PC Pro Magazine

“Oh Alice’s Adventures in dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” So said the White Rabbit in Wonderland, and I can only assume that Lewis Carroll had access to both a time machine and mind-reading equipment, because that’s precisely what I feel every m

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Tim Danton editor@pcpro.co.uk EDITORIAL FELLOW Dick Pountain ASSOCIATE EDITOR Darien Graham-Smith FEATURES EDITOR Barry Collins FUTURES EDITOR Nicole Kobie NEWS WRITER James O’Malley BONUS SOFTWARE EDITOR Nik Rawlinson ART DIRECTOR Pa

If you want an example of what not to use Copilot for in PowerPoint, then I have just the thing. You might think that asking Copilot Pro to “create a presentation about Copilot Pro in PowerPoint” would be an easy win for the AI. You would think wrong

Copilot has three main uses in Word: creating a draft for either an entire document or for sections of it, based on a prompt of up to 2,000 characters; rewriting selected text according to a prompt; and answering questions about a document’s content,

Unlike the other Copilot Pro tools, Copilot for Excel is labelled prominently as “beta”. But even in this qualified state, it has the promise of being a game-changer for anyone who needs to work with data but doesn’t want to become an expert in writi

There are three key features in Copilot for Outlook: summarisation, drafting and coaching. Summarisation is probably the feature you’ll encounter first, as every email you receive has a prominent “Summary by Copilot” bar at the top. Click on this, an

Long before the arrival of Copilot, Microsoft Teams became my go-to app that was always active on my desktop. It’s the central tool I use to stay updated about my organisation’s activities and it’s where I plan my daily tasks, share content, have mee

It could be because I tried Copilot in OneNote after all the other apps. It could be a because I’m not a regular OneNote user. Or it could be that this is indeed a, “oh, I suppose we should add it to OneNote as well” kind of effort. Copilot appears i

PRICE £374 (£449 inc VAT) for hardware, £63 (£75 inc VAT) per month for service from starlink.com If you can’t access high-speed internet via the usual means, Elon Musk’s Starlink is now available across the UK. Having experienced repeated issues wit

The Heat Map app reports your Wi-Fi signal strength in negative numbers, typically ranging from around -80 to -40. This may seem rather arbitrary, but there is a logic to it. The measurements are in decibel-milliwatts (dBm), where 0dBm means the stre

A strong wireless signal isn’t always a guarantee of fast performance. If your heatmap shows that a computer is sitting pretty in a bright green area but it’s still getting sluggish network speeds, here are some possible causes to investigate. Wi-Fi

PRICE £541 (£649 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews The AMD Ryzen 8600G was announced at CES 2024, so it’s great to see vendors already building systems around the budget-friendly chip. British manufacturer PCSpecialist was the quickest out of

PRICE As reviewed, £1,667 (£2,000 inc VAT) from asus.com/uk As the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold 16 (see p58) proves with some vengeance, foldable tablets are expensive and relatively low-powered. So, what if you only have £2,000 to play with, still want t

PRICE As reviewed, £1,583 (£1,899 inc VAT) from hp.com/uk HP’s latest Spectre convertible is a pricey proposition – you could buy a decent laptop plus a separate tablet for the same cost. But if you’re looking for something that can fulfil both roles

PRICE 512GB, £1,416 (£1,699 inc VAT) from samsung.com/uk Glance at the Galaxy Book4 Pro 16in and you may be fooled into thinking it’s the 16in MacBook Pro (see issue 342, p48). It channels the same industrial chic, with a metal shell barely interrupt

S24 S24+ PRICE S24: 8GB/128GB, £666 (£799 inc VAT); S24+: 12GB/256GB, £833 (£999 inc VAT) from samsung.com/uk The story of the Samsung Galaxy S24 series – including the S24 Ultra we reviewed last month (see issue 354, p58) – centres around Samsung’s

PRICE £541 (£649 inc VAT) from oneplus.com Last month we were impressed by the OnePlus 12 (see issue 354, p60), the latest flagship from the Shenzhen-based manufacturer. Now, OnePlus follows up with the 12R, a more affordable variation on the theme.

PRICE 2TB, £249 (£299 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com LaCie has many similar-looking external drives, but if you’re looking for the new, compact Rugged Mini – announced at CES 2024 – then ensure you buy one with a code that starts with STMF. For instanc

PRICE 256GB, £150 (£180 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com Motorola’s Moto G54 5G continues the company’s mission to offer high-quality phones for as low a price as possible. In this case £180 inc VAT – £10 less than the previous model. And that’s with 256G

DIRECT PRICE 10 devices, £54 (£65 inc VAT) from avast.com RETAIL PRICE 10 devices, 2yrs, £25 (£30 inc VAT) from store.pcpro.co.uk Avast’s offerings need careful explanation. Avast Ultimate includes Avast Premium Security, Avast SecureLine VPN, Avast

DIRECT PRICE 10 devices, £67 (£80 inc VAT) from avg.com RETAIL PRICE 10 devices, 2yrs, £25 (£30 inc VAT) from store.pcpro.co.uk AVG Ultimate is functionally identical to Avast Ultimate. They use the same engine, have the same tools, and are basically

DIRECT PRICE 5 devices, £42 (£50 inc VAT) from bitdefender.co.uk RETAIL PRICE 5 devices, 1yr, £25 (£30 inc VAT) from store.pcpro.co.uk Bitdefender makes reliable, easy-to-use antivirus software that doesn’t hog your system resources and doesn’t bothe

DIRECT PRICE 5 devices, $82 from gdatasoftware.co.uk RETAIL PRICE Not available If your priority is to stay safe, there are two good reasons to choose G Data Total Protection: its twin malware detection engines. G Data combines its own engine with Bi

DIRECT PRICE 5 devices, £43 (£52 inc VAT) from avira.com RETAIL PRICE Avira Prime not available Avira Prime is the top-tier product from a brand that’s best known for its free antivirus package. It includes the same antivirus and firewall modules as

DIRECT PRICE 5 devices, £96 (£115 inc VAT) from eset.com RETAIL PRICE Not available Since last year’s review, Eset has retired its Internet Security suite branding and revamped its consumer antivirus into its new Eset Home Security range. There are t

DIRECT PRICE 5 devices, £19 (£23 inc VAT) from kaspersky.co.uk RETAIL PRICE 5 devices, £14 (£17 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Kaspersky is in the awkward position of providing highly effective protection against viruses, alongside numerous ethical and p

DIRECT PRICE Deluxe, 5 devices, £74 (£89 inc VAT) from uk.norton.com RETAIL PRICE 10 devices, 2yrs, £17 (£20 inc VAT) from store.pcpro.co.uk Norton 360 is, along with McAfee, as close to a household name as you’ll get with antivirus. It’s been part o

DIRECT PRICE Free with Windows RETAIL PRICE Not applicable Microsoft Defender is Windows’ integrated malware protection, and with detection performance that compares well to both free and paid-for rivals, it’s good enough to rely on for security. As

DIRECT PRICE Individual, £63 (£75 inc VAT) from mcafee.com RETAIL PRICE Not available McAfee is one of the most expensive security suites around, but it is trustworthy: ever since Intel spun it off into an independent company, its long-term performan

DIRECT PRICE 5 devices, £33 (£40 inc VAT) from pandasecurity.com RETAIL PRICE Not available Panda Dome antivirus has a prettier client than most, with soothing landscape wallpaper images you can customise. It’s only a shame the icons are so stylised

DIRECT PRICE 3 devices, 1yr, £58 (£70 inc VAT) from trendmicro.com RETAIL PRICE 3 devices, 1yr, £17 (£20 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Trend Micro packs a lot of features into Maximum Security. What’s more, it looks good doing it. Unusually for antiviru

We get hands-on with every single product in the group test, ensuring that its features and interface all work as they’re supposed to and highlighting any friction points. However, long-term testing with live malware samples is required to genuinely

PRICE £20 exc VAT per user per month from box.com SMBs that want a cloud file-sharing service that snaps neatly into their existing workflows will love Box, as it offers more app integrations than most of its rivals – over 1,500 in fact. Even better,

PRICE 250GB, £55 exc VAT for first year from idrive.com Cloud backup and file-sharing services are normally considered two separate business processes, but IDrive turns this notion on its head by combining the two together in one product. IDrive’s pr

PRICE £19.60 exc VAT per user per month from sharefile.com ShareFile will appeal to SMBs with big cloud collaboration plans as all schemes start at 1TB of storage per user with the option to upgrade capacity as required. Revised pricing makes it even

PRICE £12.83 exc VAT per user per month from tresorit.com SMBs that are worried about file-sharing security and privacy can rest easy with Tresorit. A great feature of this cloud service is its zero-knowledge policy, which delivers end-to-end AES-256

PRICE £125 exc VAT from amazon.co.uk Asus’ ExpertWiFi product family speaks to small businesses and retail outlets requiring a complete network security solution that’s affordable and simple to deploy. The EBR63 is a prime example: this deceptively s

PRICE £356 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com D-Link is aiming to take surveillance in new directions with its DSS-200G series of Layer 2 switches, which are designed to power the latest IP cameras and provide automated recovery services. This family of

My friend had a SAM Coupé. He bought it in the early 1990s from a shop called Micro-Tech somewhere north of Manchester, having been convinced it was the Next Big Thing by a computer salesman wearing a long, brown lab coat like Ronnie Barker in Open A

AMD, Intel and Microsoft have hyped the AI PC concept to a crescendo, but what difference does having NPUs genuinely make today? Today’s cybercriminals have learnt to fly under the radar. We show you how to find hidden threats before they strike. Sec