the rest of the slots with 6TB hard disks. Being clever, I decided to leave one drive as hot spare, because that’s what grown-ups do.…

“I REALISED THAT IT WAS HAVING TO REBUILD THE ARRAY ACROSS A HUGE SPAN, AND THIS WAS TAKING A LONG TIME”

“THE LESS CAUTIOUS INVESTOR CAN END UP THROWING THEIR MONEY DOWN SOMEONE ELSE’S DRAIN”

PAUL OCKENDEN owns an agency that helps businesses exploit the web, from sales to marketing and everything in between I’m a huge fan of the idea of using crowdfunding for the development of new products – it’s a system that has resulted in several interesting items coming to the market that might otherwise have remained as an idea stuck in the recesses of someone’s brain. Plus, it goes a lot further than simply “products”. Crowdfunding is great for the performing arts, books and comics, charity projects, and all manner of other things that might fail to attract traditional investment. But while I love the idea of crowdfunding, I also tend to be a cautious backer. It’s important to treat crowdfunding websites – from the well-known ones to the more obscure and specialist…

“THE LESS CAUTIOUS INVESTOR CAN END UP THROWING THEIR MONEY DOWN SOMEONE ELSE’S DRAIN”

“THE DOMAIN, URL AND THE SENDING IP WERE BARELY VISIBLE; THE EMAIL WAS MORE TARGETED THAN IT FIRST APPEARED”

IAN THORNTONTRUMP is CTO for Octopi Managed Services, a managed security service provider and cyberthreat research lab There’s no shortage of numbers when it comes to cybersecurity. But, as CTO of a company that provides security services for all sizes of business, I know that those numbers usually mean something – and that, equally, on occasion they can be misleading. Take this bullet point from the Enterprise Phishing Susceptibility and Resiliency Report by PhishMe (tinyurl.com/y77s7xg6): “91% of cyberattacks and the resulting data breaches begin with a phishing email attack, and, of those attacks, 93% of them are ransomware payloads”. The first part of that statement proved to be exactly the case when I received a phishing email from a client in the medical profession. The email included a web link that I…

“THE DOMAIN, URL AND THE SENDING IP WERE BARELY VISIBLE; THE EMAIL WAS MORE TARGETED THAN IT FIRST APPEARED”

“THE MAZDA BONGO OWNERS CLUB IS LARGE, GROWING AND VERY ACTIVE... AS SUCH, IT’S FIRMLY ON SPAMMER RADAR”

DAVEY WINDER is an awardwinning journalist and consultant specialising in privacy and security issues Managing a Facebookbased group doesn’t sound like much hassle, but the level of aggravation will depend on many factors: group size, group purpose and the tools made available to help. I have real-world experience running several groups, from small-business ones to large club-based affairs. For the past four years, I’ve been running the Mazda Bongo Owners Club. It’s large, growing and very active. It’s an informal club for people who have, used to have, or would like to have a Japanese import Mazda Bongo campervan. Being old (many vehicles are 20+ years) and imports, the vans require a degree of mechanical and technical support. At the time of writing, the group has 7,866 members; the churn rate is low.…

“THE MAZDA BONGO OWNERS CLUB IS LARGE, GROWING AND VERY ACTIVE... AS SUCH, IT’S FIRMLY ON SPAMMER RADAR”

“REPUTATION CAN BE THE MAKE OR BREAK FACTOR WHEN IT COMES TO THE CHOICES PEOPLE MAKE”

STEVE CASSIDY is a consultant who specialises in networks, cloud, HR and upsetting the corporate apple cart Reputation is hard to measure. Which is a shame, because it’s the final arbiter of buying decisions all over the world – yet we don’t have a column for it in our labs tests. This is because the labs guys don’t like to make judgement calls without support from hard numbers – and quite right too. Still, reputation can be the make or break factor when it comes to the choices people make. Case in point. I recently met with G-Technology, the low-key brand that appeared without fanfare within Apple Stores almost a decade ago. The intervening years have done little for the firm’s mainstream reputation. Despite being persistently hit with questions about which backup…

“REPUTATION CAN BE THE MAKE OR BREAK FACTOR WHEN IT COMES TO THE CHOICES PEOPLE MAKE”

JON HONEYBALL ENTERS THE BITCOIN MINEFIELD - WITH PREDICTABLY EXPLOSIVE RESULTS

I’m trying very hard to be concerned about Bitcoin. No, honestly, I am. Just today it hit the $17,000 mark, before dropping back by $2,500. That’s a rise of some 50% in just one week, and a 2,000% jump in a year. Let’s just look at what this thing is – although even to call it a real “thing” is stretching things. Each bitcoin is code strung together in a chain, and like a limited-edition print there are a restricted number of them. The market has decided that each one has a “value” and is prepared to trade real cash for a bitcoin. I have no problem with this: you can buy all sorts of things with cash, from a banana to a Leonardo Da Vinci painting for $450 million. However,…

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PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription March 1st, 2018 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) March 2018: $3.32

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription February 1st, 2018 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) February 2018: $3.32

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription January 1st, 2018 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) January 2018: $3.32

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription November 12th, 2017 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Dec-17: $3.32

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2018 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) September 2018: $3.32

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription August 1st, 2018 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) August 2018: $3.27

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription July 1st, 2018 Issue

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PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription April 1st, 2018 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) April 2018: $3.32

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription March 1st, 2018 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) March 2018: $3.32

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription February 1st, 2018 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) February 2018: $3.32

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription January 1st, 2018 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) January 2018: $3.32

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription November 12th, 2017 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Dec-17: $3.32

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2018 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) September 2018: $3.32

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription August 1st, 2018 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) August 2018: $3.27

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription July 1st, 2018 Issue

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) July 2018: $3.32

PC & Tech Authority (Digital) Subscription June 1st, 2018 Issue

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October 2018: $3.32

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October 2018: $3.32

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