PC Pro Magazine

Stop. Breathe. Just for a moment, switch off your phone, ignore the itch of social media, cast all thoughts of upcoming deadlines aside. Is the sun shining? Why not step outside for a few minutes, with a cup of coffee perhaps, and enjoy that spring s

Exclusive investigations into technology practices. Email [email protected] if you have a story “The more we innovate, the more we can grow our economy, create the high-paid jobs of the future, protect our security and improve lives across the countr

Background and analysis on all the important news stories Who could have predicted back when ChatGPT first went public in November 2022 that it would transform the entire tech industry so quickly? The chatbot, made by tech startup OpenAI, used the GP

They say no good deed goes unpunished, and this is especially the case if your good deeds happen to break copyright rules. It’s something the Internet Archive learned recently, when it lost a legal battle with the major book publishers, Hachette, Har

Me Hi ChatGPT, how do you feel about Elon Musk wanting to put your offspring into furlough? ChatGPT As an artificial intelligence language model, I don’t have feelings in the same way that humans do, so I don’t feel anything about Elon Musk putting m

One of the big questions hanging over the future of UK tech is related to Tech Nation’s visa application function. Until now, it has been the custodian of the UK’s “Global Talent” visa, which lets tech firms bring in people from overseas to work in t

It can’t be much fun working on a broadband support desk. Call after call from irate customers, threatening to cancel their direct debit because the connection has “gone down again” or they’re “not getting the promised speed”. And that’s just the cal

The world used to divide sharply into two tribes – you were a Windows person or an Apple person, and that was it. Today, that barrier has all but dissolved. Plenty of people are mixing and matching hardware, working with a mix of PCs, Macs and mobile

I read your £100 laptop article (see issue 344, p26) with interest, remembering well the brief excitement of the netbook craze in the early 2000s. While the price may seem attractive, it was sad to read that the majority of the tested devices are stu

Humans aren’t good at imagining weakness and difficulty: it wasn’t until I started pushing a pram around London that I realised the horrors of public transport for someone on wheels. And this laziness towards accessibility in the physical realm exten

If you’re not ready for Wi-Fi 7, that’s understandable. Most of us haven’t caught up with Wi-Fi 6E yet, which only hit the mainstream around 18 months ago. Strictly speaking, though, Wi-Fi 6E wasn’t a new standard. While it introduced support for wir

Be more productive, they say. Work smarter. Do five days’ work in the space of four! Now, we’re not suggesting that this article is going to shave two hours from your working day, but even if you find two tips out of these 50 that make a difference t

Read any review of a simulator and you’ll find phrases such as “unbelievably realistic” thrown about by a jobbing journalist who has no idea what it’s like to fly a plane, run a football club or drive a train. Games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator

PRICE £4,000 (£4,800 inc VAT) from uk.store.asus.com Asus’ line of dual-display gaming laptops is a familiar sight in these pages, with the Zephyrus Duo 15 (see issue 320, p54) appearing twice. As the 16 in its name indicates, this year’s big upgrade

PRICE £1,083 (£1,299 inc VAT) from vive.com/uk I had high hopes for the HTC Vive XR Elite. This unique-looking, next-gen VR headset – which can also support mixed reality – appeared as though it might give Meta and its Quest Pro a run for its money.

Total value this month £164 There’s no question that you need to protect your privacy online. If your credentials, personal information or bank details fall into the wrong hands, you could be in for a world of stress and inconvenience. The problem is

Norton 360 Premium for £19.99 (10 devices for two years) pcpro.link/norton360 We’ve negotiated a killer deal with Norton. No subscriptions, just a one-off bargain price of £19.99 compared to the regular £179.99 charge. That buys you two years of cove

PRICE £750 (£900 inc VAT) from lenovo.com/uk Many professionals use a company-supplied iPhone or Android handset for business, but the ThinkPhone is a true professional smartphone. Made in partnership with Lenovo’s ThinkPad division (Lenovo now owns

Today, with cloud storage relatively cheap and solid-state storage exceptionally fast, a traditional external hard drive or NAS device may seem like antiquated technology. However, for all of the benefits of modern storage, there’s one big problem: s

1 What type of storage do I want: USB, NAS or cloud? The three main types of storage that we cover here are USB, NAS and cloud. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and your requirements will dictate which type is best for you. External storage

1 Prices correct at time of going to press but are subject to change ■

Qnap has built its NAS devices around a user-friendly Linux operating system, which has a full point-and-click interface. Called Qnap QTS, this operating system runs across all the company’s home and professional user NAS drives, giving one consisten

1 Prices correct at time of going to press but are subject to change ■

Back in the days when all NAS devices were controlled through horrible-looking and basic web interfaces, Synology was different. And it was all thanks to a Linux-like operating system called Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM). With its full point-and

Why buy a NAS if you can just make your own out of an old PC? There are multiple ways of doing this, including just leaving Windows running and having shared files, but the obvious competition is by installing TrueNAS (truenas.com). Previously called

The Network Practical buying and strategic advice for IT managers and decision makers Buyer’s guide Businesses that haven’t made the switch to voice over internet protocol (VoIP) need to start thinking seriously about binning their outdated analogue

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More data? Aren’t we already drowning in the stuff? We are, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the information we have is useful. Indeed, the stuff that stacks up uncontrollably is almost by definition of low value: something rare is far more lik

Virtual private networks of all types – there are more than one – are essentially tools for pretending that you’re in one place when in reality you’re somewhere else. Before lockdown, this sort of technology was mostly of interest to a small coterie

Lee reveals how not to cook a wet laptop, why hubris can derail repair and how much blood an exploding LCD panel will extract from a technician It’s my fault, really. Two months ago (see issue 343, p112), I scoffed at the notion that repair was dange

Inspirational stories from computing’s long-distant past SCORE PRICE Around £50 from ebay.com Ican vividly recall the moment when I first took the Asus Eee PC 701 on a trip. It was 30 October 2008, 21 days after it had been delivered, and I was on a

ON SALE Thursday 8 June Microsoft is increasingly stuffing Windows 11 with cruft: tabloid news stories, AI assistants, needless apps. We show you how to streamline the operating system. Love him or loathe him, you can’t deny Elon Musk has made a huge

There are few technologies that have stumbled to market on such a meandering path as display headsets. Be it virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality or extended reality, the final reality has proved underwhelming. But expectations continue

Las Vegas is a curious place. I’ve come nearly every year since 1990, often twice a year, lured by the best conferences in the world. The scale of the facilities, both in the hotels and the huge Las Vegas Convention Center, defies belief. Could you i