When Windows won’t work and your PC won’t boot, what do you do? You use an emergency boot disk, that’s what There are few moments in your time using a PC that are as panic inducing as being unable to boot into Windows. The thought that all your data, programs and other content is potentially … Read more
THE BEST FREE ANTIVIRUS PRODUCT AVAILABLE, BUT YOU WILL NEED TO LIVE WITH THE ANNOYING NAGS If you don’t trust Windows Defender to keep you safe from nasties – and, as we discuss later, that might be wise – then Avast is an attractive alternative. It has a few key strengths that set it apart … Read more
GoDaddy is an American domain registrar and web-hosting provider founded over two decades ago. It’s one of the biggest companies in its sector, serving over 20 million customers and employs over 9,000 people worldwide. GoDaddy offers domain name registration, cloud hosting and a website builder. It also provides complimentary digital marketing tools for customers. GoDaddy … Read more
CCleaner 5.57 www.ccleaner.com What you need: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 CCleaner hasn’t always covered itself in glory, particularly when it added an Active Monitoring tool last year that couldn’t be switched off – leading to accusations it was gathering data on the sly. This was swiftly removed, though, and we’re pleased to see CCleaner’s … Read more
Piriform’s CCleaner is one of the most useful free tools available, so surely its paid-for upgrade must be even better, right? Mike Plant pays his money to find out. Read our CCleaner Professional Review. CCleaner has more useful tools than a Swiss Army knife. It’s my go-to utility whenever my PC is creaking under the weight of … Read more
Many people don’t like the idea of trusting a third-party VPN provider to keep their online activity private, and instead rely on the open source Tor anonymity network. And no one does Tor better than Tails. If you’re new to Tails, the distro boots to a welcome tool that you can use to tweak some … Read more
Nobody who’s ever lost data will argue about the usefulness of a backup, and anyone who’s ever kept one will know the importance of good backup software. Your distro probably ships with one, and it does a good job of retaining copies of your important files. But if you need more protection for your data … Read more
We don’t give openSUSE the attention it deserves, but that’s partly because of the project’s off-canter release cycle. SUSE’s enterprise edition and the community-supported openSUSE are now being developed in tandem from the ground up. The openSUSE project maintains two main branches of the distro. In 2014, the developers split off a stabilised instance of … Read more
Compact discs are assumed to be an almost obsolete format, but – like vinyl records – they seem to be undergoing a revival. Last year, CD sales rose in the US (www.snipca.com/42372) and UK (www.snipca.com/42373) for the first time since 2004, suggesting that physical discs haven’t been completely wiped out by streaming services. Meanwhile, Microsoft … Read more
WINDOWS 10 & 11 Stop OneDrive syncing to save battery When your laptop goes into battery saver mode, it disables functions that use a lot of power, such as email and calendar syncing. One tool that carries on syncing, though, is OneDrive, which can consume a lot of battery just when you need to preserve … Read more
Your computer is full of personal data. From letters to your insurer and emails from your doctor to your tax return and list of your passwords, the documents and files stored on your hard drive are a treasure trove for an identity thief. Even if your data isn’t stolen, it could prove embarrassing if accessed … Read more
What you need: Vivaldi browser Time required: 30 minutes The free Vivaldi browser is based on the same code as Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome, so it can use many of the extensions you’re already familiar with. It also has some extra tricks up its sleeve, like built-in ad and tracker blocking and, in the … Read more