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SSDs SUPERFA SUPERFAST STORAGE FROM £80 p74
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■ 7 spreadsheet problems – solved p36 ■ Can you trust antivirus companies? p16 ■ Sexism in tech: the uncomfortable truth p54
THE GREAT BRITISH
F F O P I R
SPOTIFY∙IPADS ∙OFFICE : WHY YOU PAY TOO MUCH
inventions we’re NOT looking forward to p60
£4.99
We reveal if a third of UK Multi-terabyte storage jobs could really be lost p124 for demanding pros p80
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MAR 2015
High-speed external drives
ISSUE 245
Will robots take your job?
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SSDs SUPERFAST SUPERFAS STORAGE FROM £80 p74 ■ Earn your fortune on
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■ 7 spreadsheet problems – solved p36 ■ Can you trust antivirus companies? p16 ■ Sexism in tech: the uncomfortable truth p54
THE GREAT BRITISH
RIP-OFF
3 PC PRO PODCAST Don’t forget to download the latest PC Pro podcast. There’s a new show available every Thursday from pcpro.co.uk/ podcast
:
10
inventions we’re NOT looking forward to p60
£5.99
Multi-terabyte storage for demanding pros p80
MAR 2015
As sold for £59
High-speed external drives
ISSUE 245
DOWNLOADS Websitedesigner Antivirusprotection er Passwordmanager
FEATURES COVER STORY
42 The Great British Rip-Off
36
We solve 7 common spreadsheet problems
BRIEFING
10 Is 2Mbits/sec broadband fast enough for life in the UK?
Brits pay more than most for tech, from laptops to Spotify to Office – are we being ripped off?
An Ofcom report thinks otherwise, so could it be time to bump up the bottom rung of broadband?
COVER STORY
12 Regulating the sharing economy
54 Sexism in tech
Low-level acceptance of sexism, from schools to blue-chip companies, is pushing women away from potentially great careers in IT. COVER STORY
60 10 inventions nobody wants
Great tech innovations lie ahead, but there will be plenty of howlers, too. We warn our future selves what to avoid. PROSPECTS COVER STORY
32 Make your fortune on YouTube
Some people earn millions from YouTube clips. What’s their secret, and how can you jump aboard the gravy train? COVER STORY
36 7 spreadsheet problems... and how to solve them
Spreadsheets are brilliant – but sometimes a database can do the job better.
40 Careers: data analyst
COVER STORY
16 Can we trust antivirus companies? We investigate whether governments and the antivirus industry colluded over spy software. PROFILE
22 XMOS
One British chip company’s novel approach has led to its processors being used in everything from PC speakers to stair-climbing robots.
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VIEWPOINTS
24 25 25 26
DARIEN GRAHAM-SMITH If robots take our jobs, do we really want them back? SASHA MULLER Retro cool is in – and that extends to dumbphones.
NEWOK LO
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RFAST STOR
AGE FROM
■ Earn your £80 p74 fortune on ■ 7 spreadsh p32 eet problem s – solved ■ Can you p36 trust antiviru s compan ■ Sexism ies? p16 in tech: the uncomfo rtable truth p54
NICOLE KOBIE A lack of data isn’t what stops us from pre-empting terrorists.
THE GR EAT BR ITISH
RIP-OFF :
DOWNLOADS
Websitede signer Antiviruspr otection Passwordm manager anager
As soldfor
£59
High-spe external ed drives
Multi-terabyte for demand storage ing pros p80
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£5.99
inven we’re NOT tions forwardt looking o p60
MAR 2015
DICK POUNTAIN Computers need to get in touch with their emotions.
ISSUE 245
Selina Jones explains the appeal of mining data for a living.
The government wants to encourage and regulate sharing-economy businesses, but it isn’t easy to write laws for the likes of Uber and Airbnb.
3
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March2015 Issue245
REVIEWS/LABS
The Nexus 6: a beast of a smartphone at a very reasonable price
HEADLINE REVIEWS Nexus 6 LG G Watch R Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact MSI GT72 Dominator Pro Samsung 850 Pro 256GB AMD Radeon R7 240GB Crucial MX100 256GB Fujifilm HQ-PC 256GB Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SanDisk Ultra II 240GB Steinberg Cubase Pro 8 HIGH-SPEED STORAGE CalDigit T3 with Thunderbolt 2 LaCie d2 Thunderbolt 2 Lexar Professional Workflow DD512
64 67 68 70 75 76 76 76 76 76 77
88 90 91
OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual Me OWC ThunderBay 4 Promise Pegasus2 M4 Buffalo MiniStation DDR HD-PGDU3 G-Technology G-Drive with Thunderbolt UTM APPLIANCES Cyberoam CR10iNG Panda GateDefender Integra eSeries eSB WatchGuard Firebox T10-W ZyXEL USG60W
92 93 94 95 95
100 101 102 104
REGULARS Editor’s letter The A-List Readers’ comments
7 18 28
Subscriptions Coding challenge One last thing…
78 129 130
THE NETWORK
98 Buying a UTM appliance
We explain what to look for when choosing a threat-management appliance, and subject four contenders to real-world testing.
80
LABS: HIGH-SPEED STORAGE COVER STORY Today’s creative professionals need more than simple, single-drive storage, but which super-speed drive should you buy? We put eight portable, desktop and desktop RAID devices to the test to find out.
106 Can you survive a web avalanche?
How would your website cope with a sudden surge in traffic? We examine the solutions that will help you keep a step ahead.
108 Cheat Sheet: VPN
A secure virtual network for transporting private data is essential for companies whose employees work away from the office. FUTURES COVER STORY
124 Are robots really going to take your job?
Oxford researchers have warned that a third of UK jobs could be lost to robots. We separate the fact from the fiction.
126 Minecraft art and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega
The Tate teams up with the makers of the blockbuilding game; and the iconic computer returns.
REAL WORLD COMPUTING
110
JON HONEYBALL Users are unwittingly installing tools and widgets that are playing havoc with their systems – and it’s time to nuke them for good.
113
PAUL OCKENDEN There are some rather odd goings-on in Android 5, the latest version of Google’s OS, not least the absence of the email app – but it’s not all bad news.
116
PROFESSOR IAIN E BUCHAN A bright future of digital healthcare is closer than you might think – if we can lift the cultural and organisational barriers.
118
DAVEY WINDER Some large corporations will turn up their noses at free website security, but an easy-to-implement HTTPS system should be welcomed by everyone.
120
STEVE CASSIDY Highlighting an organisation’s true way of working could have resulted in one employee’s decision to head for the door. 5
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March2015 Issue245
Editor’s letter
IF I HAD MY WAY , it wouldn’t be the faces of Katie Price, Kim
Kardashian and Mel B splashed across the front pages: it would be that of economist Tim Harford. Not because I have a desire to see him spilling out of a nightclub at 3am, but because he scrutinises things that genuinely matter. For those not initiated in the Harford fan club, one of his claims to fame is Radio 4’s More or Less, the brilliant statistics-based programme he fronts. Yes, I really did write “brilliant statistics-based programme”, and it’s one our society desperately needs. Why? To help us understand the truth behind the headlines that, twisted to the needs of a politician’s agenda or a newspaper’s front page, appear to show that the world is on the fast track to anarchy. I’m also a fan of Harford’s books. The one to start with is The Undercover Economist, which tackles how much we pay for goods and why we’re willing to do so. I’m writing this in a café, where I paid £2.10 for a mediumsized Americano – despite the raw ingredients costing around 8p, according to a 2013 study by Allegra Strategies. So, was I ripped off? It’s easy to feel like it. The truth, as ever, is more nuanced. There’s tax to consider, as well as staff and rent costs. Plus the likelihood that if I were being ripped off, a rival shop would have sprung up around the corner charging half the price for much the same product. This is where I start to feel a little sympathy for the newspapers. They have a fraction of a second to grab your attention, and a nuanced headline just wouldn’t do the trick. Of course it’s going to shout, of course it’s going to sensationalise, of course it’s going to follow its angle through until we all rage at the target of its opprobrium, whether that’s WELFARE CHEATS, SINGLE PARENTS,
EASTERN EUROPEANS, or whoever else happens to be in the all-caps firing line at the time. One reason I feel sympathy is that we’ve done something similar with the cover of PC Pro this month. Viewed from a few feet away, the message we want passing punters to see on the newsstand is RIP-OFF BRITAIN. You’ll notice it’s in caps. What’s that, the passing populace may wonder, I’m being ripped off? Outrageous! I bet it’s those pesky Eastern Europeans. The truth, again, is more nuanced. Yes, we pay more than those in the US for iPads. Yes, we’re the second-most expensive place in the world to subscribe to Spotify. And yes, we pay twice as much for Microsoft Office as Russians. But before you book flights to pick up those deals, or start to follow the tips we provide in the article on p42 about how to do some smart shopping from the comfort of your laptop, take a deep breath. This outrage conveniently overlooks the fact we can drive a much better deal than those in the US when it comes to broadband, fixed and mobile – and that, as a percentage of our median income, we pay less for Office than those in Russia. Ultimately, we pay what we do because consumers fork out what companies can get away with charging. This is the balanced view; compared to the RIP-OFF BRITAIN headline on our front cover, a rather boring view. And this, along with the fact he doesn’t look as good in a bikini, is why my dream of Tim Harford appearing on the front of The Sun won’t become reality.
Tim Danton
Editor-in-chief
CONTRIBUTORS
Professor Iain E Buchan The director of the Farr Institute of Health Informatics explains why he sees a bright future for digital healthcare in the UK – see p116
Simon Jones Spreadsheets are wonderful – until they’re misused. On p36, Simon pinpoints the giveaway signs that it’s time to switch to a database
Stuart Andrews Want superfast external storage? Massive capacity? Stuart’s testing reveals which drive is right for your needs, starting on p80
Selina Jones An affinity for data led Selina into the world of the analyst – not the conventional career for a classicist. Discover why she loves her job in our profile on p40 7
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March2015 Issue245 EDITORIAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Tim Danton:
[email protected] DEPUTY EDITOR Darien Graham-Smith RWC EDITOR Dick Pountain:
[email protected] BRIEFING & FUTURES EDITOR Nicole Kobie REVIEWS EDITOR Jonathan Bray:
[email protected] DEPUTY REVIEWS EDITOR Sasha Muller ONLINE EDITOR David Court STAFF WRITER Jane McCallion
What tech did you pay too much for?
“A Jamie Oliver cookery app costing £4.99. All the same information was on the website for free.”
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iPhone. I’m on my fifth one in two years.”
“The ink cartridges for my first printer – it would have been cheaper to buy a disposable printer.”
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Briefıng Slug Sectionhead
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Background and analysis on all the important news stories
Regulating the sharing economy Why disruptive businesses should welcome state intervention p12
Sony hack: the fallout No network is safe, warn experts – so prepare for the worst p14
PC Probe Did antivirus companies conceal state malware? p16
Forget 2Mbits/sec: Ofcom demands 10Mbits/sec for all
An Ofcom report says the minimum broadband speed Britons need is 10Mbits/sec. Nicole Kobie asks whether it’s time to bump up the government’s target beyond 2Mbits/sec
IS A 2 MBITS /SEC CONNECTION
fast enough broadband for life in the UK? That’s the government’s minimum target, but Ofcom could be set to push for an increase to 10Mbits/sec after research revealed that’s what households need to fully make use of the web and online services. The report (pcpro. link/245ofcom) from Ofcom concluded that 10Mbits/sec was the average requirement for most Britons, but the government’s Universal Service Commitment (USC) is only 2Mbits/sec. While connections to most homes and businesses have already surpassed that, and the government’s broadband project aims to have superfast services of at least 24Mbits/sec offered to 95% of the UK by 2017, for the final 5% – which covers around 1.3 million homes – it’s guaranteeing only 2Mbits/sec. Andrew Ferguson, an analyst for Thinkbroadband, said it’s “widely thought that Ofcom is
Five stories not to miss
10
looking to try to force a change to a 10Mbits/sec USC”. Indeed, Ofcom declared it may be “time to review” the 2Mbits/sec USC, which was set in 2009, as “consumer
1 BTtobuyEE for£12.5billion
BThasbid£12.5billiontobuy EE,thejointventurebetween OrangeandT-Mobile.Inone stroke,thiswillbringBritain’s telecomsgiantbackintothe mobilemarket13yearsafter regulatorsforcedthe companytospinoffO2–the operatorBTwasrumoured tobebuyingbeforeittabled itsbidforEE.
2 Applemay ditchiPhone5c
ReportssuggestAppleis planningtostopmaking theiPhone5caftersales failedtoimpress.The colourfulsmartphone waslaunchedin2013asa cheaperiPhoneoption, butcostonly£80less thanthe5s.Applehasn’t revealedsalesfiguresor confirmedtherumours.
ABOVE Ofcom thinks that most households now need at least 10Mbits/sec
expectations of broadband rise along with the availability and take-up of faster broadband”. Pointedly, the report noted that, below that threshold, many online services “will not work properly, if at all”. However, Ferguson warned that bumping up the USC could have negative repercussions. “Raising the target from 2Mbits/sec might be seen as a victory, but it could actually delay work to improve speeds for the slowest people,” he told PC Pro, suggesting it may be better to focus on getting to the established target of 2Mbits/sec for everyone before moving the goalposts yet again. Ofcom’s report suggested that 3% of the UK have connections of slower than 2Mbits/sec, while 15% are on less than 10Mbits/sec. If the USC is shifted to the latter goal, it may draw money and focus away from those on the slowest connections. It’s worth noting that not everyone wants faster speeds, or is
3 GCHQhasn’t violatedhumanrights
Apanelofjudgesmakingupthe InvestigatoryPowersTribunal hasruledthatGCHQ’scollection ofdataforsurveillancedoesn’t breachhumanrights,inacase broughtbyPrivacyInternational andAmnestyInternational. TherulingfoundthatGCHQ doesn’tcarryoutmass surveillance,despiteevidence revealedintheSnowdenleaks.
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willing to pay for them: two-thirds of households on less than 10Mbits/sec could choose to upgrade to faster services as coverage is available in their area, but simply haven’t, Ofcom said (see Fibre take-up, bottom right).
■ Streaming video demands
Much of the push for faster services is driven by online video streaming, Ofcom suggested. The report showed that, for the first time in history, the number of homes with a television set fell, from 26.3 million in 2012 to 26 million by the end of 2013. There are now a million homes in the UK with broadband but no TV. Ferguson suggested 10Mbits/sec is enough for a “typical household”: Netflix’s HD tops out at 5Mbits/sec, which would allow two HD video streams to be played at the same time.
25.0
20.0
15.0
2014 23.9
Average broadband speeds in Mbits/sec, data from Ofcom
2014 21.1
2013 18
2014 18
2013 15.8 10.0
5.0
2012 12.9
2013 13.2
2012 12.1
2014 24.8 2013 20.4
2012 14.4
2012 9.9
2011 7.8
2011 7.2
2011 7
2011 6.7
ENGLAND
SCOTLAND
WALES
N IRELAND
Moving the goalposts could actually delay work to improve speeds for the slowest people “A household can only watch so much TV at a time,” Ferguson added. “For most people, who mainly browse the web, answer emails and maybe watch iPlayer, 10Mbits/sec will be suitable for now,” agreed Ewan Taylor Gibson, broadband expert at uSwitch. “However, as time goes on we’re only going to require greater speeds, so it’s important that the providers are continually investing in improving network speeds.”
■ Digital divide
Rural areas are most often left out of infrastructure upgrades – only 22% have access to superfast services (defined by Ofcom as above 30Mbits/ sec), versus 75% across the UK and 85% of urban areas. This also means that England, with its larger population centres, tends to
4 Skypetranslation apparrives
Microsofthasreleasedanearly previewofSkypeTranslator, whichcantranslatespeechin nearreal-time.Thefirstversion workswithWindows8.1and10 andcantranslatebetween EnglishandSpanish.Signupfor itatpcpro.link/245skype,and readmoreabout thefutureof translationtechinlastmonth’s PCPro(seeissue244,p124).
Briefing Broadband
5 AdobebuysFotolia
StockimagelibraryFotoliahas beenboughtfor$800millionby Adobe,whichplanstointegrate itintoCreativeCloud.Thiswill givesubscriberseasieraccess tothelibrary–althoughimages won’tbefree.Fotolia willalso remainastandaloneservice.
have the best coverage, with 77% coverage of superfast services, versus 61% in Scotland and 55% in Wales. Northern Ireland matches that 77% coverage, helped by governmentfunded infrastructure rollouts. Ofcom noted that some urban areas are also falling behind on upgrades – even in the centre of London. While Westminster has 47% next-generation access coverage, the City of London has only 0.4% due to a lack of street cabinets. But there is
hope: BT is trialling new technologies to extend fibre coverage and speed up copper in urban areas. “While we’re observing a difference between urban and rural speeds, it’s not always as clear-cut, since there are areas of the UK with access to affordable Gigabit speeds, well in excess of a good number of cities,” Ferguson noted. “The rural/ urban divide is an easy label, but it’s much more location-based, down to the actual postcode level.”
UK SPEEDS BY COVERAGE
97%
of UK has broadband of at least 2Mbits/sec
85% has up to 10Mbits/sec
75%
has access to at least 30Mbits/sec
Fibretake-up Ofcom’s report showed that 75% of the UK has access to superfast broadband, but only 21% of homes and businesses opt for it – although that’s up from 16% in 2013. Thinkbroadband analyst Andrew Ferguson noted that in the areas where full fibre-tothe-premises connections are available “we often see people signing up for the cheaper products,” saying “people buy the products that suits their wallet”. “I think there’s still a lot of confusion around what fibre is, as well as where it is available,” added uSwitch’s Ewan Taylor Gibson. “For a lot of people, they just don’t see the need. They’re quite happy with their 10Mbits/sec broadband and, as fibre is more expensive, they don’t see any real benefit to having a fibre connection at the moment.” The areas with the most superfast sign-ups are often those with the worst existing services. “These have usually been community-led projects where people are digging in their own fibre and thus community engagement (or you could say pressure to sign up) is much higher,” Ferguson added. However, the Ofcom numbers do suggest growth, which Ferguson expects to continue now that ISPs are offering cheaper, faster self-installation of fibre and that more special offers are bringing prices down.
11
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Thecaseforregulating theUK’s sharingeconomy The government wants to both encourage and regulate sharing-economy businesses, but it isn’t easy. Nicole Kobie reveals the challenges in writing laws for the likes of Uber and Airbnb
Images: Sophie Sheinwald
THE SHARING ECONOMY is the new Wild
West, a black market and the future of business rolled into one – and governments are desperate to find a way to regulate it without killing the sector’s lucrative potential. It’s clear why regulation is a hot topic. Airbnb began as a way that homeowners could make a few pounds by renting out their spare room to travellers, but a New York state report in October 2014 suggested 72% of those selling on the site were actually semiprofessional hoteliers, renting out secondary properties while failing to pay the necessary taxes. Meanwhile, taxi-challenger Uber has been banned in cities as disparate as Portland and Berlin, where the firm has been accused of ignoring local laws. It doesn’t help that its aggressive behaviour towards competitors and even critical journalists has attracted the wrong sort of attention. These are only two examples. The most common criticism levelled at such sharing firms and “peer-topeer” businesses is that they’re undercutting existing operators by ignoring regulations and taxes. The flip side to this, however, is that users are benefitting in the way
of lower prices, easy web and app access, and consumer-friendly flexible services.
■ Best of both worlds
The government wants to know how to both regulate and encourage sharing firms, and is currently
Sharingbythenumbers JustPark is used by
20,000 homeowners in the UK, making an average of
£465 per year
12
Zipcar says it saves users
£300
per
month versus owning a car, and Croydon Council said it helped cut travel costs by
42% in a trial
considering the recommendations of a report it commissioned from Debbie Wosskow, founder of Love Home Swap, a home-exchange service. Wosskow’s report calls on the government to rethink regulations to ensure they’re not holding back sharing businesses. The report recommends clearer taxes, a government-funded sharingstart-up “incubator” to spur innovation, and for the government itself to use sharing businesses – and let local authorities share their assets, such as spare office space and parking. Wosskow also suggested that insurance firms need to develop ways to work with the sharing economy, an initiative that has already led to the publication of a new insurance-industry guide to working with sharing-economy businesses. Regulation, meanwhile, should be “proportionate to the scale of the operation – someone renting out a spare room a few nights a year should not be subject to the same level of regulation as a business renting out 100 rooms year round,” her report added. However, she noted that basic health-and-safety rules should apply to all providers, regardless of size.
■ Light touch?
The average amount Airbnb hosts make in London annually is
£3,000 renting out a room for
33
nights per year
This may come as a surprise, but many sharing firms would welcome regulation – as long as it isn’t too onerous. “There does need to be some regulation in this space, but it needs to be relevant and it needs to not hamper these businesses,” said Benita Motofska, founder of Compare and Share – an accommodation and travel marketplace – in the opening keynote of the Share:Summit, which was held in London in November 2014. “The UK is one of the easiest places to do business in the sharing economy, because we don’t have the level of regulation here that other countries have – Germany, for example.” However, authorities need to stop trying to apply existing rules to new business models, according to Alex
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Stephany, CEO at British start-up JustPark, which lets homeowners rent their driveways to others as a parking space. “Lots of councils were sending letters to our property owners, saying that by renting out their parking space, their home was effectively becoming a car park,” adding that councils threatened to fine his users. Since then, the government has stepped in and tweaked laws to allow it. “I think this was the first time the government has intervened to push forward regulation on behalf of the sharing economy,” said Stephany. Patrick Robinson, Airbnb’s head of public policy for Europe and Canada, added that his job isn’t normally to lobby on behalf of the firm, but to work with regulators to “argue for fair rules for people who are looking to rent their homes out.”
■ Regulating monopolies
Worldmags.net BriefıngTheSharingEconomy
P CPRO.CO.UK /NEWS
There are other regulatory issues, however. Many such businesses are based in the US – which Motofska suggested was because much of the funding still comes from Silicon Valley – but her business often faces different
ABOVE Sharingbusiness owners speaking at the Share:Summit in London
BELOW Patrick Robinson from Airbnb welcomes working with regulators
rules in each country, or even city, in which it operates. JustPark’s Stephany noted another regulatory issue with global firms: how to keep massive US companies in check. “These marketplaces do tend towards monopolies,” he said. “Clearly the entrepreneurs hope that these businesses will develop extraordinary market power and gross profit margins. The question is: how will these companies behave once they are very, very large and potentially public companies?” The biggest problem for sharing firms is trust, and that’s where many believe that regulation can help. “We got regulated on 1 April [2014],” said Ian Cruickshank, chief marketing officer of peer-to-peer loan firm RateSetter. “Regulation has helped us in terms of people’s perception of us, and in terms of pushing forward,” he told attendees of the Share:Summit. Airbnb’s Robinson agreed, saying kitemarks, codes of conduct and other “things that would let companies badge themselves as safe, trustworthy, good people to do business with”
would help the industry. “It takes quite a lot of time to bring people into peer-to-peer transactions,” he said, asking how long it would it take after a first meeting before you invited someone to stay in your home. “You might be thinking a year or two – well, we’re trying to compress that decision into two or three hours. It’s a big step forward in behaviour.” Alex Depledge, CEO of cleaning service Hassle.com, added that trust is needed on the supply side too: “I think it’s a greater leap of faith to have someone stay at your house than to go there.” None of that is helped by the “Wild West” behaviour of some sharing start-ups, the summit panellists suggested. Airbnb’s Robinson said the industry often gets “lumped in” with the black economy, and that there’s an “image problem” facing disruptive businesses over their “lack of respect” for local laws. “We do have a reputational challenge as
There needs to be some regulation in this space, but it needs to be relevant and not hamper businesses an industry to say we do want to set standards, and do want there to be clear rules for people,” he added. Echoing Wosskow’s report, the panellists also raised the issue of the digital divide: those who would benefit most from sharing are often those who don’t have the ability to join in. Motofska admitted that “sharing” was very much a “middle-class phenomenon” – you can’t benefit from the so-called sharing economy if you have nothing to share. Plus, she said unemployed people needed clear rules on how working flexibly as part of the sharing economy could affect their benefits.
13
Briefing News
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Sonyattack“impossibletoavoid”
Celebrity gossip and leaked scripts may seem trivial, but all companies must accept that attacks will happen and plan for them, say experts The recent Sony Pictures hack that leaked emails about upcoming movies – and gossip about actors – could cause “severe” damage to the firm. Security experts have warned that it’s impossible to protect perfectly against such targeted attacks. The hack came to light in November when anonymous hackers contacted Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton, threatening “great damage” if Sony didn’t meet their demands. The following month, the hackers started to leak unreleased films, as well as salaries, passwords, gossip and executives’ emails. Fingers were pointed at North Korea, since the information-stealing malware had previously been used by criminals there – and the country was the subject of the Sony film, The Interview, which was pulled from cinemas amid escalating threats. However, F-Secure analyst Sean Sullivan suggested the attacks weren’t statesponsored, but the work of criminals. “It appears to be an extortion scheme”, he said.
■ Serious damage
The attack has attracted considerable attention: since the leaked information relates to upcoming films and famous actors, it has made headlines around the world. And
while gossip about the next James Bond film may not seem serious, the leaks could be seriously damaging to Sony, Sullivan said. “Sony Pictures’ business is Hollywood, and that business is driven by personal relationships,” he told PC Pro. “It seems impossible that this won’t damage [Sony’s] ability to do business. There must be significant loss of trust in [its] executives.” Sony has threatened to take legal action against anyone reporting details of the leaked data, but Kaspersky Lab security expert David Emm believes this is unlikely to limit the damage of the attack. “As well as any financial damage incurred to the company from the breach, it’s also likely that the company will suffer severe damage to its reputation. “Building a strong business reputation demands tenacity and consistency,” Emm added. “Unfortunately, losing a hard-earned reputation can take just a few moments, particularly if an attack has happened more than once.” This isn’t the first time a part of the Sony conglomerate has been compromised. In 2011, Sony’s PlayStation Network was hacked; the company didn’t immediately warn users, and said the attack had cost it hundreds of millions of dollars.
■ Police and patrol
Sullivan pointed out that many major firms have been hacked in recent years, but that Sony had seemed particularly slow to notice the attackers and shut down their access. Firms should not only focus on strengthening their “perimeters”, he advised, but must “patrol and police” inside it, to enable a rapid response when hackers do get through. “Defending your company requires a 100% success rate for all time. That’s not doable, so you need to plan for a breach to happen at some point.” Emm warned other companies to learn from Sony’s mistakes, as trends such as Bring Your Own Device make it harder to lock down infrastructure – especially at large companies with employees and systems spread around the world. “There’s a temptation to focus on the latest threats and the techniques they implement to penetrate targeted companies,” he added. “But it’s important not to neglect the basics: this includes secure password management, applying security patches, judicious network management (such as network segmentation), the use of encryption to protect intellectual property and education of staff.”
Windows10takesshape: willyouneedasubscription? RUMOURS SUGGEST THAT Microsoft
will move to a subscription model for Windows 10, as details on its next operating system continue to emerge. It’s known that Windows 10 will arrive in the middle of next summer, with a technical preview available currently to download and install. Until now, however, the company has revealed few commercial details about the release. That’s starting to change, with Microsoft naming 21 January 2015 as the date when it will reveal the “next chapter” of Windows. See pcpro.link/245win for the latest information on this story. Hints coming out of Redmond suggest we can expect the final code to include a fully integrated version of voice assistant Cortana, as well as a new settings menu, but the big news is that Microsoft may be considering switching to a subscription model or a “freemium” system: speaking at 14
ABOVE Microsoft COO Kevin Turner said the firm will look to monetise its new OS “differently”
a Credit Suisse event, Microsoft COO Kevin Turner said that Microsoft would be looking to “monetise” Windows 10 “differently”. This could include charging for a subscription for professional features while offering a consumer version for free – which seems plausible, since other Microsoft staff have suggested that users of the Technical Preview will be able to upgrade to the finished release free of charge. What we think: “Microsoft needs to produce a winner with Windows 10, and win back users,” said Briefing and Futures editor Nicole Kobie. “Missteps with Windows 8 hurt Microsoft’s
reputation among power users, businesses and average consumers alike, and while Windows 8.1 addressed some complaints, Windows 10 needs to be perfect.” What you said: A move to subscriptions for Windows wasn’t popular among pcpro.co.uk readers. Kevin Cozens felt that Microsoft has been “charging over the top for years”, adding that “if there’s going to be a subscription fee, then I’ll be closing the Windows and biting the Apple.” Instead, he called for Microsoft to make Windows 10 completely free. Others suggested a two-tier approach might be possible: offering a consumer version free of charge, but asking enterprise and professional users to cough up for more advanced features – not much different from the subscription-like Software Assurance model that’s already offered to corporations, noted Wright_is.
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PCProbe
Can we trust antivirus companies anymore? Tom Fox-Brewster investigates the Regin conspiracy, and whether governments and the antivirus industry colluded to allow surveillance software through their defences the surveillance operations, he’d also have targeted encryption experts to uncover “state-of-the-art” security technology in advance of its wider release.
Image: © Kaspersky Lab
■ Rush to publish
I
magine a world in which security vendors allowed specific strains of malware through on the say-so of governments. If exposed, it would surely ruin them: the industry has to maintain trust with customers to survive. But latent suspicion of collusion between antivirus vendors and governments was awakened in November 2014, by revelations surrounding a highly sophisticated piece of malware called Regin. Symantec was the first in a string of security firms to go public with a report on the malware, highlighting its multiple stages of execution, each hidden and encrypted. The attacks were far more targeted than typical criminal exploits – Symantec reported fewer than 100 incidents. According to The Intercept, one such attack involved Belgian ISP Belgacom. Dutch security firm Fox-IT helped to remove the malware, and it later emerged, thanks to a tweet from one of its employees, that the malware may have been crafted by GCHQ and NSA snoops. The malware was used to target individuals of interest, including noted cryptographer Jean-Jacques Quisquater, who told PC Pro that he believes other security academics were targeted by Western intelligence agencies. Quisquater even admitted that, if he’d been in charge of 16
ABOVE Kaspersky Lab has now published its research into Regin, including this guide to how the malware stays hidden
Antivirus firms, in their rush to push out technical analyses of Regin, opened themselves up for criticism. It was apparent they had detected the malware well ahead of their disclosure of it, so why take so long to publish their research? Technical staff at The Intercept told PC Pro that antivirus firms got wind of its own report and sought to go public ahead of publication as part of a PR exercise. This was the first failure of the security companies: they didn’t see any value in talking about Regin until the media was ready to expose it. Curiously, most were blocking parts of Regin at least five years ago. Symantec had been thwarting components of the malware in 2010, and both F-Secure and Kaspersky Lab were doing the same in 2009. By March 2011, Microsoft’s antivirus software was detecting and identifying Regin by name. So it’s evident that security firms were aware of Regin; they just weren’t talking about it. This raises a pertinent question: were security companies told to keep quiet by GCHQ and the NSA, or did they keep quiet simply to keep Western governments happy? Neither scenario inspires confidence. Such concerns aren’t the preserve of tin foil hat wearers. F-Secure admitted it had been asked by a customer – not from the public sector – to stay silent about Regin, for fear of exposing it as a victim. Kaspersky has been asked – through what it describes as “informal” channels – not to detect “law-enforcement malware”, but has explicitly said it would never accept such a request. Exactly how many other companies have been approached with such “informal” requests, and perhaps have a juicy government contract just waiting to be signed, is something over which we can only speculate.
Security companies didn’t see value in talking about Regin until the media was ready to expose it
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Image: © Symantec
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■ Slow to question
ABOVE Regin has a remarkable, modular structure, with multiple stages of execution that are each hidden and encrypted
BELOW As part of its investigation, Securelist uncovered this mistake in one piece of Regin code
Image:© Kaspersky Lab
Justin Clarke, co-founder of security-services firm Gotham Digital Science, believes the industry was simply slow putting the puzzle together. “I wouldn’t expect antivirus firms to be sitting on Regin for no reason,” said Clarke. “It’s probably more that they hadn’t recognised what it was until they had enough information.” Their silence is also symptomatic of an industry that doesn’t share. Kaspersky Lab was the only vendor to give a full explanation for the delay, comparing the time-consuming work that goes into threat reports to palaeontology: “Everyone may have a bone, but nobody has the full skeleton.” There remains another doubt, however. According to The Intercept’s report, the malware may well date back to 2003, leaving a six-year period in which no antivirus system had detected Regin or its components.
Briefing PCProbe
“Historically, antivirus companies have focused on protecting users against widespread threats that have been seen before. As such, they’re useful for protection against generic malware that steals banking information, online gaming credentials and so on,” said Morgan Marquis-Boire, a former Google security professional now responsible for protecting First Look Media, the publisher of The Intercept. “They’re less effective against custom surveillance implants that aren’t seen in quantity. This includes boutique toolkits such as Regin that are developed in-house at large intelligence agencies, but also commercially sold ‘lawful intercept’ tools such as Hacking Team’s Remote Control System and FinFisher’s FinSpy.”
■ Collusion or incompetence?
Indeed, antivirus software’s very failings may give security companies a plausible defence against accusations of a conspiracy. “Given that antivirus is poor at detecting targeted malware, it would be difficult to determine whether a company was failing to detect something due to collusion,” Marquis-Boire told PC Pro. But to suggest that Regin has exposed antivirus software as the enemy would be an overreaction, notes Bruce Schneier, cryptography expert and CTO of Co3 Systems, who campaigned in 2013 for security firms to reveal whether they had ever whitelisted malware at the request of a government entity. To eschew antivirus would be akin to foregoing door locks on your house, Schneier suggests. Despite its manifold failures, antivirus is still a necessary technology. But questions remain over the industry’s response to Regin: even if the number of people and companies being attacked was small, the public warnings should have been louder.
Exposinggovernmentmalware…ornot? Impressing the security industry is hard – as Claudio Guarnieri knows. He’s the creator of the Detekt tool, which aims to help journalists and political activists detect government malware on their PCs. The software was backed by Amnesty International and the Electronic Frontier Foundation – but received negative responses from some security specialists. One vehement detractor is penetration tester Steve Lord. Lord claims that, at a technical level, the tool simply “isn’t very good”, warning that the “basic pattern-matching checks” of Detekt are easily fooled. “The version I looked at did some
horrible things. It excluded processes from its scans by name, so an attacker could bypass Detekt just by renaming processes.” “If you’re trying to target people who are being monitored by governments, presumably with lives at risk, this isn’t something you can afford to get wrong.” Guarnieri admitted on blog Medium that the software as launched “certainly had issues”, but stressed that he had subsequently rushed to address them. He also pointed out that the tool wasn’t intended as a comprehensive counter-surveillance tool, but as a way to detect specific Hacking Team
and FinFisher malware, which has been used by repressive regimes. Nor was Detekt supposed to replace regular antivirus software, but to supplement it. “It’s a cat-andmouse game that will never end. My hope was to twist the game and execute a quick action,” Guarnieri said. “We wanted to run a rapid triaging campaign, dedicated to the many people whom I know are being unjustly surveilled and harassed because of their social and political struggles, and whom we just aren’t able to reach.” In the end though, Guarnieri’s experiences wore him down to the extent that he no longer wishes to
discuss his experiences. “Maybe one day infosec people will... understand and support others that actually do useful work for the community,” he told PC Pro.
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TheA-List LAPTOPS
The ultimate guide to the very best products on the market today SMARTPHONES
Apple MacBook Pro 13in with Retina display Sony Xperia Z3 Compact Android smartphone, 16GB, free phone, £23/mth, 24mths
Laptop, from £999 apple.com/uk
omio.com
Gram for gram, the MacBook Pro 13in is a powerhouse of a laptop. An Intel Haswell CPU delivers strong performance and great battery life, the PCI Express SSD is lightningquick, and the sumptuous Retina display is a pixel-perfect delight. REVIEW: pcpro.link/almb13rd
The 4.6in Xperia Z3 Compact is alluringly pocketable, yet combines speedy performance with decent battery life and a fine camera. The rugged, water-resistant design is a plus point, too – and all for a very reasonable price. REVIEW: pcpro.link/alsonyz3
ALTERNATIVES
Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 2
A versatile hybrid laptop with the best IPS screen in its price range – now available at an irresistible price. £400; johnlewis. com REVIEW: pcpro.link/ alyoga2
ALTERNATIVES
Dell XPS 12 (2013) Asus X552CL
Sturdy build and a great all-round design make this an Ultrabook to lust after. The Full HD touchscreen is excellent, as is battery life. £869; dell.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/ aldell12
A capable 15.6in desktop replacement. Battery life is merely okay, but there’s enough power here to get the job done. £350; saveonlaptops.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/ alx552cl
TABLETS
Motorola Moto G (2nd Gen.)
An Android bargain with a 5in screen, good battery life and a superb design. Free phone, £19/ mth, 24mths; omio.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/ almotog2
Samsung Galaxy S5
A fast, weather-resistant, feature-packed phone. The camera is fantastic, too. Free phone, £23/ mth, 24mths; omio.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/ algals5
Chillblast Fusion Quasar Base unit, £600
9.7in tablet, 64GB, £479
apple.com/uk
chillblast.com
Even faster, even lighter and just as pretty as ever – the iPad Air 2 takes everything that made the original great and improves on it. Updated cameras and the arrival of Touch ID are welcome upgrades, too. Its only real rival is the original 32GB iPad Air, now discounted to a tempting £359. REVIEW: pcpro.link/alipair
Chillblast’s Fusion Quasar is the very definition of a classy all-round base unit. A Core i5 CPU overclocked to 4.3GHz delivers plenty of raw power, combined with good gaming capability and serious upgrade potential. A five-year warranty seals the deal. REVIEW: pcpro.link/alchill
ALTERNATIVES
ALTERNATIVES Great design, solid all-round performance and keen pricing help the Nexus 7 retain its place on the A-List. 16GB, £180; ebuyer.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/ aln72013
Apple iPad mini 2
The arrival of the iPad mini 3 has pushed down the price of the mini 2, making it a steal. 32GB, £279; apple.com/ uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/ alipmini2
HALF-PRICE READER OFFERR 18
Apple steps up to a larger screen size with the classy, long-lasting 4.7in iPhone – but it’s pricey. Free phone, £35/mth, 24mths; omio.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/alip6
PCS
Apple iPad Air 2
Nexus 7
Apple iPhone 6
Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet
The most desirable fullsized Android tablet yet, thanks to great design and battery life. 16GB, £360; pcworld.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/ alxz2tab
Apple iMac 21.5in
A classy all-in-one with a compact frame, ample power and a colouraccurate screen. From £899; apple.com/uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/ alimac215
Apple iMac 27in with Retina 5K display
Astonishing image quality and stunning resolution go hand in hand. £1,999; apple.com/uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/ alimac27
Scan 3XS GW-HT20
The fastest workstation we’ve seen, thanks to the Haswell-E Core i7-5960X CPU. £2,753; scan.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/ algwht20
KASPERSKY INTERNET SECURITY 2015 Buy 1yr protection, 3 devices, for £24.99 (RRP £49.99) Visit store.pcpro.co.uk KA
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P C P R O . C O . U K /A L I S T
Briefing Bestbuys
MONITORS
Asus PB287Q
Premium monitor, £410 overclockers.co.uk Not so long ago, a 4K display for less than £500 was unthinkable. Asus delivers razor-sharp pictures on a generous 28in panel without breaking the bank. REVIEW: pcpro.link/alpb287q
Eizo ColorEdge CS240
AOC q2770Pqu
Eizo ticks almost every box with the 24.1in, 1,920 x 1,200 ColorEdge CS240. With a highly colour-accurate IPS screen, it’s the first truly professional-class monitor we’ve seen at anywhere near this price. £564; wex photographic.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/alcs240
A feature-packed, 27in, 2,560 x 1,440 display offering a huge workspace, an adjustable stand, a four-port USB hub – and a three-year warranty. Super PLS technology gives great viewing angles too. At this price, it’s a steal. £362; dabs.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/alq2770
Canon Pixma Pro-100
Epson Expression Photo XP-950
PRINTERS
Canon Pixma MG6450
All-in-one inkjet printer, £80
argos.co.uk The MG6450 inherits its predecessor’s status as PC Pro’s favourite inkjet all-in-one, offering high-quality output at a very reasonable price. REVIEW: pcpro.link/almg6450
Canon’s professional-level inkjet printer is just the thing if you want prints that are a cut above the average. Produces sumptuous photographs at up to A3+ size, and its black-and-white output is stunning. £364; jessops.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/alpixmapro
Epson’s high-end inkjet all-in-one is a fantastic all-rounder for the enthusiast photographer. It combines high-quality prints with a decent scanner, a great touch interface and the ability to output photos at up to A3 in size. £250; pcworld.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/alxp950
D-Link DIR-868L
Asus RT-AC68U
ROUTERS
Netgear R7000 Nighthawk AC1900 802.11ac cable router, £166 broadbandbuyer.co.uk A superfast router over 802.11ac, and speeds hold up well even at long range. With bundled backup software and fast USB 3 sharing ports, it’s the ultimate Wi-Fi router. REVIEW: pcpro.link/alr7000
This 802.11ac wireless router may not have the most impressive set of features, and it lacks an internal modem. In our tests, however, it outpaced routers costing twice as much, making it an affordable way to get speedy wireless performance. £102; broadbandbuyer.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/aldir868l
It’s hardly a value option, but Asus’ flagship router offers 3x3 wireless, four wired Gigabit Ethernet ports and a pair of integrated USB sockets for highspeed file sharing. Cloud-based access and synchronisation tools are a bonus. £185; ebuyer.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/alac68u
Netgear ReadyNAS 314
Google Chromecast
HOME NETWORKING
Synology DiskStation DS214play Network attached storage, £287 ebuyer.com A hugely versatile NAS with built-in Wi-Fi and some of the best media-streaming and cloud features we’ve seen, as well as eSATA and USB extensibility. It packs a lots of power into a solid, compact unit. REVIEW: pcpro.link/alds214play
This NAS drive isn’t cheap, but it’s fast, reliable and easy to use – while offering advanced features such as unlimited block-level snapshots and iSCSI thin provisioning. The best buy is the diskless model. £438; ebuyer.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/alrnas314
This is the future of TV streaming – cheap to buy and simple to use. Plug the Chromecast into a spare HDMI port at the back of your TV, then browse on your smartphone or tablet and beam Full HD content directly onto the big screen. £30; play.google.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/alccast
WEARABLES
Pebble Steel
Smartwatch, £180 firebox.com The Pebble Steel isn’t the flashiest smartwatch out there, but it offers great battery life, brilliant apps and a simple interface with solid physical controls. Plus, it supports both iOS and Android. REVIEW: pcpro.link/alpebsteel
LG G Watch R
Android Wear smartwatches don’t tend to have great battery life, but the G Watch R is the best we’ve seen. With an attractive, round-faced design, a punchy and colourful display and a heart-rate monitor, it’s the best Android smartwatch so far. £201; amazon.co.uk REVIEW: see p67
Motorola Moto 360
Functionally, there isn’t much to choose between the various Android Wear contenders, but Motorola’s tasteful, circular-faced smartwatch is a winner in the style stakes. Qi wireless charging and a built-in heart monitor are welcome additions, too. £199; johnlewis.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/almoto360
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Briefing Bestbuys SECURITY SOFTWARE Kaspersky Internet Security 2014
PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE Microsoft Office 2013
A feature-packed suite that excelled in our detection and usability tests – without unduly taxing lower-power PCs. 3 PCs, £25/yr; store.pcpro.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/alkasis14
Microsoft retains the top spot for the ultimate office suite, although tablet users may be disappointed by lacklustre touch support. From £110; office.microsoft.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/aloffice13
Avast Free Antivirus 2014
LibreOffice 4
The best free antivirus, with a clean interface, great protection and oodles of features, including real-time scanning, plus sandbox and remote-assistance tools. Free; avast.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/ alavast14
Bitdefender Internet Security 2014
Bitdefender’s autopilot mode provides protection without interruptions – perfect for non-experts. The price is appealing, too. 3 PCs, £20/yr; amazon.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/ albitdef14
SERVERS
The UI looks a little dated, and Microsoft Office has the edge on features. All the same, LibreOffice is an impressively powerful office suite – and it won’t cost you a penny. Free; libreoffice.org REVIEW: pcpro.link/ allibreoffice
Scrivener
A brilliant package for serious writers: not just a word processor, but a tool that helps you organise your ideas and manage the process of composition from start to finish. £28; literatureandlatte.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/ alscrivener
STORAGE APPLIANCES
Boston Value Series 361 G8
Qnap TS-EC880 Pro
Massive compute density, courtesy of a whopping 40 Intel Xeon CPU cores, combines with high-end storage features, 10GbE and integral battery backup units. It adds up to the best 1U rack server money can buy. £5,899 exc VAT; boston.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/al361g8
Qnap’s eight-bay desktop NAS sets new standards in the desktop NAS appliance space, combining ultra-powerful hardware with every storage feature you could wish for. It has huge expansion potential, and 10GbE networking seals the deal. Diskless, £1,212 exc VAT; dabs.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/ alec880pro
HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8
Synology RackStation RS2414RP+
A space-saving microserver with excellent remote-management features that’s perfect for even the smallest of businesses – and it’s reasonably priced, too. £368 exc VAT; ebuyer.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/alhpgen8
BUSINESS PRINTERS
Built with speed and expansion in mind, this 2U rack NAS offers a veritable feast of storage features and plenty of expansion potential. It’s good value, too. Diskless, £1,346 exc VAT; ballicom.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/alrs2414rp
BACKUP
@PCPRO
P C P R O . C O . U K /A L I S T
CREATIVITY SOFTWARE Adobe Creative Cloud
The licensing model won’t suit everyone, but Adobe’s suite of creative tools is second to none, covering everything from photo and video editing to web development. Complete plan, £47/mth; adobe.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/alccloud14
Adobe Photoshop Elements 13
Adobe’s home imageediting tool is a terrific and powerful buy, although users of older versions won’t find much reason to upgrade. £50; amazon.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/ alelements13
Steinberg Cubase Pro 8 A big bump in performance and a handful of UI improvements keep Cubase at the top of the audio-production tree. A worthwhile upgrade. £448; steinberg.net REVIEW: see p77
SECURITY WatchGuard Firebox T10-W Packed with wired and wireless security features, the T10-W includes IPS, web-content filtering, application controls and HTTPS inspection. The box acts as a dual-band wireless AP, too. There’s nothing better at this price. £510 exc VAT; watchguard.com REVIEW: see p102
Sophos Cloud
User-based policies and slick mobile support make this a top-class cloud solution. Performance is impressive, too. It’s not the cheapest option, but it’s a pleasure to use. 10 users, £510/yr exc VAT; sophos.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/alscloud
NETWORK MANAGEMENT
Lexmark CS510de
Barracuda Backup Server 290
NetSupport Manager 12
A huge improvement over the CS310dn, Lexmark’s A4 colour laser is faster, offers more toner options and doubles its predecessor’s memory allocation. It prints at 30ppm, and via the cartridge-return programme you can print in mono for 1.8p per page and colour for less than 9p. £375 exc VAT; printerbase.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/ alcs510de
A beautifully simple appliance that brings together on-site and cloud backup. There’s block-level deduplication, extensive support for Windows systems and applications, integral Exchange MLB and simple deployment and management. £4,446 exc VAT; barracuda.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/alserver290
Release 12 of this indispensable support tool brings a new PIN Connect feature for instant connections and a redesigned console that makes it easy to manage a large number of PCs. Android and iOS are supported via apps, and the price is a one-off fee rather than a subscription, so it’s superb value. 250 seats, £28 per seat exc VAT; netsupportsoftware.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/ alnetsupport
MozyPro
Paessler PRTG Network Monitor 12.4
HP LaserJet Pro 200 MFP M276n
A fine choice for small businesses seeking a versatile MFP. The touchscreen adds a touch of class, output quality is good, and web-printing features are excellent. £167 exc VAT; amazon.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/alhppro200 20
An affordable cloud backup service for desktops and servers that sets the standard for deployment and management. It will handle parallel local backups for faster restores. 1yr, 50GB, £154 exc VAT; mozy.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/almozypro
Licensed by the number of sensors, and with a proprietary database included, PRTG is a great-value auditing and monitoring tool with no hidden costs. 500 sensors, £943 exc VAT; paessler.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/alprtg124
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Profile BACKGROUND INFO ON INNOVATIVE BRITISH COMPANIES
XMOS
We discover how a British chip company’s novel approach has led to its processors being in everything from PC speakers to stair-climbing robots
KEYFACTS
XMOS IN A NUTSHELL XMOS is a British chip designer. It started life as a PhD project at the University of Bristol and now supplies programmable microcontrollers for everything from coffee machines to incar computers. XMOS claims its processors respond to events 100 times faster than traditional CPUs, making them perfect for robotics. LOCATION Bristol FOUNDED 2005 EMPLOYEES 65 WEBSITE xmos.com
RIGHT A single chip controls the “brains” of this Japanese robot dog, which is able to climb up and down stairs 22
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An XMOS chip controls the movement of this robotic arm, created by Synapticon
our starter for ten: name the fabless British semiconductor firm that has its chips embedded in products including smartphone accessories, home entertainment systems, robots and much more besides. ARM, you say? Sorry, you lose five points. Contrary to popular belief, ARM isn’t the only British semiconductor firm that’s thriving. In fact, XMOS has in the past few months seen its estimated value soar to more than $100 million after securing funding from international technology giants including Huawei and Bosch. Now, this little-known company believes its microcontrollers are set to replace conventional CPUs in all manner of technologies, not least the coming wave of robots. We caught up with XMOS’s CEO, Nigel Toon, to find out how this firm got started and where it’s headed.
“At the end of the PhD project, people looked at it and thought ‘that’s a pretty good idea for a product we’ve got here,’” says Toon. More people became involved, seed funding was allocated, and by 2006 the project had advanced sufficiently to attract investment from Amadeus Capital. That name may sound familiar: it’s the venture capitalist firm co-founded by Hermann Hauser, the man behind Acorn computers, which a decade or so earlier had helped to spin off ARM. By now, XMOS was ready to break away from academia and stand on its own two feet. In 2009 it produced its first prototype product, and by 2010 the first chips rolled off the production line. Amazingly, it went from student project to fully fledged chip manufacturer in five years.
■ Bristol beginnings
■ Micromanagement
Just as ARM isn’t the only British chip company, Mark Zuckerberg isn’t the only man who can turn a university project into a thriving business. XMOS started life at the University of Bristol in the middle of the last decade, under Professor David May. May was the lead architect of the transputer, a pioneering microprocessor architecture of the 1980s that was ahead of its time in terms of parallel processing – that is, running multiple tasks at once. May had a “very bright” PhD student, Ali Dixon, who was looking for a project, and with May’s guidance the XMOS microcontroller technology started to take shape.
So what makes the XMOS processor different to regular CPUs? While conventional processor manufacturers are “focused on making processors go faster and faster,” says Toon, the XMOS microcontroller is “focused much more on reducing latency and responding to external events”. “This really adds a level of performance that just isn’t possible with other processors,” he adds. “When I say not possible, we’re about 100 times faster than any other processor in responding to real-time activity. In fact, the performance of responding to real-time events is so good that you actually can build, in software, many of the functions for which you’d originally need a hardware box sitting around the processor as an I/O block.” This means, for example, that the XMOS processor can take the 480Mbits/sec of data from a USB 2 port and respond to it in real-time, reading the data at the same time as processing it. This makes XMOS processors much better suited to certain applications than conventional CPUs. Take active noise-cancelling, where the response to any background-noise input has to be instantaneous for the technology to be effective. Or robotics, where a humanised walking droid may have to react immediately to prevent itself from toppling over, in the same way you instantly throw your arms out when you sense you’re losing your balance. This ability to adapt to a wide range of products means that the company isn’t relying on one or two key vertical markets, as Intel has in the past with PCs.
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the product between it being made and it arriving at the doors of our customers. This is the same as Apple and its mobile phones.” XMOS’s motivation to build its own chips wasn’t purely based on revenue, but also on helping the product to find its place in the market – a key lesson for business owners. “There’s a chicken and egg in the IP licensing business,” says Toon. “There has to be a compelling, pulling application for the technology. ARM managed to achieve that in the mobile phone space, which became the driver for its business; the company has subsequently expanded well beyond that. “In our case, we recognised that there wasn’t going to be one big driving market that was going to be the pull for our technology. We want to build a business on lots of different companies using our technology. The line we’re going to have to draw is higher up, where we’re going to have to give them a chip, a development board, a bunch of software libraries they can use to build their system. And in return, we capture a higher level of revenue.”
■ Future developments
TOP RIGHT The XMOS business model is based on accessible development hardware BOTTOM RIGHT Unlike ARM, XMOS provides physical chips
“That flexibility allows us to be used for lots and lots of different applications,” says Toon, reeling off XMOSbased products ranging from in-car computers to coffee machines, surround-sound PC speakers and 3D printers. “We’re not trying to get our processors inside the next Apple mobile phone, because very quickly people would say ‘volumes are big enough, we’ll build a custom chip to do that’. But the peripheral that the Apple phone gets connected to is very much where we get used, because those technologies change every year, and people are trying to make differentiated products and add their own, unique special sauce into their device; they can do that very quickly by programming software on our chip.”
XMOS is allowing others to build their own projects by programming hardware in ways that haven’t previously been possible
■ Linking ARMs
Despite the differing approach to processor technology, XMOS inevitably finds itself compared to ARM – and the two companies do have much in common. Hermann Hauser is on the XMOS board, and the ARM co-founder and former CEO, Sir Robin Saxby, sits on the advisory board. Other members of the senior management also have ARM on their CVs. However, there’s one key difference between the way ARM and XMOS operate. While ARM’s business model is to license its technology to other chipmakers and take the royalties, XMOS actually sells a finished product with its name on it. It doesn’t have its own fabrication plants, but instead outsources manufacturing, in the same way Apple employs Chinese companies such as Foxconn to make its phones. “We capture the revenue for the whole chip, not only a piece of the technology inside,” says Toon. “But the reality is that, although it’s built to our design and then run against our test programme, and we control the quality of the product, we don’t physically touch
Perhaps the most encouraging thing about XMOS is that it’s allowing others to build their own projects by programming hardware in ways that haven’t previously been possible. Despite having zero experience of programming XMOS chips, or indeed any form of embedded computing, a team of Japanese students managed to build a stair-climbing robot using a single XMOS xCORE processor in just one year (you can watch a video of the robot hobbling up the stairs at pcpro.link/245xmos1). Or what about the amazing looking 6DOF Motion Platform, which uses six actuators to tilt a gamer in various directions while they’re playing a flight simulator? (Watch the video at pcpro.link/245xmos2.) Developers of the 6DOF platform believe their product won’t only find a home in arcade games: “Breaking away from the need to use a computer to conduct the necessary calculations opens the door for other applications,” said the platform’s inventor, Thanos Kontogiannis, in an interview for the XMOS blog. He included two examples: flying an “unmanned aerial vehicle” from a first-person view, and watching a motor race direct from the cockpit. XMOS puts in a huge amount of effort to encourage and cultivate these third-party developers – by publishing software libraries, running competitions, or by promoting their work on the company’s website – because it realises that an active developer community will be making the XMOS-based products of tomorrow. “With our product, people can create what used to be hardware in software. They’re writing C code to do that. There’s lots of people who can write C code, and hopefully there’s a growing number of people who can write C code. “We’re enabling a much bigger community of people to think, ‘Ah, I can change the chip, I can program a different interface, or I can modify my USB interface to do something special.’ That’s really empowering.” If the projects we’ve seen already are anything to go by, it will be fascinating to see what they come up with. BARRY COLLINS
Whataboutyou? Do you work for a British technology company that could be profiled in PC Pro? If so, get in touch: profi
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Viewpoints PC Pro readers and experts give
If robots take our jobs, do we really want them back? Automation can have a brutal effect on jobs, but long-term it’s actually a humanising force “Darling,” my wife asked me the other day, “does anyone still use hot-metal typography?” A glance across at her screen revealed the inspiration for her curiosity: a page of Darien Graham-Smith is historical newspaper PC Pro’s deputy editor. He front pages, each missed out on hot metal, one showcasing the but recalls QuarkXPress distinctive weightywith a shudder. but-wonky look of physical print. “I can’t imagine why they would,” I replied, in my best wise-old-owl voice. “Digital printing is cleaner, quicker and far less labour-intensive.” My wife weighed this up for a moment, then concluded: “Bit of a shame for all those people who used to run the printing presses.” A succinct summary of the 1986 Wapping dispute, I suppose. In truth, many industries have similar stories to tell. Long before Rupert Murdoch defied the unions with his switch to digital printing, the 19th-century Luddite movement rebelled against the use of labour-saving machinery in the textile industry. The word “saboteur” supposedly derives from a group of 15th-century Belgians who attempted to break mechanical looms by throwing wooden shoes – sabots, in the local lingo – into the works.
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their views on the world of technology So when a new report warns that computers are taking over our jobs (see p124), my reaction tends to be a weary “what’s new?” Tweak a few specifics and it’s a timeless prediction: the word “robot” itself derives from a 1920 work of sciencefiction in which automatons replace humans throughout the industries of the world. And while such upheavals can have terrible consequences for individuals, in the past I’ve tended to see them as inevitable steps along the road to zero employment.
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es, you read that right – and I don’t necessarily mean it as a bad thing. Because when you get down to it, who really wants a job? Dragging yourself out of bed each morning to spend half your life in the service of someone you’ve never met? It’s a mug’s game. We do it for the money, but surely, sooner or later, technology will free us from that tiresome necessity. That’s what I used to assume, anyway. As a youth, my vision of the future was greatly shaped by Star Trek, so I always took it as read that if our successor generations chose to work, it would be, in the words of Captain Picard, “to better ourselves and the rest of humanity” – not merely to keep the bailiffs from the door.
services such as the power grid, if only to keep our replicators working. It’s nice to imagine that volunteers might operate our power plants and distribution systems on a philanthropic basis, but the need for specialist expertise and round-the-clock reliability makes it hard to put much faith in that. (There’s an analogy here with opensource software, if anyone dares to draw it.) Even if we look forward to a time when all of that stuff can, somehow, be handled by machines, the idea of a post-work society has inherent problems. With no way to accumulate currency, how could we ever trade naturally scarce resources, such as real estate? Perhaps we’d all have to learn to be stoically satisfied with the lots we were born to – or, perhaps we’d see a spate of land grabs, ruthlessly put down by hyper-efficient police robots. Either way, I’m starting to describe a world I don’t want to live in. Happily, I don’t think that’s where we’re really heading. Despite the tremendous technological advances of the past 150 years, the UK employment rate is far higher today than it was in the Victorian period – so the idea that automation depresses the job market clearly isn’t a universal truth. And there are plenty of roles that I doubt machines will ever be able to take over – notably the ones built on two-way relationships. This isn’t to do with the limits of artificial intelligence: a future digital teacher, manager or psychotherapist may deliver a fantastic performance of caring. But the person on the other side of the exchange simply won’t respond to a machine in the way they would to a real person. Humans need humans. In fact, more or less by definition, the jobs that get taken over by machines will always be the ones that least befit a thinking, feeling person; the ones that treat the individual as a mere functional commodity, and which tend to pay accordingly. Doubtless, then, the experts are right to warn of more job losses to come. And it isn’t a warning we should ignore: we’re going to need to invest in support mechanisms for those affected, as our society isn’t one in which it’s easy to hop into a new career and keep going. At the same time, we don’t necessarily have to mourn the loss of the roles in question. There are good reasons why no-one’s gone back to metal type, and automation gives future generations their chance to prosper on terms that are – not to put too fine a point on it – ever more humane.
There are plenty of roles that I doubt machines will ever be able to take over – notably the ones built on two-way relationships I could even see how we’d get there, via the invention of the matter replicator. After all, I reasoned, once we were able to freely assemble our food and clothing out of any old atoms we had lying around, we’d have no more need for the nine-to-five. Lately, though, I’ve started to doubt that things will work out so neatly. This change in outlook probably isn’t wholly unconnected to my recent experiences with 3D printing. For years I looked forward excitedly to the arrival of this revolutionary technology – discovering only when the hardware finally landed on my desk how limited it really is. Once you start to think about matter replicators in similar terms, it becomes obvious that the employment economy isn’t going to collapse just like that. The hardware may relieve us of the need to pay for things like potatoes and trousers, but we’ll still need
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Retro cool is in – and that extends to dumbphones Step back from the hustle and bustle of constant updates: downgrade to a Nokia 3310 Back in 2001, life was wonderfully simple. Peaceful, even. There was no Facebook, no Twitter, no smartphones (Pocket PCs definitely don’t count), and tablets were things you got Sasha Muller is PC Pro’s from the doctor. It deputy reviews editor. was also the year I He’s going to read that started working in book just as soon as he’s tech journalism, and finished playing Snake. the one thing that really stands out in my memory is the phone I owned. It wasn’t just any old phone: it was the now-legendary Nokia 3310, probably the finest dumbphone to have graced a pocket. I wasn’t alone in having a soft spot for Nokia’s cutely proportioned plastic brick: The company sold 126 million of the things, more than any iPhone to date. But you certainly wouldn’t have guessed its success from the specifications. In fact, back then, there weren’t many specifications people cared about. There was no talk of processing power or pixel density. Instead, people asked three questions when buying a mobile: how much does it cost, does it make phone calls, and does it have that infuriating game with the snake on it? The Nokia 3310 emphatically ticked all those boxes. Times have moved on: these days, you’ll find a more powerful processor and a better screen in a Poundland Christmas cracker. Sadly, newer doesn’t necessarily mean better. As phones have progressed from voice and text-messaging devices to the always-connected smartphones of today, they’ve slowly lost sight of what many people loved the most: batteries that lasted more than a day; physical buttons that allowed you to text with your eyes closed; and the ability to survive regular incidences of accidental abuse.
In the wake of the iCloud leak, it wouldn’t be surprising to see celebrities dump their iPhone 6s for vintage Nokias
Thanks to a low-resolution LCD screen and a processor little more powerful than the average Casio calculator, charging a dumbphone was something you did once a week, not every night. As for resilience, there’s no contest: send today’s smartphone skittering across the street and chances are it will end up a smashed, non-functional wreck; do the same to a Nokia 3310 and you’ll cause more damage to the tarmac.
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ant proof? I’ve dropped, soaked and abused my Nokia 3310 more than any other gadget I’ve owned, and it still works today. The battery could do with being replaced (eBay is awash with third-party models), and it looks like it’s been in a fight with a sandpaper factory, but it’s still firing on all one of its low-powered cylinders. The same can’t be said of the smashed, waterlogged, year-old smartphones sitting in the tech graveyard I call my loft. No matter how far we’ve come in terms of the technology in our handsets, the one thing that never ceases to change is our cack-handedness when it comes to dealing with mobile phones. I’ve smashed more Gorilla Glass than an angry primate, and my fellow destroyer-of-phones, Nicole Kobie, has killed off an increasing number of our long-term-loan handsets with her own brand of high-speed pavement interface testing, not to mention the terrifyingly tough “toilet test”. We’re both firmly in the target audience for a dumbphone. For some, the lure of a retro phone isn’t just about resilience – it’s also, strangely enough, about fashion. It turns out Iggy Pop doesn’t have a lust for smartphone technology (he relies on a ruggedised clamshell dumbphone to survive the rigours of his punk lifestyle), and even fashion royalty such as Anna Wintour have been spied using clamshell phones alongside more modern devices. Pop superstars such as Rihanna and Miley Cyrus keep popping up with retro handsets, too. It’s not entirely about making a fashion statement, though. In the wake of the Apple iCloud leak, it wouldn’t be surprising to see celebrities dump their iPhone 6s for vintage Nokias and, as the current fashion dictates, Polaroid cameras. You might be able to hack voicemail or intercept texts, but if you replace those gigabytes of semiclothed bedroom twerking snaps (pure conjecture on my part) with physical photographs, there’s only one logical conclusion: the online community will have to go back to Photoshopping celebrity faces onto porn stars. Just like the good old days. Twerking aside, others cite the return to a dumbphone as a welcome disconnect from the always-on world, a clinical prescription to combat the addiction of constantly checking messages, emails and status updates. The rationale is that, if it’s important, people can still pick up the phone. Beyond the indestructibility, the battery life measured in days and the hipsterish cachet attached to
Viewpoints using a dumbphone, this is probably the most compelling reason anyone could have to ditch their smartphone and go dumb. No internet, no apps, no social networks, no Candy Crush Saga – just peace, quiet, that book you’ve been meaning to read and the occasional welcome trill of a retro ringtone. An appealing prospect, no?
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More data? Security services are drowning in it A lack of information isn’t what stands between the terrorists and us pre-empting their actions
The problem with our new-fangled digital lives is that there’s too much hay, making it difficult to find the needles. That’s the metaphor I keep hearing to describe the securityservices data grab: Nicole Kobie is Briefing intelligence agencies and Futures editor. She are chasing after struggles to keep up with more hay (our data), her own social networks, but it isn’t helping never mind anyone else’s. them find needles (terrorists and other criminals). Take as an example the horrific murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich in 2013: this is exactly the type of crime most of us would give up a bit of privacy to avoid. The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report on the murder reveals much about how the security services work – and when their work fails. But despite the head of MI5 warning the report’s writers against trying to retroactively predict an “alternative chain of events”, the government has cleanly pinned the blame on US web firms, saying that if it had seen murderer Michael Adebowale’s Facebook exchange with a then-unknown overseas extremist, investigation “might have enabled MI5 to prevent the attack”. There are good reasons why Facebook didn’t report the conversation – notably that, in the sense of eyeballs on letters, it doesn’t actually read all of our posts. However, this is what the government now wants. This is akin to BT listening in on our phone calls and taking notes, or Royal Mail steaming open letters; the government thinks it must be possible for everything 25
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digital to be read, but doesn’t realise that technical constraints as well as a lack of time make it impossible. Statistics revealed in The Mirror show that 99.6 million posts are made on Facebook by UK users every day, with more than a billion sent globally, daily, on Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat combined; a ridiculous 64 billion messages are traded over WhatsApp. That’s a lot of hay. The security services have access to much of that data already: the ISC’s own report said GCHQ can access a slice of global internet traffic as well as a portion of the traffic leaving or entering the UK. The exact amounts have been redacted from the report, but the spying agency admitted it’s already drowning in all the data it sees. “The resources required to process the vast quantity of data involved mean that, at any one time, GCHQ can only process approximately *** of what they can access,” the report notes, with the asterisks denoting what’s been redacted. Facebook does have an automated takedown process for terror-related posts, and several of Adebowale’s accounts were closed under the system. The site doesn’t assess whether those posts should be further investigated – it isn’t a policing agency, after all. However, as Cambridge University security specialist Ross Anderson notes, Facebook, Google and Microsoft all spend more money independently fighting online crime than Britain does, and would hand over more data if it weren’t for a backlog of requests processed via the US Department of Justice. “If GCHQ really cares, then it could always pay the Department of Justice to clear the backlog,” Anderson noted in a blog post. More could be done – but it needs to be done by the government, not Facebook. The government disagrees, and these days it feels inevitable that the worst crimes lead to such a data grab. As sure as a terror attack is to lead to marches from far-right groups such as Britain First, it also always seems to remind the home secretary, Theresa May, to revive the so-called Snoopers’ Charter. But security services don’t need more data; we need better security services. Sound unfair? Of course it’s a tough job, but with regard to the Rigby murder, UK security services had been watching the other killer – Michael Adebolajo – for years prior to the events of 2013, and were trying to introduce targeted surveillance on Adebowale. The paperwork was delayed, and didn’t go through to the Home Office until the day before the murder. They didn’t need to sift through a haystack to find that needle, they already had it in their hand.
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Computers need to get in touch with their emotions Is there a hidden message in The Imitation Game about the limits of artificial intelligence?
In Viewpoints last month (see p25), Nicole Kobie rightly skewered Hollywood’s sloppy assumption that Alan Turing must have been autistic because he was a mathematical genius Dick Pountain edits who didn’t like girls. Real World Computing I almost didn’t go to and can be found towards see The Imitation the red end of the Game, but I forced autistic spectrum. myself and was pleasantly surprised that, although it took some liberties with the facts, it did grippingly convey the significance of Bletchley Park to the war effort. The movie’s major “economy with the truth” lay in excluding GPO engineer Tommy Flowers, who actually built the kit and wrestled with the wiring looms; in the film, Turing was portrayed as doing it alone. It doesn’t mention Asperger’s - it was unknown in Turing’s lifetime – but, as Nicole pointed out, Benedict Cumberbatch’s depiction of Turing was clearly based on modern notions about the stunting of
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conversation sufficiently well to fool another human being, on the assumption that language is the highest attribute of human reason. However, recent research in affective neuroscience – the study of how emotions interact with the brain – has revealed the extent to which reason and emotion are totally entangled in the human mind. The weakness of the whole AI project, of which Turing was a pioneer, lies in failing to recognise this, in its continuing attachment to 18th-century notions of rationalism.
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hose parts of our brain that manipulate language and symbols aren’t in ultimate control, being more like our mind’s display than its CPU. I am, therefore I think, some of the time. US neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp has uncovered a collection of separate emotional operating systems in the brain’s limbic system, each employing a set of neurotransmitters and hormones. These monitor and modulate all our sensory inputs and behaviour, the most familiar examples being sexual arousal (testosterone and others), fight/flight (adrenaline) and maternal bonding (oxytocin), but there are at least four more and counting. What’s more, it’s now clear that motivation itself is under the control of the dopamine reward system: we can’t do anything without it, and its failure leads to parkinsonism and worse. Now add to this the findings of Antonio Damasio, who claims all our memories are tagged with the emotional state that prevailed at the time they were recorded, and that our reasoning abilities employ these tags as weightings when making all decisions. These lines of study suggest that, first, all rationalist AI is doomed to fail because the meaning of human discourse is permeated with emotion (if you think about it, that’s why we had to invent computer languages); and second, AI-based robots will never become wholly convincing until they mimic not only our symbolic reasoning system but also our hormone-based emotional ones. Sci-fi authors have known this forever, hence their invention of biological androids such as those in Blade Runner, with real bodies that mean they have something at stake: avoiding death, finding dinner and choosing a mate. Steven Hawking’s recent warnings about AI dooming our species should be tempered by these considerations: however “smart” machines get at moving, calculating and manipulating, their actual goals still have to be set by humans, and it’s those humans we need to worry about. So the two big lessons I took away from The Imitation Game were these: machines will never be truly intelligent until they can feel as well as think, which relies as much on advances in biology as solid-state physics and software engineering; and it would be nice if they were to start planning “Imitation Game 2: The Tommy Flowers Story”.
Rationalist artificial intelligence is doomed to fail because the meaning of human discourse is permeated with emotion emotional expression and social interaction that comprise that disorder. The plot relies upon Turing overcoming the dislike his coldness provokes in others, assisted by the token emotionally literate woman, played by Keira Knightley. The tragic ending shows Turing being chemically castrated by injections of female hormone, and that combination of emotions with hormones set me thinking: I read between the lines of The Imitation Game’s script to a deeper meaning the writer may or may not have intended. The film is named after a test of machine intelligence that Turing invented, in which the machine must try to imitate human
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Readers’comments Your views and feedback from email and the web
Forced updates
The question “Has Microsoft learned its lesson?” has been clearly answered for me. Some time ago, I tried to install Windows 8.1 on all my PCs: two were fine, but one was left with a blank, black screen. I had to reinstall Windows 8 from scratch. According to various forums, it appears some machines just can’t take the update. After this, I ignored repeated prompts to install the update again, until the other day, when I was told suddenly to “restart to complete upgrade”. I followed every suggestion I could find to prevent this: editing the Group Policy, uninstalling updates, even hacking the Registry. But now I’m staring at a message box that won’t go away until I let it “finish updating”. So, I have four hours until my PC is once again made unusable. No, Microsoft hasn’t learned its lesson: your machine is still its machine. Robert Keay
Starletter In Stewart Mitchell’s article “Life after Hacktivism” (see issue 243, p56), he reported that some hacktivists see their activities as a legitimate form of protest, comparable to real-world demonstrations. In principle, they might be right: why shouldn’t protesting, like so many other activities, move online in the 21st century? It would be fascinating to see a proper debate about what degree of disruption and economic loss is acceptable online, compared with that caused by a real-world protest.
However, there’s one big stumbling block. Legitimate street protest in the UK rightly requires organisers to liaise with the police to ensure the safety of protesters and the public. This, of course, removes anonymity. When we see balaclavas and ski masks, we know something nasty is about to happen. Sadly, the anonymity afforded by the web has led to a great deal of nastiness. In order for Anonymous to become a legitimate vehicle for protest, it will have to forego its anonymity. Vernon Stradling
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Backing up isn’t enough
Shrinking bezels
Why do manufacturers keep making the edges of their tablets narrower? Tablets are becoming faster, with better displays, but we’re heading to a situation where it’s no longer practical to hold them in portrait. If I want to 28
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read a book or magazine, I have to be careful not to turn the page by accident, since there’s so little to grip onto without touching the screen. I understand manufacturers want to make their devices look sleek, but please think of your customers and give them something to hold onto. Ray Kokoszko
Reviews editor Jonathan Bray replies:
With users demanding ever-slimmer, sleeker devices, vendors have to respond or miss out on sales. Inevitably, the ability to hold a device one-handed suffers. Narrower bezels can make it easier to hold a tablet across the rear, plus you’re getting a larger screen in a smaller, lighter chassis. But I agree – it would be nice to have the option.
the Turing machine, because the government was still sitting on the secret of Bletchley Park. Yet, if it hadn’t been for Alan Turing, the computers that changed my life might never have existed. The other Alan was the neighbour of a school friend when I was 13 – a man more than happy to show off his Sharp MZ80K when we knocked on his door. Alan was a great friend, and the instigator of my love of computers. I spent at least two evenings a week at his house, continuing to do so until I left home to start a computer studies degree at the Polytechnic of Wales. Later, when I tried to re-establish contact with him, a mutual friend
The tragedy of Turing
Two Alans changed my life forever. This thought came to me after seeing The Imitation Game (I had wanted to see if I agreed with Nicole Kobie’s assessment on p25 of issue 244). The first Alan is, of course, Alan Turing, widely regarded as the father of modern computing. Turing didn’t feature in the history of computers I was taught at school: we were told that modern computers were based on the Von Neumann machine, not
Photograph: Turing Archive
I’ve been diligently backing up my files, ready for the day that something bad happens. Now that my laptop has died, however, I’ve found that much more than files is missing. I installed lots of little programs over the years, but I didn’t keep a record of them; I can’t remember what half of them were or where I got them. Similarly, I had some useful browser extensions, but have no record of these. Sifting out the good extensions is timeconsuming, but I might have to go through the whole process again. This situation has led me to think that imaging is a better solution than a simple data backup – or perhaps that I should use a combination of the two. It would have been incredibly useful to have had a recent image of my laptop, which I could have booted in a virtual machine. This way, I could have “run it down” in a controlled way, making the transition to a new machine much easier. It’s taken me almost a month to get up and running, but I’m nowhere near where I was. M Jones
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told me he was in prison. I can’t help but see an echo of Turing, another man who had a huge influence on me but who was a “criminal”. As for Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Turing, I can see why it irritated Nicole, but without his social ineptitude the film would have been short of much-needed laughs. And I was still brought to tears when the inevitable ending was revealed. Richard Shaw
Nexus owners let down
Android 5, Lollipop, represents the first time Google has pushed out a major Android update that caused problems for so many Nexus users. After installing the update and performing a factory reset, my Nexus 7 (2012) hasn’t been as unusable as many others have reported, and there are times when it seems to be working smoothly but then grinds to a halt. I
Unless the problems with Lollipop are sorted soon, I’m unlikely to renew my relationship with Android never had to reboot the device before Lollipop; it’s now necessary several times a week. To make matters worse, there’s been no information and barely any acknowledgement from Google: yes, there’s been a limited patch for YouTube video problems, but a quick trawl of the internet shows this is the least of it. Lollipop is supposed to be consumer-ready code, yet Microsoft has been acting faster, and more openly, to sort problems with its Windows 10 beta. I’ve long been an Android fan, but unless this gets sorted soon, I’m unlikely to renew the relationship. Paul Brasington
Deputy editor Darien Graham-Smith replies: As a Nexus 7 owner myself, I can
only agree. Frankly, it would have been better to leave older tablets on KitKat until such issues were resolved. While not strictly in line with the Nexus ethos, this would have reassured customers that future updates won’t cause their devices to grind to a halt.
Corrections
In issue 243’s Business Focus section, we
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Readers’ poll
What backup strategies do you use for your main computing device?
None 2% Ad hoc 18% Regular backup to local media 76% Cloud-based file-sync service 39% Regular backup to cloud 22%
PC Pro readers are a canny lot: 98% of you have some sort of backup regime in place, according to our online survey during December 2014. Of course, file-sync services such as Dropbox aren’t a true backup solution (as deleted and overwritten files are regularly purged), but many respondents use them in combination with NAS, or use a cloud service for off-site peace of mind. For those of us with multiple terabytes of data to protect, however, online backup can be both slow and pricey – and a few additional concerns were cited, too.
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I’d never back up to a cloud service. We know what happens to clouds John Turner I don’t like the idea that a cloud service could be unavailable when I need to access my content Will Shaw I make regular backups to my NAS drive, and use Google Drive to sync the same data to the cloud Lee Jordan I back up to a network hard drive in my garage – if the house burns down, I’ll still have my data Tony Carter NEWOK LO NEWOK LO
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ISSUE 244
gave the price of IASO Online Backup as 0.64p per GB/month. The correct price is 64p per GB/month. In issue 244, the software downloads insert described Ashampoo Uninstaller 5 as “as sold for £30”; in fact, the download came with an extended 180-day licence, not an unlimited commercial licence. Our apologies for these errors.
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Upgrade yourand life,catch-up businesssection. and career with our practical projects and expert advice Regular intro Facts and background on any important news stories of the past nth
Xxxxxxxx Make a fortune on YouTube 3 Uxxwg to-do lists to How to useonline advertising on your organisetoyour life p00 channel rakework in theand money p32
7Xxxxxxxx spreadsheet problems... 3 Axng online to-do listsCould to ...and how to solve them. work and lifep36 p00 aorganise databaseyour be the answer?
Xxxxxxxx Careers 3 Uxxg online life to-do The inquisitive of lists to org your workp40 and life p00 anise data analyst
Howtomakeyour fortuneonYouTube
SomepeopleareearningmillionsfromYouTubeclips.What’stheirsecret,and how can youjumpaboardthegravytrain?IanBetteridgeshareshisexpertise
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ith more than a billion visitors every month, YouTube is the third most-used website on the planet after Google search and Facebook. And it’s home to hundreds of YouTube “stars” making six-figure sums from their channels, including plenty of amateurs who started out creating videos for themselves. We don’t have space here to tell you how to turn an idea you may have into a storming success on YouTube – we’ve created a dedicated book for that, called How to be a hit on YouTube (pcpro.link/245youtube) – but we can explain exactly how YouTube channels make their money.
■ Rights and wrong
In order to understand how to make money from your channel, you first need be aware of how to set up advertising, the different ad formats available to you, and how to determine which of your videos are actually making money. Before you turn ads on, however, you need to ensure you have the full rights to what you create. That means all music, footage and artwork. The kinds of things you’ll need to clear include logos, thumbnails, intro/outro/background music, and even software interfaces and games. Often, this clearance takes the form of explicit written permission from the rights-holders, but sometimes you’ll find that copyright holders have given 32
blanket permission for their content to be used. It’s important to always check, no exceptions. People often talk about “fair use” with regard to copyright material. In the US, this gives specific rights to the use of another person’s material under limited circumstances – for example, for the purposes of education or as part of a parody. In the UK, fair use is more restricted, and is limited to news reporting (with the exception of photos), or “incidental inclusion”, which covers those times where a billboard advert may be seen in passing during some footage filmed outdoors, for example. Pretty much every other use of copyright material will infringe, and leave you open to the threat of legal action and – more likely – being blocked from YouTube. You definitely don’t have the right to use a clip from someone else’s content, even if the clip is short. YouTube’s Content ID feature enables major partners such as studios and record companies to automatically scan for their content. If found, you’ll be issued with a takedown notice; three takedown notices could lead to you being banned from YouTube, so it simply isn’t worth the risk.
■ Let’s talk money
The first step on the road to YouTube fortune is to enable monetisation on your channel. Head to the Monetisation tab in your account
BELOW Once you enable monetisation, each video will present options depending on the length of content
settings and, assuming your account is in good standing, click “Enable my account”. (If your account isn’t in good standing – typically because you’ve uploaded copyright-infringing material at some point in the past – this option won’t be available.) Congratulations – you’re now a YouTube Partner, eligible to earn money from your work! The next step is to verify your channel, by visiting youtube.com/verify. This gives you access to series playlists and YouTube Live, features that YouTube regards as “advanced”. Payment and some aspects of monetisation are achieved through Google’s AdSense programme, which is the same system used to pay websites that use Google Ads. Although you can begin monetising
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without linking to an AdSense account, you’ll need to associate your YouTube account with an approved AdSense account to see your earnings in YouTube Analytics and to be paid the money owed to you automatically. If you’ve already created an AdSense account in the past, just visit the Monetisation tab in your YouTube account settings, and follow the instructions to link the two. If you don’t already have an account, go to the Monetisation page in your channel settings and click on the section marked “How will I be paid?” From the AdSense Association page, follow the “next” step to be directed to AdSense. Select the option at the bottom of the page to choose the Google account you wish to use, enter the password for your Google account and accept the AdSense association. Once you provide contact information and submit your AdSense application, you’ll be redirected back to YouTube, where you’ll see a message informing you that your AdSense application has been received. Approval should take no more than 48 hours, after which you’ll start to receive payment via AdSense when the amount of money you’ve earned reaches a given threshold. With advertising enabled, you’ll see new monetisation options appear against every video you’ve created, and every new one you upload. The number of options available to you will vary depending on the length of your content. The key thing to remember is to enable everything that YouTube makes available to you. There’s a temptation, particularly for new channels, to minimise the ad formats you select, because you don’t want to put people off by serving up too many. But the good news is that YouTube determines when to show ads algorithmically, based on how the person who’s viewing has reacted to ads in the past. For example, those who click “Skip ad” as soon as possible will see far fewer pre-roll skippable ads. Viewers who always drop out when they see a non-skippable ad will see fewer of those. Basically, you can leave it to YouTube to determine how many and what type of ads to show. Having said that, it’s worth having an idea about the different formats available to you. There are a number of options, some of which are worth more than others. Standard in-stream Standard in-stream is a non-skippable format, which means the viewer must watch the advert in full before the video will play. According to research, 70% of in-stream ads play all the way
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RIGHT Viewers are more likely to click on Standard in-stream ads, which can’t be skipped over
BELOW InVideo overlays that sit at the bottom of videos earn you money on a costper-click basis
Display units Display ads show on the YouTube holding page rather than in the video itself. They are, effectively, standard clickable banner ads. Since this type of ad doesn’t require any specific new creative work from advertising agencies (as it’s a standard format), it’s one of the easiest units for YouTube to sell. However, the amount of money you’ll make from these is relatively low, as they don’t receive huge rates of response from users.
through. Users are significantly more likely to click on in-stream ads versus ordinary web banner ads, which, due to their “unstoppable” nature, makes them particularly valuable. If you start to see lots of Standard in-stream ads on your channel, you know that you’re likely to make more money. TrueView in-stream Like Standard in-stream, TrueView in-stream ads appear in your video, either as pre-roll or mid-roll (those that appear during your video) ads. The difference is that they’re skippable after five seconds, which means viewers watch them only if they’re interested. Your channel is paid if someone watches either the whole ad, or 30 seconds of a longer ad, and they form the bread and butter of ads on YouTube. According to YouTube, anywhere from 20 to 50% of viewers watch the whole ad. InVideo overlay InVideo overlays usually appear at the bottom of a video, at any point while it’s playing, but usually around 8-10 seconds in from the start. They can be closed by the viewer at any time. These ads earn you money on a cost-per-click basis, so are often the least valuable of all the ad formats. However, advertisers interested in response (having people visit their site) will pay good money on a per-click basis for some topics.
TrueView in-display With an increasing number of companies opting to make their own video content on YouTube, TrueView in-display ads are becoming more common. They’re effectively ads that link to other video content on YouTube, and can generate good revenue if companies are willing to pay to get plays on their own content. Product placement Although this isn’t strictly an ad format, product placement can be a good earner for established channels. As the name suggests, this is simply ensuring a prominent placement for a product in your videos, and needs to be prearranged directly “Before you turn on with the company wanting to place the product. You’ll ads, ensure you have probably find that as your the full rights to what channel becomes larger, you create – all music, you’ll receive offers for product placement. For footage and artwork” example, Jenna Marbles (who has more than 13 million subscribers) included prominent placement for Bella Beachwear’s swimwear in a video – mainly by wearing the range.
■ Tracking your earnings
The primary place to work out how much your YouTube videos are earning is YouTube Analytics (youtube.com/analytics). Click on the Estimated Earnings tab, and you can actually drill down to how individual 33
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4waystokeepyour audiencewatching
1
Use playlists
2
Keep viewers in suspense
3
Programme your content
This is a great way to keep someone watching beyond the end of a single video, but make sure you put some thought into your playlists – it’s not enough to simply shovel lots of very different content into a playlist and hope people will keep watching: they won’t. Instead, imagine you’re curating a set of videos. When you put one video in the playlist, imagine yourself in the place of the viewer and ask what they would be interested in next.
ABOVE Head to the Ad Performance section of your channel to determine which ads are earning you the most money
RIGHT YouTube Analytics will give you a breakdown of estimated earnings for the whole channel or each individual video
videos are performing. The Estimated Earnings report provides earningsrelated details for all your content, as well as the channel and video levels. First, take a look at the overall performance of your channel. You’ll see three blocks: total estimated earnings; ad earnings; and transaction earnings. Unless you’re supplying rental content, only the first two will be applicable. Beneath this is a graph for total estimated earnings, which is initially set to daily totals. If the totals are small, you probably want to change this to show either weekly or monthly figures. Under the graph is a timeline that gives you a big-picture view over time, with handles you can use to stretch out the time period you’re looking at. You can also change this in the time period dropdown menu at the top of the page. Finally, you’ll see a top-ten list of the best-performing videos on your channel. You can click on these to drill down to view an individual video’s performance, or use the search box to find more. You can look at the performance of whole playlists too. The “Estimated monetised playbacks” tab should help you spot this straight away. However, as the name suggests, the estimated earnings shown in YouTube Analytics are just 34
that. Although they should be close to what your final earnings will be, they aren’t the canonical truth about what will end up in your bank account. For this information you need to go to the downloadable earnings reports, in the Reports tab of YouTube Analytics. In particular, the Performance Reports section will give you a view of the actual amount payable on a month-by-month basis, although – as you’d expect – the amount is in arrears, so you’ll see reports only for the previous month rather than the current one. For a full set of analytics, you need to download the report. This gives you the performance of everything on your channel, and breaks it down according to the performance of the individual kinds of ad available to you. You can also filter your earnings to help you better understand whether your revenue is coming from viewers on YouTube or on embedded content elsewhere on the web. These reports are a goldmine of information for larger channels – but at the start, you can probably just consider the estimated earnings as the best place to go. Buy our full guide How to be a hit on YouTube from Amazon for £8: pcpro.link/245youtube
This isn’t only about creating compelling content: you need to borrow a few tricks from TV too. Think about the last time you watched TV with ads. Did anyone say something such as “find out what happens after the break” or “later in the programme, we’ll tell you how…”? These kinds of verbal prompts are designed to keep you watching – and, crucially, give nothing important away.
Programming essentially involves creating a regular schedule, letting people know in advance that you’ll be doing certain things at certain times. It works because it builds expectation among viewers: if they like your content, they’ll come back every month, week or day to see what you’re doing. Start to think of your content as episodes rather than one-offs and you could benefit from “the box-set effect”, where viewers keep going from one video to the next.
4
Link with annotations
If you don’t use annotations then you’re missing a trick. Annotations are added to videos after you’ve uploaded them, and can be used to link to any point inthe video, back to your website or – most importantly – to any other video or playlist on YouTube.
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7spreadsheetproblems... andhowtosolvethem There are hundreds of reasons why spreadsheets are brilliant – but sometimes, as Simon Jones explains, a database can do the job better
I
f you need to make a list of anything, it’s tempting to see Excel as the default repository: after all, it’s only a small list of items for yourself or a few close colleagues. Perhaps you need something more sophisticated – formulae for some calculations, or macro programming to automate the collection and processing of data. No problem: just type “=” to start writing a formula and Excel will be your guide. Unfortunately, the ease with which you can start work in Excel or a rival spreadsheet program is also one of its problems. What starts as a small project in Excel grows and grows, until you’re left with a behemoth – at which point you could also be facing speed and stability issues, or even a development problem you just can’t solve. Here, we examine the issues you can often come up against with spreadsheets, how you could possibly tackle them in Excel, and when you’d be better off taking the plunge and switching to a database instead.
1 Multi-user editing
When Excel systems grow organically, you quickly run into the problem that only one user can open a workbook at any one time. The second person to try to open the file is told it’s already open and that they
36
the data into several workbooks so that a different person can use each workbook without you all treading on each other’s toes.
2 Shared workbooks
can cancel, wait or view a read-only version. Excel’s promise to let you know when the other person closes the workbook is rather hollow, since it doesn’t check the status very often, and indeed it might never enlighten you. Even if it does, someone else might nip in and open the file before you. There are three ways around this: you can use Excel Online, the cut-down, web-based version of Excel; you can turn on the Shared Workbooks feature; or you can split
Excel Online allows multiple editors by default, but it’s missing so much functionality that it isn’t really a contender for anything but the simplest tasks. Although its Shared Workbooks feature looks like it should do the job, it’s loaded with restrictions. You can’t create a table or delete a block of cells if the workbook is shared, for example. There are workarounds for some restrictions – for others it’s a matter of changing the structure of the workbook, rather than using a workbook that’s already been set up – but they can get in the way. As a result, it can be impossible to use a shared workbook in the same way you might an ordinary, single-user workbook. Changes in shared workbooks are synchronised between users each time the workbook is saved; this can be on a timed schedule, forcing a save every five “When Excel systems grow minutes, for example. However, the overhead organically, you run into of regular saving and the problem that only one tracking every user’s user can open a workbook changes is quite large: at any one time” workbooks can easily balloon in size and put a strain on your network, slowing down other systems. Shared workbooks are also fragile and prone to corruption. Microsoft is aware of the problem, but doesn’t seem to be doing much about the issue. It looks like it’s hoping Excel Online’s multi-authoring method will take over from the older shared workbook technology, but this won’t LEFT You can set be a realistic proposition until the an Excel workbook company removes all the restrictions to be multi-user, and extends the multi-authoring but it makes the file technology to the full Excel desktop larger and more application, as it has with Word, fragile, and imposes PowerPoint and OneNote. many restrictions
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3 Linked workbooks
Splitting your data across multiple workbooks can provide a workaround to the problem of multi-user editing. But it’s likely these workbooks will need to have links between them so that values entered in one can be used in another. Links between workbooks are also useful for keeping logically separate data in separate files, rather than just separate sheets in one workbook. Annoyingly, these links are another source of frustration and instability. They can be absolute, including the full path to the source workbook, or relative, including only the difference between the source and destination paths. Although this sounds sensible, Excel employs arcane rules to decide when to use each type of link and when to change them. The rules are governed by a variety of options, some of which aren’t at all obvious, and by whether the workbooks were saved, and where they were saved before the links were inserted. The links can also change when you save the workbook or open and use Save As to make a copy, rather than copying the file using the File Explorer. The upshot of all this confusion and uncertainty is that the links between workbooks can break easily, and recovering from broken links can be a time-consuming process, during which no-one can actually use the files affected. Linked data is only updated when the files are opened, unless you specifically click Data | Connections | Edit Links | Update Values. Because of this, if your links aren’t between two workbooks, but cover three or more, you have to open all the workbooks in the correct order to ensure the updated data flows in order, from the first to the second to the third. If you changed a value in the first workbook and then opened the third, it wouldn’t see any changes because the second workbook hadn’t updated its values. This chaining of data is logical, but it increases the likelihood that data is either incorrect or that you’ll try to open a workbook that someone else is already editing. Of course, you can try to avoid linked workbooks altogether, but there’s a chance you’ll end up entering the same data into more than one workbook – and with that comes the danger of typing it in slightly differently each time.
4 Data validation
Errors can creep into data in any computer system: people mistype words or transpose digits in numbers
Worldmags.netProspects Spreadsheets Whichdatabaseisrightforyou? Access
Access is one of the granddaddies of desktop databases. It’s easy to use – and easy to abuse. You can design tables, screens and reports from scratch, or start from a template. Some of the templates are overtly American and don’t always teach good practice, but they get you started quickly. Screens and programming features can be quite sophisticated, and you can deploy your finished application to your intranet rather than relying on file shares to get the application to the users. pcpro.link/245access
SharePoint
SharePoint is a database as well as a documentstorage mechanism. You can use it to compile simple lists and link them together. The Form Designer isn’t terribly sophisticated, but customisation is possible. SharePoint’s ability to suck a list of data amassed in Excel into a custom list is useful. It makes the list available to everyone on your network, but also enables you to add security to restrict who can do what with that data. You can ask SharePoint to alert you by email whenever someone adds, edits or deletes records and, if you’re storing data concerning people, calendar items or tasks, you can synchronise that data with Outlook. pcpro.link/245sharepoint
ZohoCreator
The web service Zoho Office includes a database application that uses drag and drop to lay out its forms in an easy, intuitive manner. You can also use drag and drop to program the interactions and workflows. Being a web service, your data and applications are available from anywhere, with simple security to keep your data private. Zoho charges per user per month, but limits the number of records you can store for that price. It charges extra for storing more data or for other features such as email integration. pcpro.link/245zoho
with monotonous regularity. If your data isn’t checked as it’s entered, you’re going to have a problem. By default, Excel accepts whatever the user types. It is possible to set up validation on look-up lists, but these can be difficult to maintain, particularly if the same field is used in more than one place. If users have to enter document ID numbers or customer reference numbers without any checks, it’s easy to tie the wrong records together without realising it. The data integrity of the system is then fatally compromised, and any analysis of the data is suspect. You may already be suffering the effect of this problem without realising the root cause. Consider a situation where you have a list of
invoices in Excel where the user has typed the name of the customer slightly differently on each invoice. You’ve got invoices to “Jones Ltd”, “Jones Limited”, “Jonse Ltd” and “joness”. You may be aware that these are all referring to the same company, but Excel doesn’t. Any analysis of the invoice data, such as a pivot table by customer by month, will give multiple results where there should only be one.
5 Navigation issues
Large workbooks are difficult to navigate. The row of sheet tabs across the bottom of the window is a terrible mechanism for finding your way around if there are more than a handful of tabs; when there are 37
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more tabs than can be displayed across the screen, it becomes even more difficult to find what you’re looking for. You can right-click on the arrows to the left of the sheet names to bring up the Activate Sheet dialog, but even that only lists the first 20 sheets before you have to scroll the list – and there’s no way to sort, group or search for the sheet you want.
6 Security issues
You can add security to Excel workbooks, but it’s rife with problems. Protection is geared much more towards protecting the structure of the workbook, rather than the data. You can try to lock some sheets and cells to stop users changing the structure and formulae, but if they can see the data then they can usually change any or all of it (unless you do some clever macro programming).
7 Speed issues
Excel isn’t the fastest application in the world, and its programming language, VBA, is sluggish compared to more professional programming languages such as C#. This all stems from the intended use and flexible nature of Excel. It is, after all, a spreadsheet engine. Yes, it can be pressed into service to manage lists of data, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the best choice for this kind of work. Indeed, there are other applications better suited to such tasks – because they were designed to do them.
■ Enter the database
If you’re hitting any of the problems outlined above, don’t ignore them: there’s a professional answer to storing “structured data”, and it’s our old friend the database. It doesn’t have to be scary or expensive, and it should give you the opportunity to think logically about your data, how it links together and how you interact with it. Take heed, though: if you’re moving from a spreadsheet solution to a database, don’t slavishly duplicate the spreadsheet design: take the opportunity to make it better.
There are general-purpose database applications available, with which you can construct a bespoke solution. Alternatively, you may find that a specialist database application – one that has already been designed for the purpose you require – is cheaper, faster to implement and a better fit. For instance, if you have a list of customers and details of all your interactions with these customers, that could be considered to be a customer relationship management (CRM) system. Despite its fancy name, a CRM system is simply a specialised database. Similarly, accounts packages such as QuickBooks and Sage are specialist databases. If you can’t find a prebuilt application that suits your particular needs, you can probably build one yourself or get one built for you by your IT department or a consultant. The most common database type is a relational database. This stores its data in tables, which consist of rows and columns of data. Each row holds the data for a separate item – for
example, a particular customer – and each column describes a different attribute of the item, such as the customer’s name or credit limit. The tables have relationships defined between them so that, say, an invoice carries the customer ID. This means you can easily find all the invoices for a particular customer or, from a particular invoice, retrieve the customer’s phone number. You only need to enter the customer’s data once to create the customer record, and you can then use it on as many invoices as you need without having to type it in again. To create a database, you have to define these tables and “You only need to enter relationships and then define the layout of the a customer’s data once screens you want to use to create a record, then to list and edit this data. you can use it on as many There are dozens of invoices as you need” database applications out there. Some are easy to use and do the whole job, allowing you to define the tables, data-entry screens and reports; others are more fully featured in specific areas but require other tools to do the complete job. For instance, a program may be very powerful when it comes to defining the tables and relationships, and even have powerful analysis and reporting features, but completely lack any tools for defining data-entry screens. Microsoft SQL Server is the obvious example here. As with other large database systems, SQL Server takes care of the back-end and expects you to use another tool, such as Visual Studio, to develop the front-end. LEFT An Excel
ABOVE If analysing your spreadsheet reveals it contains many different types of data, you probably need a database
workbook can easily grow to become slow, flaky and cumbersome to use 38
Next month, Simon provides a practical guide to turning a poorly designed spreadsheet into a brilliant database.
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Prospects Careers
SelinaJones Data analyst
■ What does your job involve? At the moment I work for a higher-education establishment, and we have a big customer-relationship-management (CRM) system full of details about alumni and donors. Part of my job is to delve into that data, to analyse where gifts are coming from and work out who’s most likely to make gifts in the future. I run a lot of other queries, too: I might need to find people that meet a particular criteria, for a mailing or perhaps a telethon, or I might need to create a report on something we’ve done lately. So I pull the data out and ask: what did the picture look like before? What is it now? What’s changed as a result of our actions? There’s an element of predictive modelling too: I’ll use statistical software to identify people with particular characteristics that we’re interested in, then model other people who look similar. ■ What technical tools do you use? Our database has an built-in query tool, which I can use to pull the data off and put it into Excel, or for statistical modelling I’ll use IBM’s SPSS software. In previous jobs I did more SQL coding, using plugins such as Oracle and Crystal Reports to extract data – that was when I worked for a local authority, looking at health- and social-care data. I also have a background in Access – I used it to pull out data from various databases, and sometimes people would come to me and say “my database doesn’t work any more”, so I’d have to go into the Visual Basic code and work out why. I wasn’t trained in that, but I was able to pick it up, stepping through and debugging bits and working out why things weren’t working. I’m now in a big organisation with more hierarchy, so I don’t get to go into the back-end these days. There’s no more writing SQL, which can be frustrating because you’re limited to what’s in that custom CRM. But I expect that will change at some point, because what people want is becoming more complex. ■ Did you need a technical background to get into this line of work? Actually, I originally studied classics at university. It was interesting, but not particularly useful. However, I did do a postgraduate certificate in social-science research methods, in which there was a statistical element. Really, though, my career started with a basic data-entry assistant job, which was my first introduction to databases. It was here that I completely fell in love with data, and all my jobs since then have revolved around data analysis – becoming more in depth as my technical knowledge has increased. The move from a local authority into the fundraising profession might seem a big change, but I’m still using the skills I had before. People are recognising that these skills are transferable, so it’s perfectly possible to move between fields. ■ How might someone get started in this career? There are plenty of opportunities out there: every organisation seems to want someone who can get to grips with data. You can actually get started with basic Excel skills. It sounds silly, but many people don’t understand things such as pivot tables and conditional formulae, so at the lower end of the salary spectrum, you’ll definitely find jobs where companies may need someone who can use Excel. When you want to move onto statistical analysis, you may be able to get training in a package such as SPSS. Otherwise, you can 40
£24k Approximate starting salary
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Permanent jobs (itjobswatch. co.uk)
£37k
Average earnings
download R for free, and work your way through the online documentation and support. The thing about this career is that you have to be someone who enjoys playing with things. You have to put your own time into exploring datasets, looking for patterns and seeing what kind of things you can do. Often at work you’ll be given a specific task, and you won’t necessarily have time to do much exploration, so you need to know how to look at the big picture and find what you’re looking for. ■ What’s the worst part of the job? Perhaps the most frustrating part is when you’ve spent hours and hours pulling together a report, and then somebody’s first reaction is “wouldn’t it be great if we could see such and such as well?” People don’t always recognise the time and effort that goes into this type of work, or they may not immediately grasp why you’ve focused on one thing rather than another. But as long as you’re clear about exactly what you’re giving people, they’re normally satisfied. ■ What’s the pay like? When I started working with data I was on around £20,000, but data (and especially “big data”) is becoming enormous, and as more organisations see the value in data, salaries are only going to improve. In the job I’m in now I’m actually treated as the senior person in my team – that was a real surprise at first, because normally in other teams I’ve been quite junior. But that’s the way things are going.
Where to start
■ Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis (or watch the film with Brad Pitt) ■ CoolData (cooldata.wordpress.com) ■ Stats With Cats (statswithcats.wordpress.com)
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P I R . e c i f f O r o f e r o m y a p e W . y f i t o p S r o f e r o m y a p e W We pay more for laptops. But are Britsstillbeingrippedoff? Nicole Kobie investigates
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US tech giant launches a new device, and we release a collective sigh. Not only will we have to wait months for it to arrive on these shores – when it does, it will invariably be at a jacked-up price. Well, that’s how it feels – but is rip-off Britain still a problem? On these pages, we’ll dig into the prices of hardware, software and cloud services, as well as broadband and mobile connections, to see whether Brits really are being charged over the odds when it comes to technology. The answer might surprise you.
Setting a price
How do companies decide what to charge for goods and services? When it comes to physical products, items can be divided into two types: commodities that can be freely substituted for one another, and unique goods where only the desired item will do. Many technology products fall into the latter camp – or, at least, manufacturers such as Apple try to convince us they do. Why? Well, because it gives suppliers a free hand to charge whatever they think consumers will be willing to pay for an item. 43
Worldmags.net “In industries where there are a number of substitutes available, prices are tied to the cost of producing the goods,” Dr Amalavoyal Chari, an economics lecturer at the University of Sussex, told PC Pro. “If you were to charge significantly above the cost of production, someone else could easily undercut your price and take over your market share, so firms don’t have much leeway in setting prices. “For many products, though, it’s easy to develop some degree of market power by differentiating your product from that of others,” Chari continued. “For example, some consumers may have a preference for large screens, others for high camera quality. So, if you were Sony, you’d want to conduct some market research to figure out how much consumers are willing to pay for an extra-large screen.” A similar situation arises with services tied to a particular location or situation. “Products that can’t be easily traded tend to have quite different prices in different locations,” said Chari. “The prototypical example of such products would be a service such as a haircut. Similarly, it’s hard to imagine how one could sell one’s electricity or broadband connection to someone in another country. So geography creates separate markets, and price variation between these markets is partly cost-driven and partly demand-driven. “Barring a dramatic technological breakthrough – such as a way to costlessly teleport yourself from London to Pittsburgh to get a haircut there instead – these price variations won’t be eliminated any time soon.”
Hardware
Whether it’s Amazon launching a new Kindle, Apple unveiling its next iPad or another tech giant with a new gadget, it’s widely assumed that Brits pay more than those in the US. To see whether this is true, we compared the retail price of three devices – an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite ebook reader, an Apple iPad Air 2 tablet and a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop (the basic, non-touchscreen specification)– across four major markets. At first glance, it seems clear that we’re being overcharged: buying a Paperwhite directly from Amazon costs £109 in the UK, whereas the advertised US price works out to only £88. But this isn’t an apples-toapples comparison. The UK price includes the standard VAT of 20%, whereas – because US sales tax varies from state to state – US prices are conventionally stated exclusive of taxes. If we were to adopt the same pricing convention, the Kindle 44
HARDWARE
1,200 960
£810
£886
720
£1,007
£917
£499
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240
£314
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£381
£399
0
£87
£94
£85
£109
480
US
US prices exclude sales tax
AUSTRALIA AMAZON KINDLE PAPERWHITE
Paperwhite would be listed in the UK at £91 – an almost identical sum to the £88 ($139) paid by US customers. The same holds true with Apple hardware: subtract the tax and Brits pay £333 for an iPad Air 2. That’s around £20 more than the US price, but the gap is smaller than it at first appears. If you’re annoyed about that, spare a thought for those in Brazil, China, India and South Africa, where prices are even higher than they are here (see p46). It’s a similar situation with the Dell laptop, too: £499 inc VAT in the UK equates to £416 before tax – less than £7 adrift from the price paid by our American cousins. This doesn’t mean that UK and US customers actually end up paying the same prices. Although the precise
GERMANY APPLE IPAD AIR 2
UK
DELL INSPIRON 15
rate varies, US sales taxes are invariably significantly lower than the 20% VAT charged over here, and a few states don’t charge sales tax at all. Brits do end up paying more than Americans for computer hardware, and many other things – but that extra money goes to the public purse, not to greedy manufacturers.
Software
BELOW The Dell Inspiron 15 varies in price around the world from £392 in Russia to £649 in Brazil; in the UK, we pay £499
Software pricing is more artificial than hardware. There are of course development and other overhead costs to recoup but, as Chari points out, this is a type of product for which “the cost of producing an extra unit is virtually zero”. A seller’s imperative is to maximise their returns – a goal they may pursue by “discriminating a good deal between users, based on their willingness to pay, or proxies for these,” noted Professor Michael Waterson, a specialist in industrial economics at the University of Warwick. Our survey didn’t reveal huge variations in the price of software between major Western nations: Microsoft’s Office Home & Student, for example, costs almost the same in the UK (£110) as it does in Germany (£108); the US price is similar, too, once you knock out the VAT. Head to less robust economies, however, and prices vary significantly. In India, the same Office package costs the equivalent of £55, and in Russia that falls to £49. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that “pricing
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varies by region and is dependent on a variety of factors – including, but not limited to, exchange rates, local taxes, duties, local market conditions and retailer pricing decisions.” This type of price discrimination is understandable, to a point: if Microsoft sets prices that aren’t widely affordable within a given region, those markets are more likely to use free alternatives (or simply pirate the software). When companies try to segment their pricing more finely, however, it can leave a sour taste in the mouth. Recently, the Creative Bloq blog caught Adobe charging would-be customers different prices based on the browser they used: visitors to the company’s website using Chrome on a Mac were invited to pay £46 per month for a Creative Cloud subscription, while those using Safari and Firefox saw a lower £38 price (see pcpro.link/245adobe). Adobe brushed the experience off, saying it was simply a pricing test, but the company has previously been the subject of anger in Australia. In 2013, a government report found that it was among a group of companies charging Australian customers an average of 50% more than in the US, with one Australian MP criticising tech firms for “charging what you can get away with in any market”. Adobe subsequently slashed its Australian prices, bringing them into line with the US – but full price parity is still elusive. Now, a full year of Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography plan costs Brits £105 inc VAT, while Americans pay the equivalent of £76 and Australians pay only £65. Professor Waterson isn’t surprised by this. “There’s no reason why they’d charge the same price in different countries,” he told us. “Costs are often essentially the same across markets, especially in the case of software, so pricing is based entirely on demand characteristics.”
Cloud services
Like software, pricing for cloud services can raise tricky questions. With no straightforward bill of materials, how can anyone determine a fair price for cloud products? Jagdish Rebello, senior director at IHS iSuppli, notes that cloud services are generally priced, “with an intention of creating long-term stickiness”. In other words, the vendors are “basically trying to lock you in for the long term” by keeping prices low enough that you’re not motivated to look elsewhere. Because of that, whichever service is the leader in a given space gets to set the terms, which again may have little to do with the costs of the service.
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Rip-offBritain SOFTWARE
660 550 440 330 220 110 0
£509
£486 £376
£368 £77 £58 £65 £77
£75 £62 £75 £75
£91
£88
AUSTRALIA
US prices exclude sales tax
ABOVE The price of Spotify’s premium music-streaming service in the UK is the second most expensive in the world
OFFICE HOME & STUDENT
US OFFICE 365 HOME
British PC manufacturers aim to keep prices low, but the realities of sourcing components at competitive prices can be challenging. “Component costs are linked to the dollar,” Ben Miles of PC maker Chillblast told us. “At times such as now, when the pound is taking a hammering from the US dollar, we can see our margin fall from double-digit percentages to practically nothing, with no change in the component US dollar pricing.” All the same, raising prices is out of the question. “A price gets ‘locked down’ whenever a system is reviewed, at least for a period of time,” Miles explained. “And UK customers are generally extremely suspicious of any firm that raises prices on technology items. There’s a perceived downward pressure on the price of technology, meaning margins on IT hardware are now the lowest of any major industry in this country. “It’s far from ‘rip-off Britain’ – discounting unavoidable costs such as VAT, UK customers enjoy some of the lowest IT prices in the world.”
£119
£77
£80
£115
£105
£93
£95
£108
£110
GERMANY ADOBE CC PHOTO
Spotify is a great example: in the US, its premium service costs $10 per month, whereas here it’s £10 – and in Eurozone countries it’s €10. These sums aren’t equivalent at all – in each currency, Spotify has simply targeted a convenient number that’s low enough to tempt users to sign up.
Buying British
£93
UK DROPBOX
SPOTIFY
Nevertheless, as other streaming services have launched, they’ve tended to pick a similar price point, since Spotify has set the bar. “You’re quite likely to see a price of €10 in Europe, and that same service being offered for $10 in the US, just because that’s a psychological price barrier that consumers in that country have,” Rebello added. This approach makes the UK the second-most expensive place in the world to get Spotify – beaten narrowly by Denmark, where a subscription costs 99 kroner (around £11) per month. Look to the other end of the scale and prices slide as low as 129 Philippine pesos – around £2 per month. If you want to dig deeper, you’ll find an excellent chart comparing Spotify’s prices in different territories at pcpro. link/245spotify. In principle, it’s possible to save money on an online service by signing up from a different region – or using a proxy to pretend you’re abroad when you’re really not. You may run into problems with customer support, however, and European companies are required to store your personal data in Europe, so they must keep customers local. Still, if you’re determined to save money, there’s nothing to stop you subscribing to 45
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£399 MicrosoftOfficeHome&Student £110 DellInspiron15 £499 Dropbox £80 AdobeCreativeCloudPhotography £105 MicrosoftOffice365Home £95 TOTAL £1,288 AppleiPadAir2
US
£314 MicrosoftOfficeHome&Student £88 DellInspiron15 £409 Dropbox £62 AdobeCreativeCloudPhotography £76 MicrosoftOffice365Home £75 TOTAL £1,024
AppleiPadAir2
US prices exclude sales tax
GERMANY
£381 MicrosoftOfficeHome&Student £108 DellInspiron15 £451 Dropbox £77 AdobeCreativeCloudPhotography £115 MicrosoftOffice365Home £93 TOTAL £1,225 AppleiPadAir2
BRAZIL
£399 MicrosoftOfficeHome&Student £64 DellInspiron15 £649 Dropbox £62 AdobeCreativeCloudPhotography £66 MicrosoftOffice365Home £63 TOTAL £1,303
AppleiPadAir2
Technologyprices worldwide
TheUKpaysmoreforproductsand servicesthanmostmajormarketsaround theworld,althoughBrazilnudgesahead overall,owingtohighhardwareprices 46
SOUTHAFRICA
£375 MicrosoftOfficeHome&Student £67 DellInspiron15 £516 Dropbox £62 AdobeCreativeCloudPhotography £75 MicrosoftOffice365Home £64 TOTAL £1,159 AppleiPadAir2
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RUSSIA
£342 MicrosoftOfficeHome&Student £49 DellInspiron15 £392 Dropbox N/A* AdobeCreativeCloudPhotography £50 MicrosoftOffice365Home £42 TOTAL £875
AppleiPadAir2
* Dropbox unavailable in Russia
CHINA
£359 MicrosoftOfficeHome&Student £70 DellInspiron15 £550 Dropbox £62 AdobeCreativeCloudPhotography £66 MicrosoftOffice365Home £50 TOTAL £1,157 AppleiPadAir2
INDIA
£359 MicrosoftOfficeHome&Student £55 DellInspiron15 £584 Dropbox £77 AdobeCreativeCloudPhotography £60 MicrosoftOffice365Home £50 TOTAL £1,185 AppleiPadAir2
AUSTRALIA
£334 MicrosoftOfficeHome&Student £91 DellInspiron15 £458 Dropbox £58 AdobeCreativeCloudPhotography £65 MicrosoftOffice365Home £77 TOTAL £1,083
AppleiPadAir2
47
Rip-offBritain the Russian version of Office 365 – as long as you’re fluent enough in the language to sign up and pay the bills.
Broadband
It’s no surprise that broadband prices vary significantly between different regions. Each country’s market is different, with variations in infrastructure, public investment and regulation, and consumers don’t have the option of going elsewhere. As it happens, in this case there’s no need: the UK has some of the best prices in the world. For broadband up to 30Mbits/sec, BT charges £32 per month including a land line, while Australians pay £39 for a similar deal. Interestingly, however, our Antipodean cousins use a different (and arguably more sensible) charging structure than us. In the UK, the differentiating factor between contracts is headline speed, whereas Australia’s Telstra offers only two levels of service – basic broadband and superfast – and otherwise prices its packages according to a monthly data allowance. The big losers in this market are the Americans, who pay more than £42 per month for a 30Mbits/sec service. In 2013, a think-tank called the New America Foundation undertook a study of US broadband offerings, comparing them to services in other countries, and ranked the US as the most expensive country in the world for broadband. One particular factor that’s kept British prices low is local-loop unbundling (LLU), whereby BT has been forced to offer rival ISPs wholesale access to its infrastructure. Originally mandated in 1999, LLU helped spur the emergence of cheaper ISPs such as TalkTalk, which entered the market in 2006 with a £20-permonth deal. “Even with price rises for voiceline rental, TalkTalk’s entry-level service is at around the same price some eight years later,” noted Thinkbroadband analyst Andrew Ferguson. “LLU has led to greater competition for BT, and is even keeping Virgin Media on its toes: companies have to keep prices in
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£1,233 £384
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£1,432
£1,360
£473
£1,033
£959
GERMANY MOBILE (2YR 1GB SG5)
£1,604
AUSTRALIA
£1,098
US
BROADBAND 1YR
Althoughmobilephonetariffscanvary significantlyintermsofvalueformoney, mobileservicesareoverallfarcheaperin theUKthanintheUSandAustralia,and they’remoreflexible,too line, since the UK public is pricesensitive to utility pricing.” Despite the UK’s low broadband costs relative to the USA and Australia, pricing here is also highly regulated. Cable and voice-line rentals are monitored by Ofcom, which sets a price range that BT must keep within, and the watchdog said this summer that it would start watching fibre prices, too. “BT must notify Ofcom of changes to wholesale broadband and voice product pricing, so there’s a check on them suddenly doubling the price,” noted Ferguson. Exactly how pricing works depends on the different connection technologies, and Ofcom regularly investigates broadband pricing to
Since the UK’s 20% VAT adds a big chunk to the cost of buying technology, you may be tempted to try to save money by buying equipment from websites based in the US – or from eBay sellers in the Far East. This doesn’t exempt you from your tax obligations, though: instead of VAT, electronic items imported from overseas are subject to a duty charge. Sellers may try to save you money by illicitly under-declaring the value of the goods, but if your package is intercepted by HMRC on entering the country you’ll have to pay: check pcpro.link/245duty to see how much you could be charged.
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check that prices reflect the actual costs. Ferguson added that the coming year could be interesting for fibre-tothe-premises (FTTP) prices, with Sky and TalkTalk partnering in York for a trial of a 1,000Mbits/sec internet service. “If Sky and TalkTalk can show demand for an FTTP service in York, which is set to be roughly the same price as [BT] Openreach fibre pricing, this has potential to be as disruptive as the original TalkTalk launch in 2006,” he predicted. “It may drive down pricing, while also encouraging wider rollout of competing fibre services.”
Mobile communications
The balance tips in the UK’s favour again when it comes to mobile contracts. Although tariffs can vary significantly in terms of value for money, mobile services are overall far cheaper in the UK than in the US and Australia, and they’re more flexible, too. For example, EE charges £20 per month for a contract with 1GB of data on its 4G network, while comparable packages in the US and Australia cost £32 and £27 respectively. With certain compromises, it’s possible for Brits to do better. Three offers 10GB data packages for £15, although its 4G coverage can’t yet match that of its rivals. If 4G is a priority, a 4GB package costs £31 monthly on EE, while Americans pay £44 on T-Mobile and Australians £54 on Vodafone – although, to be fair, that latter price includes a handset. In fact, most people buy a contract with a phone as part of the deal, and here too the UK does pretty well. If you have your
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IT pay around the world Comparing prices between different regions doesn’t reveal the whole story: a price that’s easily affordable in one country might represent a month’s wages in another. PayScale (payscale.com) tracks salaries for jobs around the world, and this is one area where Brits are entitled to feel aggrieved. For three particular roles in IT, you’ll be paid less in the UK than in either the US or Australia. Of course, one factor that may skew the results is competition for skilled staff in Silicon Valley. A 2011 PayScale survey found that Google US was paying 23% more than the rest of the American tech industry – so you may not need to move to the US, just find a local job with one of the tech giants.
IT PAY
160,000
£48,114
120,000
£36,309
£35,537
£38,622
£38,768
£41,499
£47,106
£47,161
80,000
£40,331 40,000
£40,997
ABOVE In the UK, we benefit from cheaper handsets and mobile contracts
0
eye on a Samsung Galaxy S5 on EE on a 1GB/month contract, the operator will charge £370 for the handset and £20 per month for service, for a total cost of ownership (TCO) over two years of £850. With T-Mobile US or Vodafone Australia, the cost of the phone would be rolled into monthly payments totalling £1,098 and £959 respectively. For cheaper or “free” handsets, the gap between here and the US and Australia is even wider. We have cheaper networks to choose from, too: with the same device and data allowance on Giffgaff, your TCO after two years works out at £752. Simply put, the UK is a great place to buy a smartphone. We pay far less for our handsets than our friends in the US and Australia, and have a wider range of options and contracts that drive down prices even further.
3,000
The cost of Tech living in the UK
2,400
Finally, to get a feel for the overall cost of technology in different markets, we totted up the prices of all the goods and services we’ve surveyed in this feature. Unexpectedly, the winner is Australia – which is a testament to the power of regulation. Had we compiled this shopping list two years ago, the country would have ranked quite differently. It’s thanks to pressure from MPs that the overall cost of buying technology in Australia is now the lowest of our four nations. The UK ranks second, however, with German prices proving a 50
UK
US prices exclude sales tax
GERMANY PROJECT MANAGER
AUSTRALIA IT CONSULTANT
£47,147
£53,602 US
SOFTWARE ENGINEER
striking how close the overall totals are across the four nations we studied. The big divide, it turns out, isn’t between us and the US, but rather between the Western world and developing economies. And if tech firms are offering their wares to those markets at discount prices, it isn’t down to charity: it reflects a calculation that this is all the local market will bear. In reality we ought to count our blessings that we live in a society that can afford to pay £10 per month for Spotify.
fraction higher. Far from being favoured with preferential pricing, the US turns out to be the most expensive region overall – and since sales tax isn’t included in these prices, consumers in the US will end up paying even more. It’s true that the UK’s advantage is largely thanks to our great deals on broadband and mobile services, but even on other goods, the beforeVAT prices in the UK aren’t far out of line with the US. In fact, when you consider the sums involved, it’s
COST OF TECH LIVING
£2,612
£2,656
£2,672
£2,718
AUSTRALIA
UK
GERMANY
US
1,800 1,200 600 0
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THE UNCOMFO TRUTH ABB SEXISM IN TECH 54
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Sexismintech
ORTABLE BOUT Our low-level acceptance of sexism, from British schools to blue-chip companies, is pushing women away from potentially great careers in tech. Stewart Mitchell investigates
Y
ahoo’s Marissa Mayer, HP’s Meg Whitman and lastminute.com co-founder Martha Lane Fox – they’re the high-flyers whose rise to the top of the technology industry suggests that we’ve finally broken free of gender discrimination. But have we? Behind those headline successes, many women in technology still find themselves isolated in an unwelcoming environment. Those who take steps to confront sexism can meet with resentment or disdain, and they may even find themselves sidelined professionally. Certainly there are women who enjoy rewarding, well-paid work in the technology field. But some sectors remain a boys’ club, which appears to resist female involvement. The Gamergate saga proved that: what started as a debate over game-review ethics splintered into a character assassination of female developers. Game creator Brianna Wu, for example, came under fire after mocking Gamergate for “fighting an apocalyptic future where women are 8% of programmers and not 3%”. She received a deluge of online threats, including one stating: “I’m going to rape your filthy ass until you bleed then choke you to death on your husband’s tiny Asian penis.” The message included details of Wu’s home address, which forced her to move out of her home in fear.
It’s a shameful situation in an industry that owes so much to pioneering women such as Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper, and the many female software engineers who drove coding during the 1960s. Such attacks create an environment in which technically capable women are fearful to confront sexism where it still exists.
EVERYDAY SEXISM
Although efforts are underway to address some inequalities – including pay, to an extent – the IT industry remains male-dominated. According to the latest Office for National Statistics figures from August 2014, there are 723,000 male “information technology and telecommunications professionals” in the UK, compared with 124,000 women. It’s an imbalance that’s reflected in company diversity reports. Microsoft, for example, boasts 29% female workers across its staff, but in technical positions only 17% are women. Of Google’s senior management and executive officer team, 17 are male while only three are women. Men make up 83% of Google’s engineering staff; Apple’s technical team is 80% male. The high percentage of men in the sector doesn’t necessarily make it sexist; if fewer women go through education to get on the first rung of the ladder, an imbalance 55
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ABOVE Martha Lane Fox co-founded lastminute. com in 1998 and now chairs the board of the digital skills charity, Go ON UK. Her success in the tech industry remains a rarity, however BELOW Female role models for young girls could encourage interest in technology, leading to a greater take-up of the subject at schools and universities
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2014 WHITNEY WOLFE
2014 JULIE ANN HOWARTH
2010 MARK HURD
Originally a co-founder of Tinder, Wolfe was allegedly stripped of the title because the association was considered “slutty”. She launched a sexual harassment case against the company, citing sexist abuse and claiming she had been forced out after a relationship with a company founder turned sour. Tinder settled out of court.
Coding network GitHub’s first female engineer, Howarth left under a cloud after decrying a culture of sexism and bullying within the company. “What I endured as an employee of GitHub was unacceptable and went unnoticed by most,” she tweeted of the ordeal. GitHub issued a partial apology.
Once credited with saving HP, Mark Hurd was forced to step down as CEO after a sexual harassment inquiry. It was found that he had abused his position to try to pressure a female employee to enter into a relationship with him – despite her insistence that she didn’t want to date a married man.
is inevitable. But the masculine skew allows casual sexism to go unchecked, exemplified by ill-advised comments from certain chief executives. In October 2014, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made a patronising statement (later retracted) that suggested women shouldn’t ask for pay rises. “It’s not about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along,” he said. “And that, I think, might be one of the additional superpowers that quite frankly women who don’t ask for a raise have. Because that’s good karma.” Not that karma pays the rent – even for women with “additional superpowers”. The laddishness that thrives in testosterone-heavy climes leads to sexist attitudes going unchallenged among otherwise professional workers. Take the presentation by a principal developer at Atlassian, which compared
Apache Maven software to his girlfriend. Jonathan Doklovic fleshed out the comparison by saying that the software “looks beautiful, complains a lot, demands attention, interrupts me when I’m working and doesn’t play well with my other friends.” It’s fair to say the presenter’s joke wasn’t universally appreciated. “Women continue to leave the industry because it’s so toxic,” said Randi Harper, a developer and engineer. “Trying to get more women to go to school for STEM [science, technology, engineering, maths] is the wrong approach; we need to attack the problem of fixing the environment to make it a place where they can stay. “It’s so subtle that you’re often left wondering if it really happened, and when you try to talk about it, you sound like a crazy person because it’s so small – but it’s death by a thousand paper cuts. While there are definitely valid stories of women being belittled directly to their faces, even in front of co-workers, at least that’s something that you know is wrong. In my experience, it’s worse when it isn’t quite so direct.” Of course, not all offices are the same, and there are workplaces where men and women are on a par both numerically and socially. Indeed, many of the women we spoke to said they had rarely come across gender-related problems at work. “When you’re in the workplace, you don’t run into discrimination very much,” said programmer Pam-Marie Guzzo. “It’s more… in a broader cultural context that you see it. And that can influence young girls.” “Every now and again, you run into those who think you’re not as intelligent as them, but I don’t think that’s a gender thing – I think it’s people being arrogant,” she added. Much depends on the culture in the workplace, company maturity, and the ratio of men to women. Anecdotally, academic campuses with a more equal gender split and a liberal culture appear less likely to be fuelled by testosterone than “brogrammer” start-ups. Large companies with mentoring programmes and more structured human resources teams are also less likely to tolerate sexism at work, and to have procedures in place to deal with complaints. Even within larger companies, however, stories of management bullying are rife,
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and the attacks are often directed at women. “It’s a bullying culture,” a former Microsoft senior director told a recent Center for Talent Innovation (CTI) study. “I think it’s because those guys were bullied in school. They don’t know any other way to act.” She highlights a meeting where a product manager was “screaming at the top of his lungs” at a woman’s feature-set ideas, yelling: “Why would you think I’d be interested in this garbage? How stupid are you?” It was enough to make that particular woman leave the industry, although it should be noted that many men might have felt the same in similar circumstances. The long hours, high pressure and on-call nature of many tech companies is also cited as a reason for women leaving the industry. “Of the small numbers of women who are going into the industry, more than half are leaving because of those issues,” said Lynn Anderson of The Metis Movement, which promotes women in tech. “People don’t want the strain – you get a guy that works through the night and it makes it look like other people don’t have the passion. There’s animosity if you’re not committed to being there 24/7; sometimes women can’t be.”
“CASUAL SEXISM IN TECH CAN GO UNCHALLENGED, EXEMPLIFIED BY ILL-ADVISED COMMENTS FROM CERTAIN CHIEF EXECUTIVES” The workplace environment is something that contributes to worrying CTI figures that show 52% of women leave technology as an industry because they’re made to feel unwelcome and undervalued, and see their careers stagnating. “A woman’s ideas will be shot down without even being considered, and the men who are doing this don’t even realise they’re doing so because she’s a woman,” said Harper. “If you don’t have rock-solid self-esteem, it’s going to wear you down over time. Women start to think that their ideas aren’t great, and this is going to keep them from going after promotions, from thinking that they should ask for the same amount of money as their male co-workers. Eventually, given enough time, women will just drop out entirely.”
CAREER SPEED BUMPS
The industry makes the right noises about wanting to hire more women - in fact, big companies are actively competing for the best female candidates from a small pool – but behind the scenes, the major players’ old worries persist. Bosses still fear costs and disruption caused by maternity leave and childcare if they choose to hire younger women, leading
some employers to come up with fairly controversial solutions that they say are designed to empower female staff. Facebook and Apple both offer “femalefriendly perks” that include covering the costs of egg freezing in a bid to delay workers having children, and Apple also covers the legal costs of adoption. The plan is to avoid disruption during their staffers’ most productive years, but what impact it will have down the line remains unknown. In smaller companies and start-ups such perks are unimaginable and will probably be unaffordable; instead they may simply bin applications from women they expect might be planning a family. This is the kind of discrimination that’s easy to mask. “I was senior management and therefore involved in the recruiting process, but HR would often ask, ‘Wouldn’t it be better to put a man in?’” said Sadie Sherran, an SEO expert involved in the hiring process at one company. “Or if people say they’re getting married or engaged, then people were thinking ‘They’ll be having children after that - better to get a man’.”
SEXUAL HARASSMENT
According to that 2013 CTI report, based on a global survey of almost 6,000 STEM workers, more overt sexism at work in the form of harassment is also all too common, with half of the respondents having experienced some sort of sexual harassment and a fifth “subjected to comments and catcalls when they wear a skirt or use lipstick”. Some men in senior positions, especially in out-of-office environments such as conferences or social functions, cross the line between being friendly and sexual predation. “I worked as management, but when I came into contact with the directors I found them very sexually aggressive towards me and another colleague,” said one of our interviewees. “There was one occasion at a conference, where one of the directors tried it on with me and another director tried it on with her. They plied us with drinks - it got to the point where a male colleague and myself had to get involved to protect her. They were pushing drugs onto her and touching her inappropriately. I had to drag her away.” Given the serious nature of the harassment, you’d think HR would investigate, but you’d be wrong. Our interviewee believed the firm involved was more concerned with protecting its reputation and directors than resolving the claims. Being vocal about the incident achieved little, and instead she later found herself singled out and criticised for wearing provocative clothing at work in a bid to discredit her. “I found that I was being victimised,” she said. “The company would pull me into HR on a day when I was wearing a suit and they’d say, ‘We’ve had complaints that you’re dressing inappropriately for work’. I’d look at myself and say ‘What’s inappropriate about this?’ and they’d say ‘No, it’s not today, it was another day.’ But
Sexismintech
Image: Pau-Payasita
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REPROGRAMMING PRECONCEPTIONS According to women in the industry – and many bodies trying to address the gender gap – one of the root causes of gender imbalance is the low number of girls choosing to study computing and science subjects at school and university. Stereotyping still sees girls pushed towards subjects relevant to the nurturing and creative industries, and away from science and maths. Female students make up only 15% of computerscience intakes in UK universities. Keeping more girls interested in computing at schools and colleges could lead to more balanced working environments – but achieving that will require overturning the idea that coding and technical tasks are for boys only. “It’s common in the media,” said programmer Pam-Marie Guzzo. “When we were growing up and films had computer scientists or nerds in school, it was always guys. There were never any female characters portrayed. As you grow up, if that’s all you see, then you assume it’s normal. You get into this mindset that it’s a boys’ club, and that’s what it’s always going to be, and what it always has been – which isn’t true at all.” A case in point is a Barbie book that recently hit the headlines. I Can Be A Computer Engineer was pulled by publisher Mattel after it was pointed out that, contrary to the title, the book portrays women as unable to work with computers. The pink-heavy book portrayed Barbie as a clueless game designer who relied on boys to help her with coding, and to fix the computers that had become infected with a virus. Is it any wonder that girls get the impression that technical roles are for men? “There are fewer women in STEM jobs because they are at various points given the impression that these spaces aren’t for girls,” said Casey Fiesler at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Unfortunately, that was the message of the Barbie book.” “To me, the most problematic line in the book was: ‘“I’m only creating the design ideas,” Barbie says, laughing. “I’ll need Steven’s and Brian’s help to turn it into a real game”.’ It reads like the idea that Barbie could be the one coding is funny – because programming is for boys and art (design) is for girls.” In response, Fiesler has created her own “remix” of the book with a more positive message: see pcpro. link/245barbie to read her updated version. 57
Sexismintech
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It often seems that men do the speeches at technology launches, while women are used purely for decoration
they couldn’t tell me exactly what I was wearing that was inappropriate. “They were pointing a finger at me and saying, ‘Yeah, you had a problem - it’s on your record - now we’re going to put things on your record that show you to be a slut.’ It was like they were doctoring my file to put them in a better light if it ever came out.”
DARING TO STAND UP
If sexism in the workplace can be subtle, the misogynist trolling of women in the tech industry on Twitter is altogether more shameless, as trolls are willing to put a bewildering level of effort and bile into their attacks. The anti-feminist campaigns have a modus operandi. They use Twitter to threaten their victims, then dig up the individual’s past and post it online, including highly personal information, any criminal record and private photos. They fabricate stories with doctored images and bombard the target’s employer with complaints and criticism in a bid to get them fired. This isn’t “name-calling”, it’s a concentrated campaign to ruin someone’s reputation. Randi Harper attracted the hate mob’s wrath by helping to create a block list that stopped harassers’ tweets from reaching their targets. What she believed was a service to protect women was instead seen as a censorship tool by opponents, who then went on to drag up all the dirt from her past in an attempt to discredit her. Even in researching this article, a campaigner tried to warn us off speaking to Harper after we’d contacted her via Twitter. 58
“IF SEXISM IN THE WORKPLACE IS SUBTLE,THE MISOGYNISTIC TROLLING OFWOMEN ON TWITTER IS ALTOGETHER MORE SHAMELESS” Using a disposable Twitter account, he slurred Harper by branding her a neo-Nazi and posted a link to a photo of her in front of a Nazi flag. That the doctored photo included her dead sister only made the tactics more contemptible. Sadly, similar threats appear to be having an effect on women who refrain from speaking out on industry issues for fear of the fallout. “We can’t talk about the problems without being called professional victims, martyrs – or being told that we’re just too sensitive,” said Harper. “We’re told that it’s our fault, or that we’re just imagining things. Women are afraid to tell their stories, so men think that there isn’t really a problem except with the few of us who are able to stand up and be vocal. We need to make the industry a safer place for women to speak up. The public backlash can be soul-crushing.” Despite the career opportunities and the addressing of the pay gap that make the industry look a picture of equality, it remains a patchy work in progress. If women can’t confront the sexism that still exists in technology without fear of reprisal then the industry can’t call itself female-friendly.
@PCPRO
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GENDER GAP BY NUMBERS
83 17 25 8 15
% of Google’s
engineering staff are male
% of Microsoft’s
tech team are female
% of Amazon
management staff are women
% of the 4,171 UK students
sitting A-level computing in 2014 were female
% of UK computer
science graduates are women
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s n o i t n e v n i 0 1 s t n a w y d nobo
Think back 30 years: no mobile phones, no internet, zero
LOLcats. But also no spam, viruses or Windows ME. Without a doubt, even greater innovations lie ahead in the next 30 years, but how do we avoid the mistakes? Here, Stuart Turton sends a warning to our future selves. It’s not too late... is it?
1
Generation perfect
n, and the ing much more informatio “We’re on the cusp of hav choosing the ch greater discretion, in appearance of having mu Murray in a ote bioethicist Thomas H traits of our children,” wr ence. “What er babies in the journal Sci recent article on design should there be limits?” use will we make of it, and the be having soon, because It’s a conversation we’ll S US e. In February 2014, the already out of the test tub genetically perfect genie’s techniques ls of genetic-manipulation rted discussing clinical tria sta tion tra inis Adm g Food and Dru ers are kept is that all our genetic lev newborns. The problem in es eas dis ting ven pre aimed at to height becomes rything from eye colour door. Kick it down and eve ked loc e sam the ind beh a choice on a checklist. r won’t only be a matter le like cars? Rich and poo isab tom cus are ies bab n’t even But what happens when beautiful children. It wo o has the smartest, most wh but s, yer law t bes of who can afford the g genetic gap. ided by an ever-widenin m and everybody else, div the be l wil it ; iety soc r be a two-tie own baby? Kardashian can bling her live in a world where Kim Basically, do you want to
, I’m sorry Dave ’t I’m afraid I can do that
2 AI up, lad
It’s only a matter of time before Siri and Cortan Cortana swallow their respective OSes whole. Eventually, they won’t just be clever algorithms algori reminding us about birthdays and heavy traffic, but AIs that we can verbally interact intera with to get things done. When that happens, happen we’ll discover that Windows and OS X are know-it-all brickies who stop working wor every few hours for no reason. Pleading with my PC not to crash is embarrassing emb enough without the
60
computer telling me to “man up” in a Northern accent. In fact, we should probably agree to ban all AI research outright. At the end of the day, AI will either mirror the mind of its creator, or surpass it so completely we’ll have no idea how to control it. I call this the girlfriend protocol, and it’s terrifying.
@PCPRO
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Worldmags.netUnwantedinventions
3 Ad and subtract
that we were once brilliant at If Mad Men has taught us anything it’s nk e 50 cigarettes straight and drink advertising. Ad executives would smok of ma mias the in ing rialis ration mate whisky by the tumbler-full, with inspi los lost ey they act, their up ent they cleaned terrible living. Unfortunately, the mom n. in. p panies such as Google to swoo their advertising mojo – allowing com ’t n’t aven wooing us with products we have Page’s prodigies aren’t interested in for ed us with ads for things we searched seen before. They prefer to bludgeon an alent of having a used-car salesman two minutes ago. It’s the digital equiv . oom room show his in Volvo glanced at a follow you around all day because you ed by the concept of video As a result, it’s a bit difficult to be excit alk r us with products as we walk screens that know our names and peste Tom Cruise was catcalled by down the street. In Minority Report, buy an expensive car. In real life, biometric billboards wanting him to re ged by ads for flat-pack furniture most of us would find ourselves besie and cheap holidays in the Med.
4
Voyeur of the damned
Remember when we all thought The Truman Show was a comedy?
Turns out Jim Carrey had a beady eye on the future all along, except pt the real version of The Truman Show isn’t remotely amusing. Drones are already watching our streets 24/7. Cameras are being built into glasses and gizmos, while the internet’s learning how to link up every bit of data collected on us. Forget voluntarily uploading stuff to Facebook and YouTube; it’s getting to the point where we can’t help but be caught on camera, era, our entire lives captured from every angle. Toss in some automatic facial-recognition tech, and it isn’t hard to conceive of a future in which every video of us is collated into an easily accessible folder, available to whichever authority decides it needs to see it.
5 Hollow words Dear J J Abrams, Congratulations on landing the Sta r Wars director’s gig – I’m sure you’re doin ga great job. Quick favour, though, can you please ditch the holograms? I
know George loved a bit of “help me Obi-Wan”, but have you noticed
that holograms are rubbish? Have you, J J?
Imagine a world where pulling a sick ie doesn’t involve only a few half-hearted
coughs down the phone, but a full physical performanc e in your boss’ office. Imagine having some telesales worker appear in your living room while you’re eating din ner. That’s the reality of holograms, J J, and it’s a future in which all telephonic communication dies because it’s too much effort. Case in point: I love my parents, but the crux of that love is the whopping lie I tell them when I need to hang up at the end of a par ticularly taxing telephone con versation. “Sorry mum, can’t talk about grandchildren righ t now, the house is on fire.” That sort of thing. Popularise holograms and you’re effe ctively ending millions of loving relationships. Is that what you want, J J? Yours sincerely, The little people
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7 The forever war s n o i t n e v n i 10 s t n a w y nobod
6
s e y e l l a y Specc
t since it’s a grea ow it – a shame, kn e w as n io at e civilis glle og oo m, Go uld be the end of you? No proble Google Glass co seems to know ho w on rs a pe elegantly as Don’t know this information as idea in theory. and deliver that on iti gn co re orm facial Glass can perf pas averted. ng paper. Faux ogle g a crisp morni in er liv de r w it works. Go tle bu ows this isn’t ho kn s as Gl ed us blank, their y who’s ever Their face goes Except, anybod ey try to use it. th r ve ne he w ide at f people of unted to one sid Glass switches momentarily sh is e er w ey th on t, and the pers eyes empty ou ing. ify rr t. It’s te hile. They see Google’s reques n’t seen for a w ve ha u yo nd ie an old fr g onto You bump into pid smile leapin Think about it. it reboots, a va r te la nd co se A pt that it isn’t ce shuts down. birthday. Exce you and their fa them it’s your ed rm fo in s ning ha use Google bother mentio their face beca and they don’t ay hd rt bi ur yo it’s le Glass. Really, Or worse still, wearing Goog your birthday. because they’re ow kn ey th you know it, even though sty? is sort of hone ship survive th nd ie fr y an n ca how
62
Forgive me for turning serious all of F
a sudden, but war is heartbrea king; a d adful, extravagant waste of life. dre It t es special thinking to solve this traged tak y n by eradicating war, but by sendin not g m machines to fight our battles instea d. W While we’re used to drones scouring distant bat ba tlefields, their pilots hundreds of miles away, the next stop is to promote tho se pi ts to managers, leaving the robots pilo to pi k their own targets and fire on the pic m wi h impunity. Organisations suc wit h as the th Campaign to Stop Killer Robots are lobbying for an international ban on au onomous war machines, but wit aut h half off the world on fire, and the US quietl y recommitting itself to campaigns in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and As ia, there’s a suggestion that automated warfare may arrive sooner rather than later.
I ROBOT
@PCPRO
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8 Metal hearts
Tech companies have a perverse fascination with my health. Smartwatches seem determined to monitor every
aspect of my well-being, from the number of footsteps I take in a day to my heart rate and who knows what else. Google, Microsoft and Apple all want to stash this information, along with my medical records, on their servers, while EA’s digital gaming service, Origin, tells me to get a life when I’ve played FIFA for too long. But here’s what they’re all missing. I know I’m lazy. I didn’t wake up one day to discover I’d become Benny Hill overnight, and the situation isn’t going to be resolved by a wrist-mounted guilt box telling me
9 A little problem
Nanotechnology is the science of smal l things, allowing us to build billions of robots capable of squeezing themselves onto a pinhead. They’d float in the air and in our blood stream, repairing us, building things, being generally small and helpf ul – an army of nans, if you will. This would be a corking idea if we, a civilis ation that can’t find its own car keys ten seconds after we put them down, weren’t inventing them. A civilisation of lost pens and puzz les missing pieces. We’re rubbish at small. The first time we spott ed the atom, we cracked it in half and blew a hole in the world. With this in mind, does anybody really think it’s a good idea to let billions of self-a ssembling, infinitely powerful, invisible robots loose in the world? Do we really want to spend the next thousand years searching down the back of the sofa for them?
to take a run in the rain because my blood pressure is so high it could launch a rocket into orbit. This is data-mining disguised as corporate concern, and it isn’t going to end with gadgets. Soon we’ll have pacemakers and brain bits with web interfaces logging everything we do. It’s terrifying, incredibly open
♥
You’re dea d
to abuse, and a far better idea
BOWMAN
on paper than in reality.
DAVE
BANG
10
Jobs for the droids
A recent report suggested that around 35% of British jobs (see p124) will be lost to computers in the next 20 years. Visit the PC Pro local on a Friday afternoon and you’d swe ar it has already happened. But wh ile manufacturing has long been in the steely grip of machines, driverle ss car s look set to replace taxis and long-distance tru ck drivers in the not-too-dis tan t futu re. It’s a nice idea, but teaching a scythe swinger to pull a lever is one thin g, tea ching a trucker to program a Goo gle-developed automate d vehicle is quite another.
Reviews Slug Sectionhead
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The biggest, best, most exciting products in tech – tested, evaluated and reviewed
Nexus6
A beast of a smartphone – and an exceptional all-rounder – at a very reasonable price SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE 32GB, £416 (£499 inc VAT); 64GB, £458 (£549 inc VAT) from play.google.com (pcpro.link/245gnexus6)
G
oogle seems to be entering a new phase with its latest round of Nexus devices – the Nexus 9 tablet last month and now the Nexus 6
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smartphone. In the company of HTC and Motorola, Google is pushing its mobile devices upmarket – a brave move in light of the incredible success of last year’s low-cost Nexus products.
■ Price, design and key features
Google’s flagship smartphone certainly isn’t the bargain last year’s Nexus 5 was. SIM-free, the Nexus 6
will set you back £499 for the 32GB version or £549 for the 64GB; that’s £200 more than the 16GB Nexus 5. Is it worth it? Physically, the Motorola-made Nexus 6 makes a good start in justifying the extra outlay – it’s a much more luxurious handset than the Nexus 5 was, and the build quality is far better than that of the disappointingly cheap-feeling Nexus 9.
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The first thing you notice about the Nexus 6 isn’t the design, however, but the sheer size of the thing. The screen measures an enormous 5.96in across the diagonal: it’s almost 0.5in larger than the Apple iPhone 6 Plus, 0.26in bigger than the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and gains almost an inch on its cousin, the Moto X (2nd Gen.). It’s a real handful of a phone, measuring 83mm across, a huge 159mm tall and 10.1mm thick. It’s larger than all those devices we just mentioned, and it weighs a not-inconsiderable 184g – making it the heaviest phone we’ve laid our hands on in quite a while. The Nexus 6 is most definitely a phone for those who favour cargo pants over skinny jeans, and who don’t mind texting with both hands. Unlike some recent larger-screened smartphones, if offers no software function to shrink down apps or move them within reach of a single thumb. For us, the Nexus 6 is a step too far, but the size of one’s smartphone is a very personal thing. Others may find that it’s the ideal size for them – the perfect compromise between compact tablet and smartphone. Leaving aside its size, there’s plenty to love about the Nexus 6’s design. There are no fancy customisation options – it’s only available in “midnight blue” or white – but elsewhere the design language is all Moto X (2nd Gen.), which is very much a good thing. It’s surrounded with a softly curved silver-aluminium frame, which feels great in the hand. The smooth, matte-plastic rear isn’t soft to the touch like the Moto X’s, but it doesn’t give an inch and feels pleasant under the finger. The Nexus logo is emblazoned in silver lettering across the back, lending the phone a touch of class. The screen, which is topped with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3, is slightly curved at the edges, so thumbs and fingers slide on and off without catching. Above and below the screen sit a pair of stereo speakers that must be among the loudest we’ve come across on a phone – they really pound out the volume. It’s a great phone for listening to podcasts and radio in the kitchen, although music still sounds rather tinny. Google continues to disappoint when it comes to storage. Just like the Nexus 9, and the Nexus 5 before it, the Nexus 6 has no microSD slot. There’s also no way to easily remove and replace the battery. However, we’re big fans of Android 5 (Lollipop), which shows its face on a smartphone for the first time here.
It’s a revamp that represents the biggest leap forward for Google’s mobile OS we’ve seen, and its colourful flat icons, revamped core apps, notifications and lockscreen all hang together just as well as they did with the Nexus 9. The whole shebang feels superbly responsive, too.
Good battery life, great design and Android 5 Far too big for one-handed use – unless you’re a giant
■ Display
The screen is what the Nexus 6 is all about. Why else would anyone put up with such a giant smartphone if not for all that extra space? It’s important to nail such a critical element, and the Nexus 6 gets off on the right foot. Motorola has employed an AMOLED panel behind the Gorilla Glass frontage, so the black level is deep and contrast is superb. Using AMOLED technology should allow the phone to keep power demands to a minimum when using Lollipop’s “ambient display” mode – where notifications appear when the phone is in standby. This is a clever feature, but you may want to think about switching it off. Google quotes up to 250 hours of battery life with it on, a figure that leaps to 330 hours with it off – a significant 32% longer. As has become the norm for larger flagship smartphones (the Galaxy Note 4 and LG G3 come to mind), the resolution of this enormous screen is Quad HD – that’s 1,440 pixels across and 2,560 down. This gives a faintly ridiculous pixel density of 493ppi, and although we remain unconvinced that even a 6in display needs that many pixels, there’s no denying the screen is sharp, with crisp text and sharp images all round. In terms of colour and brightness performance, though, we’re less impressed. The main problem is that the Nexus 6 employs content-based dynamic contrast that can’t be disabled. Even with “adaptive brightness” switched off in the settings (this adjusts brightness depending on the ambient lighting conditions), the Nexus 6 constantly adjusts the brightness according to what’s displayed onscreen. As such, white text on a dark background will look gleamingly brilliant, while the white background of a web page will look slightly dim.
In fact, brightness can swing by as much as 70cd/m2, an adjustment that’s particularly noticeable when you open the settings menu (which has a white background) from a homescreen with a dark background. This makes any definitive judgement of colour accuracy impossible, since it’s effectively in constant flux. Even by eye, colours on the screen look slightly off, and in many cases a little overenthusiastic, even lurid. One thing is clear: this screen isn’t a patch on those on the Galaxy Note 4 or the iPhone 6 Plus.
“Even by eye, colours on the screen look slightly off, and in many cases a little overenthusiastic, even lurid”
■ Core hardware and performance
Nexus products are normally cutting-edge when it comes to core performance, and the Nexus 6 is no different. Inside is the fastest SoC that Qualcomm produces – a quad-core Snapdragon 805, running at 2.7GHz with 3GB of RAM and an Adreno 420 GPU – the same get-up as found in the Galaxy Note 4. As expected, the Nexus 6 swatted aside all the benchmarks we threw at it, matching the Galaxy Note 4 blow for blow in all the big tests. It’s also reasonably competitive with the iPhone 6 Plus, until you get to the GFXBench tests – that’s because, with a 1080p screen, the iPhone has far fewer pixels to shunt around. Still, 27fps is perfectly respectable,
BELOW It isn’t perfect, but the Quad HD display is certainly sharp
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Worldmags.net and in everyday use and gaming the Nexus 6 put in a decent showing: it’s slick and responsive in most situations, whether browsing heavy web pages or Google Maps, and multitasking doesn’t faze it. The phone does, however, become rather hot when used intensively. The top portion of the screen hit 41˚C at times and the rear 39˚C, which starts to get uncomfortable after a while.
■ Battery life
Battery life is a mixed picture. For light- and moderate-use scenarios, it’s excellent. In our 720p videoplayback test, where we put the phone into flight mode and set the screen as close to 120cd/m2 as possible, the capacity of the Nexus 6’s 3,220mAh battery fell at a rate of 6.8% per hour. It’s in good company here, almost matching the Galaxy Note 4’s result of 6.2%, although it falls some way behind the iPhone 6 Plus’ impressive score of 4.9%. The audio-streaming test, which gives an indication of a phone’s
UsingtheNexus6 one-handed The Nexus 6 is big – too big to make one-handed use practical, in our opinion. Much of the time, this isn’t an issue, but on occasion you’ll need to answer calls, reply to texts, search the web or find something nearby with Google Maps when one of your hands is occupied – holding a shopping bag, for instance – and the size makes this almost impossible. However, the handset has an ace up its sleeve: Google Now. Since this is a Nexus device, Google’s voice-control and dictation system can be activated using the key phrase “OK, Google”, which means all you have to do to activate it is unlock the phone – just about achievable one-handed on the Nexus 6. At this point, as long as you have a data connection, you can do all the above without having to touch the screen at all. And the efficacy of Google Now’s voice-recognition system and the quality of the Nexus 6’s microphones mean it works with a remarkable degree of accuracy, even in the noisiest environments. In fact, it’s so good – and the Nexus 6 so big – that we’ve increasingly found ourselves turning to Google Now even when we’re not forced to do so. As long as you don’t mind talking to your phone, it’s surprising how much you can do one-handed.
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standby performance, resulted in a depletion rate of 2.3% per hour, slightly better than the Galaxy Note 4 and on a par with the 6 Plus. In other good news, the Nexus 6 has wireless charging built in, and comes with a “Turbo” AC charger, which we found was capable of ramping up the charge very quickly indeed: 17% in 15 minutes is enough of an emergency boost to be genuinely useful. Push the CPU, however, and stamina takes a dramatic turn for the worse. In the GFXBench battery test, with the frame rate capped at 22.4fps (lower than the maximum of which the phone is capable), a result of 2hrs 24mins is pretty poor, and well short of the iPhone 6 Plus’ time of 3hrs 26mins, which is rendering more than twice the number of frames. All in all, though, it’s a thumbs-up for the Nexus 6’s battery life – just don’t expect it to last long when you’re gaming hard.
■ Camera
On paper, the cameras look decent. The rear snapper has a top resolution of 13 megapixels, an f/2 lens, 4K video recording, optical image stabilisation (OIS) and a dual-LED ring flash; the front-facing camera can capture 2-megapixel stills and 1080p video. It can’t match the Galaxy Note 4’s 16-megapixel camera, but it beats the 8 megapixels of the iPhone 6 Plus. In testing, it performed much better than expected – given how disappointing the camera on the Moto X (2nd Gen.) was – capturing largely clean images and video in good light, and well-exposed and well-focused photographs and video in low light, without our needing to use the dual-LED flash. If there’s a weakness, it’s the speed of the autofocus system. This isn’t anywhere near as fast as that of the Galaxy Note 4 or the iPhone 6 Plus, both of which employ phase-detect autofocus like a DSLR or compact system camera. The Nexus 6 doesn’t have that, instead relying on contrast detection, and this takes quite a while to lock focus. In video, it’s more of a problem: the focus jumps backwards and forwards distractingly as you pan the camera around. In general, though, we’re pleased with the results from the Nexus 6’s camera, and it’s nice to see that Google has refrained from messing about too much with the camera software. It’s simple, effective and
ABOVE The Nexus 6 doesn’t feature a microSD slot for expanding the storage, which is disappointing
BELOW The Google device is a monster, measuring 83mm wide, 159mm tall and 10.1mm thick
not overladen with features, putting most of what you need a tap and a swipe or two away. The only major thing it lacks is full control over ISO and shutter speed, but as compensation it’s possible to tweak the exposure up and down.
■ Connectivity, storage, price and call quality
As you’d expect of a high-end handset, connectivity is cutting-edge. The Nexus 6 has Cat 6 4G support, for download speeds of up to 300Mbits/ sec and uploads of 50Mbits/sec. There’s 2x2 MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi, which we saw hit speeds between 8MB/sec and 9MB/sec when reading a large movie file at close range from a network share. NFC is covered, too, as is Bluetooth 4.1, and you also get SlimPort for HDMI output from the phone’s USB port. As far as storage is concerned, there are only two configurations of the Nexus 6 to choose from: a 32GB model and a 64GB model. Both represent good (if not exceptional) value, at £499 and £549 SIM-free respectively, when compared with the 6GB iPhone 6 Plus, which is £619, and the 32GB Galaxy Note 4, which is £599. Call quality is perfectly respectable. The Nexus 6 goes loud enough that you can hear your caller in even the noisiest environments – just be careful not to put the phone to your ear in speakerphone mode or you’ll come away with your ears ringing.
■ Verdict
The Nexus 6 has taken us by surprise in the short time we’ve had it. Once you get past its gargantuan size,there’s an awful lot it does right. Battery life is good, the camera is excellent, and the build and design quality are second to none. And although its rivals hold an edge over it in many areas, the differences aren’t huge. For us, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 remains top dog in the phablet stakes, thanks to its slightly more manageable size and its stylus input, but if you’re in the market for a big phone – and make no mistake, this is a real bruiser of a handset – you’d be doing yourself a disfavour by not putting the Nexus 6 on your shortlist. JONATHAN BRAY SPECIFICATIONS Quad-core 2.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 SoC ● 3GB RAM ● 32/64GB storage ● 5.96in 1,440 x 2,560 AMOLED display ● 802.11ac Wi-Fi ● 4G (Cat 6 up to 300Mbits/ sec download) ● 3,220mAh battery ● Android 5 (Lollipop) ● 1yr RTB warranty ● 83 x 10.1 x 159mm (WDH) ● 184g
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Reviews
LGGWatchR
The round-faced successor to the G Watch brings strong battery life and a sense of style to Android Wear SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £175 (£210 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk (pcpro.link/245lgw)
T
he G Watch R’s key selling point isn’t difficult to spot. Where most Android Wear smartwatches offer a conventional rectangular screen, the G Watch R’s display is a perfect circle. We’ve seen this type of design before, in the shape of Motorola’s Moto 360, but where the lower part of the Motorola’s screen is cut off by a small black bar, LG’s latest smartwatch displays a fully circular face. It’s a design that instantly lends the G Watch R a certain cachet. To our eyes, a square-faced smartwatch, no matter how luxurious, inevitably calls to mind the low-cost digital watches of yore. The G Watch R’s classic shape suggests a more grown-up accessory, an effect that’s supported by the faux winding knob (which in fact turns the screen on and off), and is completed by a dive-watch-style bezel. The chunky body won’t suit slender wrists, but at 62g it’s lighter than most dumb chronometers, and the comfortable leather strap is easily replaceable via a standard 22mm fitting. Wake up the watch and you’re greeted by a 1.3in screen, with a 320-pixel diameter that translates to a pixel density of 246ppi. That’s not quite Retina-sharp at typical watchreading distances, but it delivers crisp and clear text and images. LG has also chosen to use P-OLED (polymer OLED) technology, which delivers sumptuous colours that really leap off your wrist; at maximum brightness of around 310cd/m2 it’s a sight to behold, and it’s easily readable even in bright sunlight. So far so good – but there’s a catch. The G Watch R’s high-brightness settings can be a bit too dazzling for discreet indoor use; there’s no ambient light sensor to automatically dial it down when you need to. Happily, the latest Android Wear update introduces a new “sunlight mode”, which temporarily pushes the brightness up to maximum, automatically returning to normal the next the screen wakes up. You
can quickly activate this mode by triple-clicking the side-knob, so it’s a decent workaround. It’s also worth mentioning that OLED screens are susceptible to screen burn, which isn’t covered by the warranty. It remains to be seen whether this early generation of Android Wear watches will be in use long enough for that to be a problem. Android Wear tries to minimise burn by subtly shifting the position of your watch face each minute, and you can help matters further by choosing mostly black faces and switching between them periodically. The outer ring surrounding the screen is, in our view, a design misstep. It doesn’t actually rotate – not that you could really take the G Watch R diving anyway, since its IP67 rating means it’s only waterresistant to a depth of 1m. And the raised surround interferes with the swipe gestures used to navigate Android Wear, creating a sense that the software and hardware don’t quite gel. Those who prefer a minimalist face may find the physical markings a needless visual distraction as well. And then there’s the charger. Similar to the regular G Watch, the G Watch R charges via a USB dock that attaches magnetically to the back. But it’s a disconcertingly loose fit, feeling more like a pedestal than a clip. It takes only an inadvertent shove to knock the watch off its charger, which doesn’t inspire confidence. As all Android Wear smartwatches run the same base software, the G Watch R can’t really be faulted in terms of function. The vibrator is a bit weedy, but you do get a
ABOVE LG’s use of P-OLED technology translates to a bright screen with superb colours
The best battery life we’ve seen on Android Wear No light sensor, raised outer ring obstructs swiping
heart-rate monitor for one-shot pulse readouts, which several models (including the original G Watch) lack. Continuous heart-rate monitoring isn’t supported. What’s more, LG has packed in the biggest battery we’ve yet seen on an Android Wear device, rated at 410mAh. In our tests, this gave the watch a projected battery life of two days and 21 hours per charge (at default settings), helped along by the efficiencies of the OLED display. This isn’t the transformative leap in smartwatch longevity that we’ve been waiting for, but it’s 19 hours longer than the original G Watch. That, perhaps, is the G Watch R’s saving grace. If you’re looking for an upmarket smartwatch, the Moto 360’s wireless charger, built-in light sensor and edge-to-edge screen make it a much slicker and more polished device. It’s a touch cheaper, too, but the battery life of barely more than 24 hours means the G Watch R is a better compromise. It doesn’t come close to the elegance of a real high-end timepiece, and it’s significantly more expensive than its rectangular rivals. But if you’re looking for an eye-catching Android Wear watch that won’t let you down at the end of the day, it’s your best bet – so far. DARIEN GRAHAM-SMITH KEY SPECS Single-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor ● 512MB RAM ● 4GB storage ● 1.3in circular 320 x 320 P-OLED touchscreen ● optical heart-rate monitor ● Bluetooth 4 LE ● 410mAh battery ● Android Wear ● 1yr RTB warranty ● 46.4 x 53.6 x 11.1mm (WDH) ● 62g 67
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Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact
Slender, sturdy and perfectly formed, but the Sony’s record-breaking stamina comes at a price SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £274 (£329 inc VAT) from sony.co.uk (pcpro.link/245xperia)
S
ony is taking a brave step with the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact. With an 8in screen, its principal rivals are the Apple iPad mini 3 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 – yet at £329 it costs more than both. In fact, that price also makes it more expensive than the Nexus 9 and the 16GB iPad Air.
■ Specifications and design
At first glance, it’s difficult to see how the Z3 justifies its price, especially in terms of the bald specifications. On the display front, it comes with an 8in IPS display with a resolution of 1,200 x 1,920. Inside, it’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, with 3GB of RAM and an Adreno 330 GPU. None of this is groundbreaking stuff, and for £329 we’d also expect a little more than 16GB storage (although there’s a microSD slot for expansion).
However, a closer look reveals a handful of things that elevate this tablet above the humdrum. It has the same water and dust resistance as the firm’s smartphones – its IP68 rating means it’s impervious to the ingress of dust and capable of being submerged in up to 1.5 metres of water. The cameras are also a cut above the tablet norm – at least when it comes to the numbers. You get an 8.1-megapixel camera on the rear and a 2.2-megapixel shooter up front, although there’s no LED flash to help out in low light. In terms of connectivity, there’s a full roster of top-end technology, too, with 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1 and NFC for quick pairing with wireless peripherals. There’s also a 4G version (not yet officially available in the UK) that can be used to make phone calls, albeit only via a Bluetooth headset or in speakerphone mode. The Z3 also offers a unique feature for those who own a PlayStation 4 – it sports a special mode that allows users to pipe games from the console to the screen of the Z3. The design furnishes more points in the Z3’s favour. For starters, it’s the lightest, slimmest tablet of its size,
outdoing both the iPad mini 3 and the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 in this regard. It’s 124mm wide, 213mm tall and only a fraction thicker than the iPad Air 2, at just 6.4mm. It’s the merest slip of a thing, weighing little more than an ebook reader, at 266g. Despite this, there’s barely any flex or give to be found – which is no mean feat for such a dainty tablet. It’s an engineering achievement of which Sony should be proud – it’s only a shame that the design is so bland. The matte-black plastic finish on our review sample has a slight sparkle to it, but “The Z3 is the merest slip otherwise there’s very little about the look of of a thing, weighing little more than an ebook reader, the Z3 to raise the temperature, not even but there’s barely any flex a selection of bright or give to be found” colours – it’s available only in black or white. ABOVE The display is sharp and bright – and the battery is truly formidable
■ Screen and performance
Incredibly slim and light, with a great screen, and water and dust resistance Pricey for an 8in tablet, and the camera isn’t fantastic
It’s just as well there’s plenty else to like about Sony’s compact tablet. The Full HD display, stretched across 8in, delivers a pixel density of 283ppi, which is as sharp as you need. It’s searingly bright, reaching 477cd/m2 with the brightness turned up, and contrast is a respectable BATTERY: video playback, 17hrs 45mins
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1,078:1. The tablet also features Sony’s latest display technology – Live Colour LED – which is supposed to deliver “super-sharp images and accurate colours”. Alas, while the Z3 delivers on the first part of that claim, it’s a little way off on the second. We recorded an average Delta E of 6.37, which would normally indicate colours that are way off. However, although hues look a little more intense than we’d expect from a colour-accurate display – whites in particular appear cold and bluish – sRGB coverage is excellent (98%), and colours across the rest of the spectrum don’t look particularly unnatural to the eye. Performance is as you’d expect from a £329 tablet – which is to say excellent. The Z3 has a quad-core, 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor and 3GB of RAM, and this delivers a solid set of benchmark figures. In the single- and multi-core Geekbench tests, its scores of 977 and 2,654 compare well with the Galaxy Tab S 8.4’s 936 and 2,768, and its GFXBench T-Rex HD (onscreen) frame rate is twice as good, at 28fps. It also outstrips the iPad mini 3’s year-old hardware by 24% in the latter test. It feels extremely responsive, too, whether you’re browsing hefty web pages or panning and zooming around in Google Maps. But the really impressive side to the Z3’s performance is battery life. In our 720p looping video-playback test, where we set the screen to a brightness of 120cd/m2, the 4,500mAh battery lasted for an astonishing 17hrs 45mins, smashing the PC Pro record for tablet battery life – previously held by the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9in (2014) – by 50 minutes, and outrunning the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 by a full 5hrs 23mins. In the GFXBench battery test, the tablet gained a projected runtime of 4hrs 49mins, indicating that stamina isn’t limited to video. It does fall behind the iPad mini 3 (5hrs 9mins) in this test, however.
■ Cameras and software
When you move up the tablet price scale, one of the things you should expect is a better camera, and that would certainly seem to be the case from the specifications. Fire it up and you’re faced with an impressive-looking selection of modes and options. It’s similar to Sony’s smartphones, with Intelligent Auto mode selected by default, and a host of fun features to tinker with. Alas, the Z3’s 8-megapixel rear camera struggles to produce consistently good results. The main problem here is lens flare, which means that most of our shots in less-than-favourable conditions came out lacking in contrast and looking washed out. We weren’t too keen on Sony’s processing of pictures, either, with heavy-handed compression artefacts smearing the finer details. Our test photos weren’t a complete disaster, but the Z3’s rear camera is best viewed as an emergency snapper – one that’s only worth using when your smartphone runs out of battery.
■ Verdict
Although it has its weaknesses, the Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact is a fabulous piece of hardware. The battery life is incredible, the display is super-bright and performance is excellent. Couple these attributes with a slim, lightweight, waterresistant chassis and you have a high-calibre compact tablet – one that holds an edge over all its rivals. The problem here is the price. It costs £329 for the 16GB Wi-Fi version, which makes it more expensive than the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 – currently available from some online outlets for £280 – and more than the already overpriced iPad mini 3; even the larger Nexus 9 and the original iPad Air are a smidgen cheaper. The Sony Xperia Z3 Compact Tablet is a fantastic device, but only if you don’t mind paying for it. While its rivals may not boast superior hardware, they certainly offer better value. JONATHAN BRAY SPECIFICATIONS Quad-core 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC ● 3GB RAM ● 16GB storage ● microSD slot ● 8in 1,200 x 1,920 IPS display ● 2.2MP/8MP front/rear cameras ● 802.11ac Wi-Fi ● optional 4G (with phone-call capability) ● 4,500mAh Li-ion battery ● Android 4.4.2 (KitKat) ● 1yr RTB warranty ● 124 x 6.4 x 213mm (WDH) ● 266g
Worldmags.net MSIGT72DominatorPro A fearsome gaming laptop, delivering uncompromising graphical power in an (almost) portable package SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £1,667 (£2,000 inc VAT) from saveonlaptops.co.uk (pcpro.link/245msidp)
T
he MSI GT72 Dominator Pro harks back to the days when gaming laptops were giants. Weighing near 4kg, this 17.3in Goliath isn’t a device you’d want on your lap. It’s also the most powerful gaming laptop the world has ever seen – and puts many gaming desktops to shame. The GT72’s size isn’t its only attention-grabbing characteristic. Gaming glam is everywhere: the LED strips along the front edge, the keyboard and even the touchpad ignite with multicoloured backlighting of your choosing. The brushed-metal lid, meanwhile, adds a touch of class.
■ Specifications
The GT72 comes in a range of specifications, each with a selection of CPU models, multiple SSDs, RAM, and a choice of Nvidia’s GTX 970M and GTX 980M GPUs. For three grand, it’s possible to specify Intel’s top-flight 2.8GHz Core i7-4980HQ CPU, 16GB of RAM, up to four M.2 SSDs in RAID and a GeForce GTX 980M equipped with 8GB of GDDR5 memory. Our review unit reached for the middle ground, partnering a relatively modest quad-core 2.5GHz Core i7 CPU with 16GB of DDR3 RAM, twin 128GB SSDs in RAID0, a Hitachi 1TB 7,200rpm hard drive and an 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M. That GPU is the star of the show. While Nvidia’s power-efficient Maxwell architecture made its debut in the GTX 860M (take a look at our review of Chillblast’s st’s Defiant 2 Mini, pcpro.link/245chill, hill, to see how that GPU fared), this his is the first time the architecture ure has been extended to high-end products. The result esult is significantly greater ter performance per watt than the previous Kepler generation: on: Nvidia claims Maxwell is up to 40% faster than last st year’s range-topping pping GTX 880M. 70
■ Gaming performance
In practice, there’s little this laptop can’t handle. Crysis might nowadays be looking a little long in the tooth, but it’s still a serious challenge for mobile GPUs – or at least it was until the GTX 980M came “Twin DisplayPort 1.2 along. At Full HD resolution and Very High outputs and an HDMI 1.4 detail, the MSI smashed port permit triple-monitor through our benchmark setups; all three can be used at an average of 73fps – concurrently as the display” 26% faster than the GeForce GTX 880M in the Asus ROG G750JZ. Even when we upped the resolution to 2,560 x 1,440, the MSI kept up a smooth average BELOW The GTX frame rate of 50fps. Only when we 980M inside the pushed up Crysis to 4K (3,840 x 2,160) Dominator Pro gives resolution and Very High detail did a 40% speed boost the frame rate dip to a jerky 26fps. over its predecessor, performance isn’t to Application performan according to Nvidia result of 1.04 be sniffed at either. A res in our Real World Benchmarks is Ben stunning for a stu portable system, por and the SSD-based array is RAID a stupendously fast, stupendou sequential read and with sequent write speeds of wri 1,021MB/sec and 878MB/sec in the AS SSD benchmark. This benchm
makes for seriously quick startup times for the system and applications; we never found ourselves waiting around for games to load. For some reason, MSI has chosen not to employ Nvidia’s Optimus graphics-switching technology, so if you want to save power by switching to the CPU’s integrated graphics, it’s necessary to reboot the laptop. You do get MSI’s Shift feature, however, which lets you switch between Green, Comfort and Speed modes. As the name suggests, Speed mode lets the CPU and GPU work flat out; Comfort mode limits the maximum GPU frequency; and Green mode limits both clocks and sets a temperature cap of 85˚C. Even in Green mode, however, the GPU devours power. With the screen dimmed to 75cd/m2, and Wi-Fi off, the MSI lasted a mere 2hrs 26mins before running dry. When we rebooted and allowed Intel’s integrated graphics to take the helm, the GT72 lasted 7hrs 26mins in the same light-use battery test.
■ Features and upgradability
Despite the ostentatious coloured backlighting, the GT72’s SteelSeries keyboard is no mere novelty act. The control panel lets you create macros for often-used key combinations, and set up profiles for individual games.
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RIGHT The GT72 Dominator Pro is well connected, with six USB 3 ports, four 3.5mm audio jacks, Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11ac Wi-Fi
BATTERY: light use, 2hrs 26mins
REAL WORLD BENCHMARKS
3.4GHz Intel Core i7-2600K, 4GB DDR3 = 1
OVERALL 1.04 0
0.25
0.5
0.75
1
1.25
1.5
1.75
The crisp, responsive keys are mounted on a keyboard panel that doesn’t exhibit the slightest bit of flex or wallow, whether you’re typing or frantically mashing the WASD keys in the latest shooter. And while the touchpad will be of less interest to gamers, it too is a class act: the huge touch area is accurate and responsive, and the dedicated buttons respond with a solid, reassuring click. Connectivity is equally impressive. At the rear, twin DisplayPort 1.2 outputs and an HDMI 1.4 port permit triple-monitor setups, and all three can be used concurrently as the laptop’s display. Six USB 3 ports are provided, spread across the laptop’s two flanks, and a full set of four 3.5mm audio jacks makes it possible to hook up an external 7.1 speaker set. There’s wired Gigabit Ethernet as well as 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and there’s even a Blu-ray writer thrown in. When it comes to internal expansion, opening up the chassis is a simple matter of removing six screws; inside you’ll find two 2.5in drive bays and an M.2 riser card with two Toshiba 128GB SSDs installed. Both the GPU and CPU are covered with beefy-looking heatsinks, with multiple heatpipes connected to a dedicated pair of 60mm fans at either corner of the chassis. Even though our model came with 16GB of RAM, two further RAM slots are provided, opening up the possibility of expanding the memory to a maximum of 32GB. Best of all, MSI has used a replaceable MXM graphics module, so it’s possible to upgrade the GPU – although it’s hard to imagine you’ll feel the need in the foreseeable future.
■ Displayy
If you’re wondering ndering why we haven’t mentioned the display yet, it’s because some ome uncertainty remains on this point. Our test est unit came with a Full HD TN panel, which ich we found disappointing ting at this price. The resolution on is fine for
Performance, build quality, connectivity, oodles of upgradability and effective cooling Bulky, questionable looks, poor battery life and expensive
games, but TN’s limited viewing angles and poor colour accuracy undermine the experience. The good news is that MSI has decided to upgrade the final retail hardware with IPS displays, which should offer much improved image quality. Unfortunately, the company wasn’t able to provide an updated sample at the time of review, so we’ve yet to see the new screen for ourselves.
■ Verdict
BELOW Distinctive design features can be seen everywhere
The MSI GT72 is every inch the gaming laptop we’d love to own. We’re not even too disheartened by the asking price: the £2,000 tag attached to our review unit includes a swathe of SteelSeries gaming accessories and an MSI rucksack. If you don’t mind dropping to 8GB of RAM, and losing the SSDs, you can buy a GT72 with a 4GB GTX 980M for an easier-toswallow £1,500. Regardless of which model you choose, you’ll be getting an excellent gaming laptop. Great build quality is matched with plenty of scope for future upgrades, and Nvidia’s powerhouse of a GPU is capable of smashing through most games without breaking sweat. Until we see the updated screen, we can’t give the GT72 an unequivocal recommendation. But it’s very ver rare for IPS to disappoint, disappoin so if you’re in the market for fo a no-compromises gaming laptop, the GT72 Dominator Pro demands a place high up on your shortlist. SASHA MULLER SPECIFICATIONS SPECIFICA 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-4710HQ ● 8GB RAM ● 2 x 128GB SSD (RAID0) ● 1TB hard disk ● 17.3in 1,920 x 1,080 1,08 TN LCD panel ● Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M graphics ● Windows 8.1 ● 2yr RTB warranty ● 428 x 294 x 58mm (WDH) ● 3.8kg (4.7kg with charger)
TheMaxwellfactor Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 980M finally marks the debut of Nvidia’s second-generation “Maxwell” GPU architecture. While last year’s range-topping GTX 880M used the older Kepler architecture, Nvidia chose to debut Maxwell’s potential with the midrange GTX 860M, which proved its mettle with a judicious blend of performance and efficiency. Now, however, Nvidia has demonstrated what Maxwell can do for high-end mobile gaming. The GM204 GPU in the GTX 980M builds on the changes introduced by the GTX 860M’s GM107 chip. For starters, the new streaming multiprocessor design (SMM) dramatically improves both performance and power efficiency over the Kepler architecture in the GTX 880M. So much so, in fact, that on paper the GTX 980M doesn’t appear to have much going for it. It has the same number of CUDA processing cores as the GTX 880M, 25% fewer texture mapping units (TMUs), and its GDDR5 memory runs at the same effective 5GHz. So how is it around 40% quicker? It’s the aggregation of marginal gains. The architectural tweaks – the new SMM design; a little extra cache memory here and there; twice the number of render output units (ROPs); and a more potent colour-compression algorithm to maximise bandwidth – all add up to a dramatic performance increase. Most impressive of all, performance boost aside, is that power consumption has actually come down slightly. The performance per watt here bodes well for battery life in future designs. And with more affordable second-generation Maxwell GPUs such as the GTX 960M due soon, we can be sure that 2015 is set to be an exciting year for laptop gaming.
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Worldmags.net SSDshootout
Solid-state drives are getting faster, larger and cheaper. We test the best drives on the market
S
olid-state storage used to be prohibitively expensive and hampered by tight capacities, but the market has recently matured. SSDs are now viable alternatives to hard disks, thanks to lower prices, higher capacities and faster speeds. It’s a fast-moving part of the tech world, which means rapid innovation is the norm. The number of new techniques and technologies present in SSDs means there’s a lot to look out for when buying a drive – it’s certainly trickier than picking a hard disk.
■ Making memories
Flash memory chips form the bulk of an SSD, and advances in this space have the biggest influence on the performance and longevity of the drives you buy. The most recent technological development was introduced by Samsung in May, in the shape of 3D V-NAND. This marks a big change in how SSD memory is constructed: instead of installing transistors in traditional horizontal layers, this drive stacks them vertically too. This change means Samsung can pack in many more transistors without shrinking the manufacturing process, so the NAND doesn’t suffer from the performance inefficiencies, current leaks and higher costs associated with smaller process nodes. The 850 Pro employs a 40nm process – an archaic-sounding choice compared to the sub-20nm chips used in other commercial drives – but that’s moot when the Pro’s vertical arrangement means Samsung has the luxury of extra space. This innovation means Samsung is finally free from the shackles of chasing smaller processes. That’s been the path of SSD development for several years, despite the obvious cons: smaller nodes mean better performance, but they put more demands on the components and reduce endurance. For those reasons, other firms including Intel are already moving down the same path to improve storage deficiencies.
■ Cell division
The flash memory in modern SSDs comes in three types: SLC, MLC and TLC. These acronyms describe the number of bits stored in the cells 74
that make up NAND memory, with single-, multi- and triple-level used in different drives. Each type of NAND has pros and cons. Single-level cells have the best endurance and raw speed, but they’re more expensive to produce, since each NAND cell stores only one bit, and thus storage density is lower. SLC SSDs are typically used for mission-critical PCs that read and write huge amounts of data. The next step up, MLC, stores two bits per cell. This “The number of new makes it cheaper to techniques and technologies produce drives with the same capacity as present on SSDs means an SLC equivalent, but there’s a lot to look out longevity is hampered. for when buying a drive” The increased number of bits in each cell means it’s more difficult to distinguish between the states, which reduces endurance: on an atomic level, higher voltages and more frequent changes in the charge level cause the silicon-oxide insulation inside the cells to erode at a faster rate. AS SSD read
AS SSD write
Seq
4K
4K 64
493
26
364
Crucial
519
30
330
Fujifilm
518
21
363
Samsung 850 Evo
510
43
375
Samsung 850 Pro
527
35
SanDisk
505
31
AMD
Triple-level cells increase the capacity and reduce the cost even more, but performance and endurance decline further. These disadvantages mean MLC and TLC drives aren’t suitable for intense workloads, but they have ample endurance and performance for home and gaming systems – and generally, they’re cheaper. Flash memory controllers manage the interactions between the NAND cells and the rest of the PC. They don’t handle only file reads and writes – they also manage drive maintenance and cleaning procedures. Many SSD manufacturers source controllers from third-party firms. Marvell is consistently popular, and controllers are often bolstered by custom firmware that allow for different areas of a drive’s performance to be emphasised. Other firms develop their own silicon. Samsung produces its own triple-core MEX parts, and Intel also produces homegrown controllers.
* All results are in MB/sec except where specified
Access
ATTO read Access
Seq
4K
4K 64
497
77
315
0.05
0.04
332
96
287
0.08
489
74
228
0.04
499
96
384
0.05
502
330
0.05
473
(ms)
0.04
4K
2048K
231
532
0.05
126
554
0.05
275
554
287
0.04
314
549
93
320
0.04
295
563
72
291
0.05
256
550
(ms)
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■ Get connected
Every modern SSD uses the current SATA III standard to connect to your PC or laptop, and its maximum transfer rate of 6Gbits/sec is enough for consumer applications. But this is also on the road to change, and newer connectors could soon supersede SATA. The most prominent currently is mSATA, which is already found inside many laptops and on most high-end motherboards. It’s a SATA III interface but, crucially, squeezed into a tiny space – the connector is slimmer than a SATA plug, and the drives themselves are several times smaller than normal SSDs. Drives compatible with the mSATA standard are plentiful, but they’re still limited by SATA III’s maximum bandwidth – an issue that will become more significant as NAND chips become faster and cheaper. A new form factor, M.2, solves this by cramming the SATA Express interface – which supports both SATA III and PCI Express 3 – into an even smaller connector. Its maximum transfer rate of 16Gbits/sec outstrips SATA III, and M.2 drives can come in several different lengths and widths. If anything will replace SATA, it’s this.
ABOVE The SATA III is fast enough – for now
Samsung850Pro256GB SCORE
ATTO write
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £115 (£138 inc VAT) from ebuyer.com (pcpro.link/245samssd)
■ How big?
That’s for the future, though. Assuming you’re buying today, the most important consideration may also be the most banal one: physical size. Most 2.5in SSDs sold these days are 7mm thick, but a handful are still the chunkier 9.5mm. These thicker drives may not fit inside laptops that only accept the slimmer parts. Take a peek inside the box, too. Some drives come with spacers to bulk out 7mm drives to fit into 9.5mm bays, and others come with adapters so they can be installed in a desktop PC’s 3.5in hard disk bay.
Also check the warranty. Some SSDs, such as Samsung’s 850 Pro, come with generous ten-year deals, but more affordable SSDs often make do with two or three years of coverage. The final thing we’d check before buying an SSD is its endurance rating. Endurance is measured in gigabytes or terabytes, and these measurements represent how much data can be written to the drive before it’s liable to fail. Endurance ratings in gigabytes generally indicate the amount of data that can be written to the drive daily, while a terabyte rating represents how much data can be written over the drive’s lifespan – its warranty period. These figures vary wildly. The cheap Crucial MX100 is rated for a modest 72TB workload, while the pricier Samsung 850 Pro is rated for 150TB. Both of those figures are ample for typical consumer machines, but it’s worth paying attention in work systems that deal with intensive read and write processes.
faster. There’s also a 512MB cache of low-power DDR2 memory. It’s a potent specification. The 850 Pro’s AS SSD sequential read and write results of 527MB/sec and 502MB/sec are the best we’ve seen, and it topped the table in the 4K 64 read and write tests as well. Anvil’s benchmarks run similar tests, and here the 850 Pro also proved dominant. The Samsung followed its stunning start with great results in the ATTO benchmark. It was the fastest SSD on test in 12 of the 15 read tests, which evaluate performance with a wide range of different file sizes. When writing files in ATTO it led the way in 11 of those 15 tests. The Iometer and PCMark8 storage tests evaluate longer-term performance. Here, unsurprisingly, the 850 Pro continued to impress. Its total I/O result of 6,997 is the best here, and its total figure in Iometer sat at 267MB/sec – again the quickest result we’ve seen. In PCMark8’s extensive storage test, the 850 Pro scored 4,984 points – not the best, but not far behind it. The Samsung 850 Pro is a drive with very few weaknesses. Its Iometer average and maximum response times weren’t top of our results table but, even then, the difference between the 850 Pro and faster rivals can be measured in mere milliseconds.
S RECOMMENDED
Iometer
amsung’s current flagship is a testament to the benefits of controlling an entire supply chain, from research to production. That tight grip means Samsung’s 850 Pro was the first commercial drive to deploy 3D V-NAND, and it helps this drive maintain a lead over the rest of the market. The 850 doesn’t just gain an advantage from its innovative NAND flash. Its triple-core MEX controller also has a part to play: it’s the same as the one found in its predecessor, the 840 Pro, but clocked 100MHz
PCMark8
4K
2048K
Total IOPS
Total MB/sec
Av I/O resp (ms)
Max I/O resp (ms)
Score (PC Marks)
264
532
1,892
72
0.5
728
4,937
289
339
1,754
67
3.4
133
4,966
217
525
5,475
210
0.2
22
4,991
279
529
5,270
202
0.2
5
4,984
273
536
6,997
267
0.9
15
294
502
1,843
70
0.5
53
Anvil read
Anvil write
Bandwidth
Seq 4MB
4K
4K OD16
Seq 4MB
4K
4K OD16
220
489
26
249
489
86
338
261
516
30
298
328
97
302
288
518
22
287
482
74
245
275
512
37
346
497
99
337
4,984
275
527
35
370
497
92
335
4,925
207
522
30
296
475
71
310
* All results are MB/sec except where specified
75
Worldmags.net It’s a similar story with AS SSD’s access times – the 850 Pro doesn’t lead the way, but it isn’t far behind. The 850 Pro costs £138 inc VAT, which, for this 256GB model, works out at 54p per gigabyte. It’s expensive, but it justifies its price through its rapid and consistent pace. It’s the SSD to buy for market-leading performance.
for 2MB reads – barely any slower than market-leading products. The Ultra proved even better when writing files; it gained 502MB/sec for 2MB files, while the Crucial MX100 languished at 339MB/sec. Meanwhile, in the Anvil test suite, the Ultra II’s 4MB sequential read pace of 522MB/sec is among the best we’ve seen and its 475MB/sec write speed is decent, too. Other tests, however, expose the gap between the SanDisk and a real premium drive. In Iometer, the Ultra II’s total I/O score of 1,843 was one of
SanDiskUltraII240GB SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £67 (£80 inc VAT) from pcworld.co.uk (pcpro.link/245sandisk)
Bestoftherest
AMD Radeon R7 SSD 240GB
T
he SanDisk’s name makes it sound like a high-end drive, but that’s deceptive – its £80 price and 240GB capacity mean it costs only 33p per gigabyte, making it one of the cheapest big-name SSDs you can buy. It’s the first SanDisk drive to use TLC NAND, and the first consumer drive to use this type of memory aside from Samsung. The chips used here are 19nm parts – a process less than half the size of Samsung’s 40nm silicon. Elsewhere, SanDisk uses a Marvell-made controller. The choice of TLC NAND has clearly been made on grounds of price rather than performance, but the Ultra punched above its weight in several of our benchmarks. In AS SSD’s sequential read and write tests, the SanDisk achieved scores of 505MB/sec and 473MB/sec – not enough pace to trouble the Samsung 850 Pro, but within touching distance of more expensive rivals. Compared to other budget SSDs, the SanDisk did rather well indeed. In some of ATTO’s smaller read tests, the Ultra II was twice as quick as affordable rivals, and hit 550MB/sec
76
PRICE £92 (£110 inc VAT) from dabs.com (pcpro.link/245amdr7) SCORE
RECOMMENDED
✪✪✪✪✪
This drive bears the AMD logo, but it’s made by Toshiba-owned OCZ. It uses a Barefoot 3 M00 controller similar to the chips inside OCZ’s SSDs, and Toshiba’s 19nm MLC NAND flash. Its AS SSD sequential read pace is the worst here, and that poor form continues in ATTO – its read tests are among this group’s slowest. The R7 picks up in write tests, but even here it’s hampered by inconsistency. Worst of all is the price: at £110, it’s poor value for money based on the performance on offer.
Crucial MX100 256GB
PRICE £67 (£80 inc VAT) from dabs.com (pcpro.link/245crucial) SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
Crucial’s £80 drive works out at 31p per GB and, using that measure, it’s the cheapest SSD here. That low price hasn’t precluded innovation. It’s the first mainstream consumer SSD to use 16nm NAND – no surprise given the drive is manufactured by Crucial’s parent company, Micron. This is a double-edged sword, however, since the smaller process can improve performance in some areas, but hamper it in others. The MX100 is adept when reading files, but it falters when writing them. For instance, in AS SSD’s read test its top 519MB/sec pace was the group’s second best, but its 332MB/sec writes let it down. This pattern was repeated in ATTO, where the MX100 almost caught Samsung when reading, but fell behind when writing larger files. In Iometer, its total I/O score of 1,754 was the group’s poorest. The MX100 is cheap, then, but the SanDisk is almost as affordable and a much more consistent performer. If you want to save cash, choose that instead.
the poorest we’ve recorded, and its maximum I/O response time of 53ms is a long way behind the 5ms and 15ms scores achieved by Samsung’s Evo and Pro drives. For the money, though, the SanDisk Ultra II 240GB is very impressive. It stays in touch with top SSDs in some benchmarks, and in almost every test it’s quicker and more consistent than its similarly priced rivals. Crucial’s MX100 was once the budget king, but now SanDisk’s Ultra II has seized that crown. MIKE JENNINGS
Fujifilm HQ-PC 256GB
PRICE £90 (£108 inc VAT) from ballicom.co.uk (pcpro.link/245fuji) SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
Photography firm Fujifilm’s first foray into SSDs isn’t a homegrown part. It’s a rebadged Toshiba drive that employs 19nm MLC NAND. The HQ-PC was mid-table in most of the AS SSD tests, and its good performance in individual ATTO tests was undermined by mid-table speeds elsewhere. The HQ-PC’s best performances came in the longer-term tests: its Iometer result of 5,475 IOPS was second only to the Samsung 850 Pro. Its £110 price is a lot to pay, though, for such inconsistent performance. A better mid-range bet is the Samsung 850 Evo.
Samsung 850 Evo 250GB
PRICE £92 (£110 inc VAT) from ebuyer.com (pcpro.link/245samevo) SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
Samsung’s newest drive – the 850 Evo – is cheaper than the 850 Pro, but still uses 3D V-NAND flash chips. The 850 Evo is produced with TLC rather than MLC memory, so cells store three bits of data rather than two – a move that increases storage density and reduces cost at the expense of performance. That’s not to say the Evo is sluggish. It impressed in AS SSD, occasionally besting even the 850 Pro. Its Iometer result of 5,270 is third best, and in PCMark8 it scored 4,984 – second to the Fujifilm and equal to the 850 Pro. The Evo only faltered in ATTO. Its larger-file read speeds proved slow, and most of its write speeds were average. The £110 Evo is the best mid-range drive we’ve seen: faster than AMD’s drive, and more consistent than the Fujifilm SSD. However, with better allround performance available for only £28 more, we’d suggest you save a few more pennies and opt for the 850 Pro.
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Reviews
SteinbergCubasePro8
A host of improvements mean Cubase remains the most accomplished musicproduction system around SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £373 (£448 inc VAT); upgrade, £68 (£82 inc VAT) from steinberg.net (pcpro.link/245cubase)
C
ubase has long been our musicproduction system of choice, and this latest release brings some notable updates – including a name change. The flagship is now Cubase Pro, for a clearer distinction from the Artist and Elements editions. More significantly, Cubase 8 also promises a significant boost to performance thanks to a “massive engine rebuild”. Low latency is now used only on tracks that demand it, such as those being recorded, and there’s also better disk buffering for virtual instruments. To test the effectiveness of these improvements, we created a sample project in version 7.5 using lots of virtual instruments and demanding effects, then piling on plugins until we saw constant playback glitches. On loading this project into Cubase Pro 8, the glitches disappeared. Using the built-in performance monitor, we saw the average load meter hover at around 50% during playback in both version 7.5 and 8. However, the realtime peak meter fell from a highly volatile reading in version 7.5, with regular overloads, to a steady reading of around 15% in version 8. To push the experiment further, we then duplicated every track in the project. This caused some dropouts in version 8, but only to a similar extent to the original file in version 7.5. These improvements go a long way to reduce the headache associated with managing system resources. While effects plugins place a steady
load on resources, the demands of virtual instruments vary depending on the number of notes played. In the past, this has often meant grappling with the Freeze commands to ensure the engine isn’t pushed too hard at any point. In Cubase 8, playback is not only more efficient but also more predictable, so you’re less likely to encounter the occasional dropout. Another key improvement affects Linked Channels, a feature originally introduced in Cubase 7 for synchronising mix settings across multiple channels. These covered everything from channel volume to EQ, effects and routing settings, but they didn’t work well alongside automation, as automation data overrode other settings. The new VCA Faders feature in Cubase 8 overcomes this issue, adding a virtual channel with a fader that offsets the volumes of linked channels. Automation data is handled appropriately, with the VCA Fader value simply superimposed onto the automation envelope. The VCA Fader can itself be automated too, and it’s even possible to nest VCA Faders to create complex automation layers, should the need arise. Although VCA Faders work well, most projects will be better served by the existing Groups channels, which create submixes of related channels. Still, we can’t fault Steinberg for accommodating multiple working methods. Alongside these low-level changes, you’ll also find some welcome cosmetic and workflow improvements. A new Workspaces menu makes it easy to save and recall ABOVE Choose from 19 stomp boxes, six amps, four cabinets, eight interface layouts, microphones and six mic positions with the virtual Bass Amp
TOP Workspaces make it easier to pack multiple panels onto a single screen BOTTOM Quadrafuzz splits audio into four frequency bands, roughs it up and then puts it back together
A momentous performance boost, welcome refinements to the UI and impressive new sonic toys Remains tricky to get to grips with – not for the casual user
while a docked Racks panel neatly houses virtual instruments and media assets. EQ frequencies are now shown as note values, helping to tune resonant frequencies more musically. There’s a redesigned plugin manager, too, allowing multiple custom lists of plugins – perfect for picking out chains for specific tasks. A new Direct Routing module allows mixer channels to be sent to up to eight destinations and switched quickly between them. It’s a niche feature, but it could be useful for flipping between processing chains. Finally, there are the new sonic toys – not quite as impressive as those in version 7.5, but still very welcome. VST Bass Amp does what the name suggests, and is a useful companion to VST Amp Rack. Quadrafuzz v2 is a four-band distortion effect with five distortion algorithms and gate and delay effects on each band; it’s capable of anything from a gentle scuff to total annihilation, and it’s tremendous fun to experiment with. A Multiband Envelope Shaper and Expander make it possible to sculpt frequencies and timing with incredible precision. And the DeEsser for reducing vocal sibilance has been overhauled, with finer control and a cleaner results. Cubase remains a package with no time for passersby; those who want a streamlined, jargon-free interface should look elsewhere. But if you seek meticulous control over the musicproduction process, this is another superb update – and at only £82 for users of version 7.5, it’s attractively priced too. BEN PITT 77
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FEATURES TheunsungheroesofIT
The greatest visionaries don’t always get the recognition they deserve. We celebrate the lesser-known heroes of today’s technology – and tomorrow’s too.
Soyouwanttobuildanapp?
Do you dream of making the next Angry Birds? Here’s your guide to the opportunities available in the mobile app market – and the harsh realities that await the unwary.
N LO EW OK
■ Crapware’s true cost: reclaim your cash p50 ■ Grow your business using Facebook p36 depth test p82 ■ Buy a pro-quality printer: in-depth ■ Real-time translation: can it work? p124
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HIGH-SPEED STORAGE Today’s demanding professionals need more than simple, single-drive storage, but which super-speed drive should you buy?
Worldmags.net
I
f there’s one thing you can be sure about with storage, it’s that just when you think you have enough of it, new applications will come along to prove you wrong. Photography, video, audio and design professionals know this better than anyone: as they transition from editing 1080p, Full HD video to the new 2K and 4K formats, or shift up to shooting with the latest 36-megapixel full-frame cameras, additional space and bandwidth become essential. Let’s look at the numbers. Raw, uncompressed 4K video requires a staggering 9GB/sec of bandwidth to edit a single stream; even when
compressed to Apple’s HQ 4K format, you’re looking at 106MB/sec, or 212MB/sec if you want to composite two clips. Meanwhile, raw files from a full-frame Nikon D810 can now push above 50MB per shot. Suddenly, that consumer-grade USB 3 or old FireWire 800 drive no longer appears to be up to the task. Enthusiast users are also facing new requirements. More PCs, workstations and high-end laptops are launching with smaller, faster SSDs, and while these are great for performance and responsiveness, they’re not as good for working on multiple projects or spinning
Labs Storage
up virtual machines. Even those who simply want to store and stream media around the house face challenges. As high-resolution audio formats and 4K codecs and content enter the mainstream, existing storage solutions will struggle to keep up. Luckily, a new generation of storage device is emerging. Combining speedy SSDs, RAID and faster USB 3 and Thunderbolt 2 interfaces, they’re poised to handle the explosion of 4K media and high-resolution photos, giving professionals and enthusiasts what they need to get things done.
Contents
CalDigit T3 with Thunderbolt 2 LaCie d2 Thunderbolt 2 Lexar Professional Workflow DD512 OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual OWC ThunderBay 4 Promise Pegasus2 M4 Buffalo MiniStation DDR HD-PGDU3 G-Technology G-Drive with Thunderbolt In depth: the future of storage media Feature table View from the Labs Test results
88 90 91 92 93 94 95 95
84 86 96 96
81
Labs Storage
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@PCPRO
Finally, we have direct-attached storage (DAS) and network-attached storage (NAS) devices with larger RAID configurations, more exotic interface technologies and/or more complex storage pools. You’ll find these in professional environments, but they fall outside the remit of this Labs.
■ USB 3 or Thunderbolt?
■ Form factors
High-speed storage devices fall into three classes. First, there are the basic portable and desktop drives. The former are often powered over USB; the latter are usually powered by a separate power supply and designed to sit on a desk. Professional and enthusiast drives are more robust than consumer models, provide better cooling and are faster – the norm is either a 7,200rpm magnetic hard disk with a generous cache, or a high-performance SSD. Beyond this, we have RAID devices, packing between two and six hard disks or SSDs into an enclosure with a USB 3, Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 2 interface. With the RAID configured to a RAID0 striped configuration, you get a huge boost in performance and all the available capacity, although there’s an associated risk: should one drive fail, you could lose all your data. Configure it to RAID1 or RAID5 and you take a hit on performance and capacity, but gain the benefits of redundancy; your data is safe should one drive fail. In applications such as video editing, where performance is all-important, RAID0 is usually the preferred option, but you might want a second drive providing backup. RAID is ideal for professionals and high-end enthusiasts, but it’s pricey. There’s also a learning curve in setting up and managing arrays and logical drives, even if the hard work has been done for you, as is usually the case. 82
ABOVE All the drives in this Labs were tested using an Apple Mac Pro
USB 3 has a maximum bandwidth of 625MB/sec, with the forthcoming USB 3.1 revision doubling that to 1,250MB/sec. That’s a lot of bandwidth – enough to cover several 4K streams. The original Thunderbolt specification, however, goes one better, handling two 1.25GB/sec channels, while Thunderbolt 2 combines them for 2.5GB/sec of bandwidth. But while Thunderbolt 2 wins on theoretical performance, the situation is more complex. First, with most single-drive devices, the bottleneck isn’t the interface but the drive. With a given SSD or hard disk, Thunderbolt and USB 3 tend to run neck and neck; it’s only once you go to the faster RAID0 configurations that Thunderbolt 2 comes into its own. Second, only a few – mostly Apple – PCs and laptops support Thunderbolt 2, and they cost more. Add the fact that both Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 drives carry a premium and it’s clear there are savings to be made by opting for USB 3, which is supported across a wider range of systems.
■ SSDs vs hard disks
There are also trade-offs to be made with the type of drive employed by your storage unit. For single-drive desktop and portable storage, SSDs will deliver maximum performance, but you’ll lose out on price and capacity over hard disks. An SSD will probably give you enough space to work on one or two projects, but it isn’t as good
RIGHT Mechanical hard disks still rule the roost when it comes to cost per gigabyte
PCPRO.CO.UK/REVIEWS
Howwetest To put these high-performance drives through their paces, we connected them to an Apple Mac Pro (2013) with OS X 10.9 and a Windows 8.1 Boot Camp partition installed. Drives were connected via USB 3 and Thunderbolt as appropriate. On OS X, we ran a series of file-transfer tests, with one handling 4.4GB of RAW photos and another more than 10.2GB of raw 4K footage from a Red 4K video camera. We also tested the drive’s performance with small files and larger files using the QuickBench synthetic benchmark. Switching to Windows, we then ran additional tests using the ATTO disk benchmarking utility and CrystalDiskMark to obtain sequential and random read/write results across a range of scenarios.
for archiving and accessing huge quantities of material or working on a larger project. This is where the additional capacity of a hard disk comes in. An SSD RAID unit can give you the best of both worlds, combining multiple SSDs into one highperformance storage pool. However, the costs rise dramatically to match.
■ Other considerations
Other things to look at include expansion potential – are there drive upgrades available, should you need them? – and native formatting. For obvious reasons, most Thunderbolt 2 drives ship with an OS X-friendly HFS+ file system preinstalled. Windows will ll happily hap read from rom this, but it won’t normally norm write to it, which means you’ll you’l have to re-prep the drive for Windows. Windo Although this isn’t difficult, the process doesn’t always run smoothly.
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Indepth:thefuture ofstoragemedia
A look at the technology behind the scenes that will ensure we continue to see higher-capacity storage media in smaller packages – including the use of DNA
W
hile developments in magnetic and solid-state storage tech continue to see performance improve, capacity grow and prices fall, current technologies won’t last forever. Even the perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology that boosted capacity and speeds in the middle of the last decade is beginning to run out of steam, as platters reach the superparamagnetic limit – the point at which the magnetic bits that hold the data become so small they can no longer sustain their charge. Meanwhile, NAND flash memory – used in current SSDs – has its own limitations. While wear-levelling techniques have increased the lifespan of SSDs, each block of memory is only good for 10,000 to 30,000 writes. What’s more, NAND faces its own challenges in terms of improving capacity, while current NAND SSDs only hint at the performance of potential SSDs to come.
■ The heat is on
So far, PMR has been enough to keep areal density (the density of bits of data stored in a given space), drive capacity and transfer speeds heading upwards. More recently, shingled magnetic recording (SMR), a new
parallel arrangement of tracks on the platter, has helped single-platter mechanical drives reach 8TB, with the chance to go further. Even this, however, won’t be enough to keep magnetic media moving onwards and upwards indefinitely. Two key technologies might help, the first being heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). HAMR gets past that dastardly superparamagnetic effect by using a tiny laser to heat the equally tiny portion of the magnetic disk onto which the data is being written. On a conventional hard disk drive, if the areal density is much beyond 1TB per square inch, the data site becomes so tiny that the magnetic medium needs a very high coercivity – resistance to the effects of magnetic fields – in order to avoid changing with minor thermal fluctuations. The only problem is that as the coercivity rises, it becomes difficult – if not impossible – to write to the medium. However, coercivity can be temperature-dependent. Heat up the data site and coercivity drops, enabling you to write to it. The spot then cools quickly, coercivity rises and the data is locked in place. The result? Areal density can be pushed up, increasing the amount of data that can be stored on a platter, without making the drive unreliable. In fact, it
should eventually be possible to fit up to 50TB of data in a single square inch. For a long time, HAMR looked like one of those promising technologies that might never happen, but in March 2012, Seagate demonstrated a prototype HAMR drive with an areal density of 1TB per square inch. Commercial drives could hit the shelves by “As long as magnetic hard the end of 2016, with disk technology is the 2TB 2.5in drives and 6TB best way to get higher 3.5in drives among the capacities at lower prices, first to benefit from the technology. After that, it’s here to stay” we could see HAMR drives with an areal density of up to 10TB per square inch, a figure that should rise even higher in the future.
ABOVE Samsung is the first manufacturer to offer commercial V-NAND drives
■ Patterned media
LEFT Dividing magnetic media into “islands” makes it possible to achieve higher densities 84
HAMR isn’t the only technology that might help push magnetic media further. Bit-patterned media (BPM) also shows plenty of potential. In a conventional hard disk, the magnetic media is one featureless, continuous film, and data is written to the grains within that film. BPM, however, transforms it, using nanolithography to form patterns in the media, giving each bit of data its own magnetic island on the surface. The advantage here is that there’s a stronger energy barrier between the islands than between the grains on a conventional platter, decreasing the impact of the superparamagnetic effect. With islands 10nm wide, it should be possible to reach areal densities of 20TB to 300TB per square
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ABOVE Stacking flash cells can increase not only storage capacity but speed and power efficiency as well
Labs Storage while improving write cycles and boosting power efficiency. V-NAND drives are already on the market in the shape of Samsung’s 850 Pro SSD (see p74 for our review) and a second-generation line-up of 128GB, 256GB and 512GB SSDs. Intel has also announced plans to ship its own 3D NAND drives in the second half of 2015 (see Coming up, p128). One potential alternative to V-NAND is phase-change memory, a new form of solid-state storage in which a chalcogenide glass is rapidly heated, converting it from a crystalline to an amorphous phase. In fact, it’s possible to switch the glass to a number of distinct, intermediary states, resulting in a storage medium that can hold multiple bits of information. In theory, phase-change memory could be used to produce SSDs that come closer to the performance of system RAM, with lower latency than NAND, faster read and write times, and write cycles that go into the millions. For the moment, however, it’s seeing more use in hybrid devices, such as IBM’s Project Theseus; this combines phase-change memory, NAND and DRAM in a prototype storage device that can outperform equivalent NAND SSDs by between 12- and 27-fold.
■ Exotic options
LEFT An HAMR disk head uses a microscopic laser to heat the magnetic medium for writing
inch. Researchers in Singapore have already successfully demonstrated media with an areal density of 3.3TB per square inch,which is a significant improvement on current technology.
■ Solid-state of the art
As long as magnetic hard disk technology is the best way to get higher capacities at lower prices, it’s here to stay. All the same, we can expect SSD technology to develop further in the next few years, with positive effects on capacity, performance and cost. We’re already seeing a transition from the NAND flash technology used in the majority of current SSDs to 3D NAND technologies – or, in Samsung’s terminology, V-NAND. Regular NAND flash memory has cells that contain the data arranged side by side, horizontally. This has worked fine up until now, but as
cells are packed in more densely, there’s a risk that charge can flow from one to the next, resulting in corruption, while the cells themselves become more difficult to pattern using photolithography. V-NAND, however, stacks the cells vertically to make multi-bit cells 24 to 32 layers deep. Combine this with a different structure and insulation and it’s possible to gain more from the same area of wafer, increasing capacity and speed,
BELOW Solid-state technology could give way to data stored in DNA
This is all very exciting, but the real future of storage might be something else altogether. Molecular memory, for example, would see data stored as individual molecules, using the magnetic state of each molecule to represent a one or a zero. This concept has always had problems, not least the fact that prototype molecular memory systems have relied on cooling materials to near absolute zero. In 2013, however, chemists from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata showcased a new molecule that could be arranged at temperatures nearer to room temperature. It’s possible that molecular memory could reach areal densities of an incredible 1,000TB per inch. Yet the answer could be even closer to home. DNA, for example, is an incredibly efficient storage medium; one gram of a singlestranded genome could be used to store 700TB of data. In 2012, a team at Harvard University digitised an entire book on genome engineering, using chemical processes to store it as vDNA then make 70 billion copies, effectively storing 44 petabytes of data in a few grams of biological material. That’s an awful lot of data in a really tiny space – who knows what applications it might power? 85
86
N/A
300MB/sec 400MB/sec N/A N/A N/A FAT32 Windows 8.1, 8, 7; OS X 10.7+
1 x activity, 4 x cache N/A
Quoted write speed Quoted read speed Supported RAID levels Default configuration RAID type Supplied file system OS support
Physical attributes Indicators Locked bays
Dimensions (WDH) Weight
81 x 132 x 18mm 199g
USB 3 cable
Accessories supplied
Kensington lock
Bus-powered Buffalo Tools
(micro-USB)
Power supply Software supplied
Thunderbolt 2
Thunderbolt
USB 3 (type)
N/A
N/A
Desktop RAID 3 12TB 3 x 4TB
Portable 1 500GB 1 x 500GB, 1GB DDR3 RAM cache N/A
Maximum capacity USB 3
Desktop 1 4TB 1 x 4TB
amazon.co.uk caldigit.com 5yr RTB
saverstore.com buffalo-technology.com 2yr RTB
✪✪✪✪✪
135 x 241 x 116mm 4.5kg
1 x power, 3 x status
580MB/sec 580MB/sec 0, 1, JBODs RAID0 System level HFS+ Windows 8.1, 8, 7; OS X 10.68+
External power brick
15TB
235 x 130 x 48mm 1.4kg
1 x status N/A
Thunderbolt cable, USB 3 cable Not stated 226MB/sec N/A N/A N/A HFS+ Windows 8.1, 8, 7, Vista; OS X 10.7+
External power brick
6TB
wexphotographic.com g-technology.com 3yr RTB
£241 (£289)
Supplier Manufacturer Warranty 2 Core specifications Form factor Number of bays Supplied capacity HDDs supplied (unformatted capacities) SSDs supplied (unformatted capacities) Replaceable drives
✪✪✪✪✪
£667 (£800)
✪✪✪✪✪
£85 (£102)
✪✪✪✪✪
60 x 217 x 130mm 1.5kg
1 x status N/A
External power brick Intego Backup Assistant (OS X), LaCie Genie Timeline (Windows), LaCie Private-Public Thunderbolt cable, USB 3 cable Not stated 220MB/sec N/A N/A N/A HFS+ Windows 8.1, 8, 7; OS X 10.6+
(micro-USB)
6TB
Optional 128GB
Desktop 1 (+1 for optional SSD) 6TB 1 x 6TB, 64MB cache
lacie.com lacie.com 3yr RTB
£316 (£379)
G-Technology G-Drive LaCie d2 with Thunderbolt Thunderbolt 2
Overall
CalDigit T3 with Thunderbolt 2
LABS WINNER
Price (inc VAT) 1
Buffalo MiniStation DDR HD-PGDU3
✪✪✪✪✪
✪✪✪✪✪
External power brick Various utilities and shareware
(Type B)
6TB
N/A
Desktop RAID 2 Supplied empty N/A
lambda-tek.com macsales.com 3yr RTB
£160 (£192)
OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual
74 x 60 x 23mm 164g
5 x capacity, 1 x status N/A
71 x 229 x 133mm 2.5kg
N/A
Thunderbolt cable, USB 3 cable 245MB/sec 442MB/sec 450MB/sec 421MB/sec N/A 0, 1 N/A RAID0 N/A Hardware ExFAT HFS+ Windows 8.1, 8, 7; OS X 10.6+ Windows XP+; OS X 10.8+
USB 3 cable
Bus-powered
(micro-USB)
N/A
1 x 512GB
Portable 1 512GB N/A
wexphotographic.com lexar.com 2yr RTB
£141 (£169)
Lexar Professional Workflow DD512
245 x 135 x 177mm 3.9kg
1 x power, 4 x status
Thunderbolt cable, USB 3 cable 1,342MB/sec 1,342MB/sec 0, 1, 5 RAID5 SoftRAID 5 HFS+ Windows 7 SP1+; OS X 10.6+
Internal SoftRAID 5, various utilities and shareware
6TB
N/A
Desktop RAID 4 Supplied empty N/A
megamac.co.uk macsales.com 3yr RTB
£308 (£370)
✪✪✪✪✪
OWC ThunderBay 4
RECOMMENDED
✪✪✪✪✪
127 x 167 x 107mm 2.9kg
1 x power, 8 x status
Not stated Not stated 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 RAID1 System level HFS+ Windows 8.1, 8, 7; OS X 10.8+
Thunderbolt cable
Internal Promise Utility
4TB
N/A
Desktop RAID 4 4TB 4 x 1TB
jigsaw24.com promise.com 2yr RTB
£629 (£755)
Promise Pegasus2 M4
Labs Storage
Worldmags.net
1. Prices correct at time of going to press. 2. Warranty is parts and labour, UK, unless stated.
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The new waterproof * ™ Xperia Z3 series. Demand gr great.
Search ‘Xperia Z3 series’
Xperia™ Z3 Compact
Xperia™ Z3
Xperia™ Z3 Tablet Compact
*In compliance with IP65 and IP68, the Xperia™ Z3, Z3 Compact and Z3 Tablet Compact are protected against the ingress of dust and are waterproof. Provided that all ports and covers are firmly closed, the phone is (i) dust tight and (ii) protected against low-pressure jets of water from all practicable directions in compliance with IP65; and/or (iii) can be kept under 1.5m of freshwater for up to 30 minutes in compliance with IP68. Abuse and improper use of device will invalidate warranty. For more information see www.sonymobile.com/durability. ©2014 Layout and Design SPHE. The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the Movie ©2014 CPII. All titles shown are available from Sony Entertainment Network Ltd. Icons and images are simulated and are for illustrative purposes only. Sony and Walkman are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sony Corporation. Android, Google Chrome and Google Play are trademarks of Google Inc. PlayStation is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. ©2014 Sony Mobile Communications Inc. All rights reserved.
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CalDigitT3with Thunderbolt2
Well designed and quietly capable, this is a brilliant Thunderbolt 2 storage device for demanding users SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £667 (£800 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk (pcpro.link/245calt3)
W
hile you can’t exactly describe it as compact or stylish, the CalDigit T3 with Thunderbolt 2 is about as unobtrusive as a three-bay 3.5in RAID is going to get. At only 135mm wide and 116mm
88
tall, it’s noticeably smaller than the OWC ThunderBay 4, and from the front it doesn’t appear to be much larger than the pint-sized Promise Pegasus2 M4, although it’s a good 60mm deeper. The aluminium enclosure is both tough and good-looking, with chunky rubber feet on the underside to minimise vibrations being transmitted to your desk. Discreet status indicators sit at the bottom of the front panel, right next to the circular power button. Maybe it’s the ribbed-aluminium casing, or the ambient-temperaturecontrolled smart fan, but the T3 with Thunderbolt 2 is relatively quiet by desktop RAID standards. You can hear it humming away above the near-silence of the Mac Pro, but it’s a restrained noise in comparison to the racket produced by the OWC and Promise units reviewed elsewhere in
this group test. This is one drive you won’t mind sitting on your desk while you work, although do bear in mind that you’ll need to find extra space for the hefty external power brick.
■ Options and setup
The T3 is available in a variety of configurations, covering all sorts of budgets and requirements. The Thunderbolt 2 version we tested ships with a choice of 6TB, 9TB, 12TB and 15TB HDD arrays, and you can get one with a 4TB SSD array inside as well. The only disappointment is the lack of USB 3; to run this RAID unit, your desktop machine or laptop will need support for either Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 2. The 12TB version reviewed ships with three Toshiba 4TB 7,200rpm hard disks, each with 64MB of cache. The drives are replaceable, fitting into slide-in caddies that lock in place with
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a security hex key, releasing only when the tiny hole next door is prodded with the special thick pin provided in the box. This may not be hugely secure, but it should prevent drives being accidentally ejected in the middle of a job. In practice, we found the mechanism slightly awkward, and it’s clear that CalDigit doesn’t want you removing the drives anyway: note the placement of a “warranty void if removed” sticker over one screw in each caddy. The T3 came optimised for maximum performance, preconfigured as a RAID0 striped array. If you prioritise resilience over raw performance, though, it’s easy enough to change that configuration using OS X’s standard Disk Utility or the Windows Disk Management tool. In general, we prefer this approach
to proprietary software. What’s more, where the Promise Pegasus2 M4 had us messing around with drivers, and the OWC drives forced us to fiddle with system files to get them working under Boot Camp, the T3 worked without a hitch. Windows users will still need to reformat the array from HFS+ to NTFS, but the T3 is a little more Windows-friendly.
■ Performance
With the Toshiba drives doing the heavy-lifting and Thunderbolt 2 handling the connection, the CalDigit T3 is impressively speedy. Where some drives took more than a minute to copy 10.2GB of 4K video files, the CalDigit took less than 22 seconds; only the OWC ThunderBay 4 has faster read speeds. On write speeds it trades punches with the OWC, losing out on sequential writes but performing
TOP From the front, the T3 is as unobtrusive as desktop RAID units get BOTTOM The only disappointment is the lack of USB 3; the T3 is Thunderbolt-only
Labs Storage
better when it comes to random writes. While the ThunderBay has a slight edge on performance in some scenarios, the CalDigit has more than enough speed to handle demanding virtualisation and 4K video-editing applications. It’s smaller than the ThunderBay 4, but still very powerful.
■ Verdict
The T3 is an expensive RAID device, but when you factor in the drives and the capacity included, it’s good value. The 12TB of storage should be enough for the most demanding professional applications, and we found the T3 easier to use and work with than the other units here, particularly under Windows. Given this, a generous five-year RTB warranty, storming performance and excellent design, we’re happy to crown the T3 with Thunderbolt 2 as our Labs winner. 89
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LaCied2Thunderbolt2 Good looks, decent speeds and powerful upgrade options make this drive a contender SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £316 (£379 inc VAT) from lacie.com (pcpro.link/245lacie)
L
ong favoured by design pros who prefer to work on Macs, LaCie knows how to put a good-looking drive together, and the d2 Thunderbolt 2 is no exception. Its aluminium, unibody enclosure is both stylish and tough, and while it isn’t always clear what the huge blue LED on the front is indicating, it does look impressive when it’s flashing rapidly. It isn’t a case of style over substance, however. With a 6TB 7,200rpm drive with a 64MB cache, the d2 Thunderbolt 2 promises a good balance of performance and capacity. It’s also possible to upgrade this slimline drive by inserting an internal SSD, giving you 128GB of high-speed flash storage in addition to the 6TB HDD capacity. This costs an extra £191 exc VAT. Even the aluminium chassis has its practical side, helping to cool the drive without the obtrusive fan noise exhibited by other external drives. You can hear the d2 Thunderbolt 2 90
RIGHT The d2 can be fitted with an SSD upgrade, but this removes the option for USB 3 connection
over the ultra-quiet Mac Pro, but it soon fades into the background. As standard, the d2 Thunderbolt 2 provides two Thunderbolt 2 ports for daisy-chaining purposes and a single USB 3, making it a useful drive both for Mac and Windows users. However, fitting the SSD upgrade takes up the USB 3 port, so it’s only usable if you’re happy working with Thunderbolt 2. Performance is good for a singledrive enclosure, with read and write speeds of 206MB/sec and 186MB/sec respectively while transferring 4.4GB of photos. This rises to 216MB/sec and 214MB/sec with larger 4K video files. It’s also speedy when it comes to handling smaller file sizes; worth bearing in mind if you’re more interested in virtualisation and backup than editing video. Across the board, the LaCie is significantly faster than the G-Drive with Thunderbolt, but not quite up there with the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual. However, the SSD upgrade is a serious ace up its sleeve. With read speeds in excess of 700MB/sec and write speeds of more than 443MB/sec in
our simple transfer tests, it can handle any application you throw at it. The QuickMark OS X benchmark puts it at around 379MB/sec read and 329MB/sec write with smaller, sequential transfers, but that rises to 673MB/sec and more than 1GB/sec for larger files. Arguably, this makes the d2 Thunderbolt 2 a superb storage option for audio, video, photography and design professionals. You can keep your current project on the SSD for speed, then archive assets and completed projects to the 6TB HDD. Without the SSD, the LaCie d2 is a strong option for enthusiasts and professionals who don’t need the extreme performance of the big RAID desktop drives, although the price shows that you do pay for the design and build quality. With the SSD, however, it’s a serious contender for cost-conscious buyers, providing the associated speed when you need it most, and plenty of capacity when you don’t. If you want high performance and capacity within one logical drive, then RAID is still the way to go, but if you can find a place for the d2 Thunderbolt 2 in your workflow, it has much to recommend it.
@PCPRO
LexarProfessional WorkflowDD512
A fast, lightweight drive designed to work as on-the-go storage for creative professionals SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £141 (£169 inc VAT) from wex photographic.com (pcpro.link/245dd512)
L
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PCPRO.CO.UK/REVIEWS
exar’s tiny portable SSD provides 512GB of storage in a unit a little smaller and thicker than a pack of playing cards. Part of Lexar’s Professional Workflow system, it can either work independently as a USB 3 SSD or slot neatly into the HR1 or HR2 storage drive hubs (see right). The former connects to a computer via USB 3, the latter uses Thunderbolt 2 for additional bandwidth. The four-bay hubs don’t only support the 512GB DD512 and 256GB DD256 SSDs, but also a range of media readers, including SDXC/SDHC, microSDXC/SDHC, CompactFlash and CFast options. The idea is to provide a flexible workflow setup for professional photographers and videographers, providing all their storage needs in one device and preventing them from having to find and connect a mass of cables when they’d rather be getting on with work.
Drives can be slotted in and out at any time, although they do need to be ejected from the OS first to avoid data corruption. You can, of course, pack in four DD512 units to give a total capacity of 2TB, but it’s important to remember that the HR1 and HR2 don’t provide any RAID capabilities. You’re not getting the performance of a striped array or the fail-safe redundancy of RAID1 or RAID5: the system simply delivers a collection of fast solid-state external drives. The drives themselves are simple but solidly made, with a row of blue LED indicators to indicate capacity and status on the front panel, plus a rubberised pad at the bottom to stop them slipping around on your desk. Each LED represents one-sixth of the total capacity, so it’s easy to see how far along you are. The drives are also extremely light; at an almostunnoticeable 164g each, you could easily cram one in a camera bag or pocket without really noticing. Drives are recognised instantaneously once connected by both OS X and Windows – and it helps that the DD512 can use the same exFAT format on both. We expect SSDs to be fast, and the DD512 doesn’t disappoint. It will happily reach sustained read speeds in excess of 320MB/sec and write speeds greater than 220MB/sec, beating the single-HDD USB 3 and Thunderbolt drives here. Understandably, however, it falls behind faster RAID devices. Of course, the price you pay is capacity. High-capacity solid-state
BELOW The DD512 can work as a USB 3 SSD or slot neatly into the HR1 or HR2 storage drive hubs
Labs Storage
storage might be coming down in price, but it’s still a long way behind conventional magnetic storage on the gigabytes-perpound front. If you want space to archive photos or videos, you’re barking up the wrong tree, then, but that won’t matter if all you desire is additional storage while you’re on the move that can be quickly and easily reconnected to your main computer when you’re back at base. It isn’t for everyone, but for the photographers and videographers that Lexar has in its sights, the Professional Workflow DD512 could well hit the button. We can see it working well as a supplement to a main high-speed storage solution.
91
Worldmags.net
OWCMercury EliteProDual
Unusually, the Elite Pro Dual uses a hardware RAID controller, which provides a choice between RAID0, RAID1, a single-volume Span mode and two independent drives, via the adjustment of a screwdriver dial at the rear. It’s possible to change the RAID configuration at any time, although OWC warns that this will destroy all data on the disks. Perhaps as a result of this, changes must be confirmed by pressing the small Confirm button with a paperclip. The benefit of this approach is that there’s no faffing with the Elite Pro Dual. It presents itself both to OS X and Windows 8.1 as a single volume, preformatted to HFS+ but easily reformatted to NTFS without the need for proprietary utilities. Where
Effective, high-speed storage that works without fuss – and the price is impressive too SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £160 (£192 inc VAT) from lambda-tek.com (pcpro.link/245merc)
R
esembling its ThunderBay 4 stablemate after a crash diet, the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual is a two-bay desktop RAID unit with both Thunderbolt and USB 3 interfaces. Our review sample was supplied with two 2GB, 7,200rpm Toshiba hard disks – a configuration OWC sells in the US through its parent company MacSales; in the UK, it’s sold chassis-only. Still, bought separately, the drives will set you back only £120 for the pair, and you can choose your own drives based on your budget and requirements. Inserting the drives is a palaver, requiring you to remove the inner chassis from the outer enclosure, then insert both units at a slightly awkward angle. Like the ThunderBay 4, this is an extremely solid, well-constructed drive. Unfortunately, again like its larger sibling, it’s noisy, emitting a noticeable hum from the fan when the drives are in operation. 92
RIGHT The OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual emits noticeable hum in operation
other RAID devices caused problems while running under Boot Camp on the Mac Pro, the Elite Pro Dual behaved impeccably. On the software front, OWC provides a selection of disk utilities, backup utilities and shareware. With the two Toshiba drives in RAID0 configuration, the Elite Pro Dual performs well over Thunderbolt, reaching write speeds of more than 300MB/sec and read speeds in excess of 350MB/sec in OS X, with similar results in Windows. That performance doesn’t degrade when connected over USB 3, either. Overall, the Elite Pro Dual is a great halfway house between single-drive desktop enclosures and larger, high-performance RAID devices. It provides plenty of space and bandwidth, plus impressive transfer speeds, but in a slightly smaller, less obtrusive box. And, while fitting the drives yourself may be off-putting, it makes the whole package comparatively inexpensive, with the drives and enclosure costing a shade over £300. At this price, it isn’t merely a cheaper option than the larger RAID units, but also a viable alternative to the non-RAID desktop hard drives.
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OWCThunderBay4
With power, price and performance on its side, the ThunderBay 4 stands toe to toe with the best SCORE
RECOMMENDED
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £308 (£370 inc VAT) from megamac.co.uk (pcpro.link/245thunder)
F
rom its huge, powder-coated black outer chassis to the fearsome roar from its fans when you turn it on, the OWC ThunderBay 4 exudes power. It’s a four-bay, 3.5in-drive RAID enclosure with dual Thunderbolt 2 interfaces. Unlike most of the other drives on test this month, it also has a built-in power supply. It’s an extremely solid unit, and although substantially louder than the CalDigit T3 and Promise Pegasus2 M4, it’s not uncomfortably noisy. Drives need to be fitted within a tough metal caddy, which slides into place inside the enclosure. The caddies are then screwed in, before the enclosure is locked behind the steel-mesh front panel with a key. Combine all that with the Kensington lock slot on the rear and the OWC has a strong sense of security surrounding it. In the US, OWC’s parent company, MacSales, offers the
ThunderBay 4 in a variety of readymade configurations. Our review sample came with four 2TB, 7,200rpm Toshiba drives in a RAID5 configuration; in the UK, the drive is usually sold diskless. To buy the four drives separately would normally set you back an additional £240, although, at less than £600 for the whole shebang, that’s still excellent value. Unlike its OWC stablemate, the Mercury Elite Pro Dual (opposite), the ThunderBay 4 doesn’t have a hardware RAID controller. It uses SoftRAID 5 to create and manage RAID configurations in OS X. This is easy to use and has a simple, wizard-based approach, so it’s not difficult to create a RAID0 or new RAID5 array if you need to do so. In Windows, you can use the standard utilities, although we
Labs Storage
had to rename two Apple system files on our Boot Camp partition to prevent the Mac Pro crashing after startup. When it comes to performance, the ThunderBay 4 is a beast. It produced the fastest read speeds in our test – bar the SSD built into the LaCie d2 Thunderbolt 2 – hitting peaks of 510MB/sec and 518MB/sec with our raw photo files and 4K video files. It recorded sequential read speeds in excess of 760MB/sec in CrystalDiskMark on Windows. Write speeds aren’t quite as impressive, although the ThunderBay still outperforms the CalDigit and Promise RAID devices in some of our tests. With such stellar sequential read and write speeds, the ThunderBay 4 would be a valuable asset in any 4K video-editing workflow. Its size and noise mean the OWC ThunderBay 4 won’t be a natural fit for every studio, but it’s a great option if these aren’t huge concerns. The balanced performance, plug-and-play operation and lower profile of the CalDigit T3 make it our high-speed storage system of choice, but if you want to save a little cash and don’t mind choosing and fitting your own drives, the OWC ThunderBay 4 is a cost-effective alternative, and slightly more flexible, too.
RIGHT A lockable front panel and Kensington lock slot at the rear make the ThunderBay ideal for securityconscious users 93
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PromisePegasus2M4 A compact desktop RAID drive that works better with OS X than Windows SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £629 (£755 inc VAT) from jigsaw24.com (pcpro.link/245promise)
D
esktop RAID units don’t get much more compact than the Pegasus2 M4: it’s a chipper little block only 107mm high and 127mm wide, all dressed in black. It owes its diminutive size partly to its use of 2.5in hard drives instead of the 3.5in drives found in many RAID devices. These pop smoothly out of the chassis at a press of the button to the right of each drive and are mounted on sliding rails, making it easy to get them in and out to replace or upgrade. The four drives supplied with our review model were 1TB, 5,400rpm Toshiba HDDs, but the drive screws are standard, so any four matched 2.5in drives should be fine. The only downside is that 2.5in drives don’t offer as much potential for future upgrades as 3.5in units, because 2.5in drives don’t reach the higher capacities. 94
BELOW For such a small package, the Pegasus2 delivers high performance
In OS X, it’s easy to set the Pegasus2 to work. Simply plug in the mains lead – there’s no external power brick – then hook up one of the two Thunderbolt 2 ports and it connects. It’s supplied preformatted as a RAID5 configuration with HFS+, and you can rebuild the array using the supplied Promise Utility software. With multiple screens and tabs to navigate and options spread throughout them, it could be easier to use, but it has some useful wizards to help you set up your RAID array for specific tasks. In Windows, the news isn’t so good. For one thing, you need to install a driver before the M4 can be recognised; on our test Boot Camp partition, the driver crashed the system immediately after install or upon rebooting. The Windows
version of the Utility software didn’t always behave as expected, either. Eventually, we got the drive up and running by removing the drivers and physically removing two disks, before setting up a simple two-disk RAID with the remaining disks. After this, we were able to rebuild the array with four drives and resume testing. Once set up, the Promise Utility software works well, with plenty of real-time monitoring and management features, plus some simple tools that let you make necessary repairs and see which drives are operating within the array. Performance is beyond what you’ll get from any single-drive USB 3 or Thunderbolt 2 product but, with 5,400rpm disks, the Pegasus2 can’t match the speeds of the drives from OWC and CalDigit. It will hit sequential read speeds of 400MB/sec while reading or writing large files, but its rivals are consistently faster, particularly under Windows. For some users, the M4’s compact size might make all the difference, especially since it offers an easy upgrade path to 2.5in SSDs. If performance is of greater importance than a small form factor, though, you would do better to look elsewhere.
@PCPRO
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BuffaloMiniStation DDR HD-PGDU3
LEFT This ordinarylooking drive hides an ingenious hybrid design
A compact, well-built mobile drive at an affordable price – its quick in bursts, less so for sustained transfers SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £85 (£102 inc VAT) from saverstore.com (pcpro.link/245buffddr)
I
t may look like a standard portable USB 3 drive, but the Buffalo MiniStation DDR HD-PGDU3 promises to combine the high speeds of an SSD with the affordability and capacity of an HDD through the addition of a 1GB DDR3 RAM cache. The drive itself is fairly understated, measuring a jacketpocket-sized 81 x 132 x 18mm (WDH) and weighing only 199g. It draws both power and data through its single USB 3 connection, so there’s no power supply to lug around, and, while the matte-black plastics don’t lend it the
G-TechnologyG-Drive withThunderbolt A versatile desktop drive that boasts both USB 3 and Thunderbolt connections SCORE
✪✪✪✪✪
PRICE £241 (£289 inc VAT) from wex photographic.com (pcpro.link/245gdrive)
W
ith its aluminium casing and glowing-blue Thunderbolt logo, the G-Drive with Thunderbolt 4TB seems to be taking design cues from LaCie in its keenness to appeal to the pro designer market. It’s a heavy enclosure, weighing nearly 1.35kg, but the low-profile design, large vents and cooling fins beneath the body help it remain cool and keep noise to a minimum. We could hear the G-Drive over the nearsilent Mac Pro, but only just. The drive supports the original 1.25GB/sec Thunderbolt standard rather than the new 2.5GB/sec Thunderbolt 2. This isn’t such
high-end feel of some other drives, the casing feels robust. Ease of use is a strong point. The drive comes preformatted for
an issue on a single-disk device, where you’re unlikely to swamp a 1.25GB/sec connection, and there’s compensation in the drive’s provision of a USB 3 port. With both interfaces, the G-Drive plays well with OS X and Windows systems, and we had no problems using it with its default HFS+ configuration then reformatting to NTFS for use in Windows. It helps if you already know how to do this, however, since the instructions merely suggest you use OS X’s Disk Utility to repartition and format the G-Drive as a FAT32 device – hardly the most efficient way of doing things. We tested the G-Drive with both Thunderbolt and USB 3 connections, and generally there wasn’t much to separate the two: in some cases, we saw higher read speeds through Thunderbolt, but in other tests, the results were so close as to make no practical difference.
BELOW The G-Drive is quiet, looks great and has both USB 3 and Thunderbolt connections
Labs Storage Windows, but it’s easy to reformat for Mac use; once you plug in the cable, it springs to life on the desktop immediately. Speed is supposed to be the MiniStation DDR’s key attraction, and up to a point it is. Although we didn’t quite match Buffalo’s claimed read and write speeds of 300MB/sec and 400MB/sec in our tests, the results weren’t a million miles short of the mark. In QuickBench, for example, it gave us average read and write speeds of 296MB/sec and 369MB/sec with large files. However, the drive struggles to maintain these speeds over longer periods or when transferring a greater number of smaller files. The results in our timed transfer tests were among the worst, both when copying our group of DNG raw files and when copying larger 4K video files. It appears, then, that while the MiniStation DDR HD-PGDU3 can be as fast as an SSD, it can’t produce that speed consistently. It is, however, a well built, compact and easy-to-use mobile drive that undercuts SSD models by a substantial margin. If all you need is some cheap, reasonably speedy additional storage for your laptop, it’s worth a second look.
In either case, the G-Drive with Thunderbolt is a competent performer rather than a great one, delivering a range of read and write speeds between 100MB/sec and 170MB/sec. This doesn’t trouble the LaCie and OWC desktop drives, nor the RAID systems at the top of our leaderboard. The G-Drive is a decent option for the money, then, but if you’re after flexibility, resilience and raw speed, we’d advise looking elsewhere.
95
Labs Storage
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ViewfromtheLabs
The PC industry will have to do more to welcome Thunderbolt if we’re to gain from the best technology, says Stuart Andrews
I
f this Labs proves anything, it’s that there’s never been so much choice when it comes to high-performance storage. Whether you have £300 or £1,000 to spend, whether you’re looking for a portable or a desktop solution, whether you want the raw performance of RAID0, the resilience of RAID1 or a simple, single-drive solution, there’s something for you. And while high-end applications grow more demanding, particularly in the realm of 4K video, the technology is keeping up. We’ve tested drives here that can transfer data at speeds of 500MB/sec, 700MB/sec and even 1GB/sec, albeit in specific circumstances. Mechanical hard drives are still getting larger and cheaper, while even high-capacity SSDs are slowly becoming more affordable. Should 4K video hit the mainstream, the technology will be available, at the right price, to meet the demand. Manufacturers aren’t all taking the same approach, however. The CalDigit T3 with Thunderbolt 2 and OWC ThunderBay 4 both deliver extreme performance at a high-end price, but if you don’t have the budget for either, you can still get that level of capacity with the option of SSD performance by purchasing the LaCie d2 with Thunderbolt 2. Lexar’s DD512 and H1 hub don’t make the ideal mainstream storage solution, but they could be perfect for photographers and videographers who spend much of their time shooting, not sitting at a desk. Instead of seeing SSD and hard disk as competing technologies, manufacturers are finding ways to integrate them. The only sour note? Some of the best technology is tied to an interface that the majority of PCs and Windows workstations don’t support. Why? Because Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 are seen as an unnecessary expense in the PC world, rather than a standard feature as they are on Macs. A few PC and motherboard manufacturers are bucking the trend, but, unless Thunderbolt 2 trickles further down into the PC market, many PC users will be denied the best-of-breed storage devices. It isn’t that USB 3 is lacking the bandwidth, or that many drives
96
Stuart Andrews is a former PC Pro reviews editor
are maxing out the bandwidth of Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2. The problem is the focus on Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 to the detriment of USB 3 – and PC manufacturers don’t seem bothered. The result of this? Many Windows-based photographers, video-editors and enthusiasts will be making do with second-class
solutions while their Mac-based competitors get the best. Mac users will say this has always been so, citing OS X’s dominance of the professional video, design and photography markets as evidence. All the same, Windows professionals deserve more choice. Until the PC industry does more to adopt Thunderbolt 2, they won’t get it.
Testresults Photo test files
MB/sec Write speed
Labs winner
OWC ThunderBay 4
Recommended
403
510
366 391
Promise Pegasus2 M4
210
Lexar DD512
Buffalo MiniStation DDR
200
300
400
500
600
MB/sec
Extended file tests Large file tests Standard random tests Standard sequential tests
Labs winner
620
200 242 19
233 490
Promise Pegasus2 M4
311 269 369
Buffalo MiniStation DDR
311
OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual
338 206 232
Lexar DD512
89
46
228
100
107 102 0
200
600
500
600
MB/sec
Labs winner
CalDigit T3 with Thunderbolt 2
257
Recommended
OWC ThunderBay 4
528
516
33
367
Promise Pegasus2 M4
292 381
35
386
235 348
343
139
200 296
294
157
36
526
518
283
164 229
151
210
157 164 144
25 0
557
515
127
G-Techology G-Drive with Thunderbolt 500
400
Extended file tests Large file tests Standard random tests Standard sequential tests
LaCie d2 Thunderbolt 2
400
300
QuickBench read speed
Buffalo MiniStation DDR
125
300
100
Lexar DD512
204
329
109 161
342
232
200
488 518
214 216
OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual
165 145
37 0
363
161
233
107
G-Techology G-Drive with Thunderbolt
549
269
35
LaCie d2 Thunderbolt 2
557
528 603
Recommended
OWC ThunderBay 4
505 468
328 360
Buffalo MiniStation DDR
100
Read speed
400 395
G-Techology G-Drive with Thunderbolt
QuickBench write speed
CalDigit T3 with Thunderbolt 2
Recommended
LaCie d2 Thunderbolt 2
119 167 0
OWC ThunderBay 4
Lexar DD512
310
121 104
G-Techology G-Drive with Thunderbolt
Labs winner
OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual
186 206
LaCie d2 Thunderbolt 2
Write speed CalDigit T3 with Thunderbolt 2
Promise Pegasus2 M4
313 363
OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual
MB/sec
Read speed
431 479
CalDigit T3 with Thunderbolt 2
4K video test files
100
200
300
400
500
600
Worldmags.net
The fast, simple, reliable path from camera to post. Media production is growing more complicated, and turnaround times are getting tighter. You need a tool that eases the workload on your editor, ensuring that projects meet deadline. Enter Catalyst Prepare, a new media preparation tool that revolutionizes the post-production workflow. Quickly view and import clips from the latest professional cameras, including Sony, Canon, GoPro, and others. Catalyst Prepare gives you the ability to organize your media into targeted, meaningful collections. View the details, zoom into every corner, mark In/Out, edit metadata, adjust colors non-destructively, and create a storyboard to rough draft your vision. Export a file, a group of files, or a storyboard. Render to a variety of formats, resolutions, and frame rates, or upload to Ci, Sony Media Cloud Services, for collaborative team review. With Catalyst Prepare you deliver the correct media to streamline post-production and keep your creative energy focused on your vision.
www.sonycreativesoftware.com/catalystprepare
Copyright ©2014. Sony Creative Software Inc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. All screen images simulated.
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The Network Practical buying and strategic advice for IT managers and decision makers
Business Focus Choose a one-stop security solution for your business p98
The Business Question Could your site cope with a sudden surge in traffic? p106
Cheat Sheet VPN: the advantages of a secure virtual network p108
BUSINESS FOCUS
What to look for when buying a UTM appliance Dave Mitchell shows you what to look for when choosing a threat-management appliance, and subjects four contenders to real-world testing
I
f you ask around to determine what a unified threat-management (UTM) appliance is, you’ll receive half a dozen different answers. The term was originally coined by the market-research company IDC to describe a security product that provided firewall, gateway antivirus and intrusion-prevention system (IPS) services. However, today’s UTM appliances actually go way beyond this basic remit. In this buyer’s guide, we look at four solutions that meet the base UTM criteria and offer a wealth of extra security features. And if you’re worried about the price, don’t be: UTM hardware may have been expensive a few years ago, but vendors are now offering low-cost solutions aimed specifically at companies on a tight budget. Small businesses that hold back are making a false economy by not giving their networks the security they desperately need.
■ All together now
In the past, if you wanted anything more than a firewall at your network perimeter, 98
you’d have been looking at multiplepoint solutions. Usually made up of products from different vendors, such a system often proved expensive and impractical to manage. UTM appliances amalgamate every security service into one box. The appliances on review this month can all be managed from a single web interface that provides access to all the features. Keeping security services updated with antivirus signatures and IPS profiles thus becomes effortless, as
BELOW All the appliances provide cloud-based web filtering for blocking non-productive websites
each appliance automatically updates the whole set at regular intervals. Furthermore, all inbound and outbound internet traffic goes through a single point on the network perimeter, so security functions can be easily applied without the need to create complex routes.
■ UTM and more
At their foundation, UTM appliances use a bog-standard, stateful packet inspection (SPI) firewall, with support for IPsec and SSL VPNs for secure site-to-site and mobile user connections. All four appliances in the spotlight this month have these extra security services ready and waiting to be licensed, so there’s nothing additional to install on them. In our tests, all we had to do was enter a licence or feature key on each appliance to activate gateway antivirus, web-filtering, anti-spam, application
@PCPRO
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Worldmags.net The Network BusinessFocus running, was 20% less than its data-sheet figures. Strangely, Panda’s stated IPS speeds were almost 24% less than we achieved. The only exception was Cyberoam’s CR10iNG: here, our antivirus and IPS performance results tallied closely with the stated figures.
controls and IPS. WatchGuard also offers optional data-leak prevention (DLP), allowing the Firebox T10-W to scan email traffic for keywords such as credit card numbers and stop them being sent. If you’d like to customise your features, however, there isn’t much room for manoeuvre. Panda, WatchGuard and ZyXEL offer only a single licence that activates everything; Cyberoam’s appliance offers a Security Value Subscription if you don’t want anti-spam, which is cheaper than the full subscription.
■ Be patient
Installation for all products is fairly straightforward at first: quick-start wizards help you set up internet access easily, with a base selection of firewall rules applied by default. Beyond this point, however, things become more complicated, since each of the appliances uses a diverse range of methods for controlling traffic for specific protocols. The Panda and WatchGuard appliances use proxies to intercept traffic for processing, so for web filtering, you need to configure HTTP and HTTPS proxies. This sounds simple, but you also have to tell the proxy what it should do with traffic that matches your criteria – and this can be a slightly fiddly operation. On occasion, we thought we had set up a rule to block specific traffic and yet found that the appliance continued to let it through. After checking, we often found we hadn’t successfully applied the changes, or had missed something as simple as a checkbox. We therefore strongly recommend that you test in a safe environment before going live. If nothing else, it will provide a valuable insight into how firewall rules, proxies, objects and users interact.
■ Wireless if you want it
It’s important to check the vendors’ recommendations before making a buying decision, to ensure your chosen UTM is up to the job. ZyXEL’s USG60W is recommended for 10 to 25 users; Panda claims its Integra eSeries eSB can handle up to 50 users, although our own performance results suggest this may be a tad optimistic.
■ Performance claims
To test the real-world performance of each UTM, we used Ixia XcellonUltra NP network-load modules and configured the IxLoad control software to generate 512KB HTTP web pages. We ran the test three times on each appliance, first with HTTP inspection enabled, then with antivirus running as well, and finally with IPS activated. In most cases, we found that our throughput figures didn’t match the manufacturer’s stated figures. ZyXEL’s USG60W with HTTP inspection and antivirus enabled was 22% slower, while WatchGuard’s throughput with the HTTP proxy, gateway antivirus and IPS services
Many UTMs support only wired traffic, but the ZyXEL and WatchGuard units both feature integrated wireless access points (APs): the ZyXEL USG60W provides dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios, while the Firebox T10-W offers only 2.4GHz. Both can optionally operate ABOVE Cyberoam’s free iView app as central management controllers for a wider network of APs from their provides easily understood reporting respective vendors. This is a great on security events feature for businesses with a mix of wired and wireless clients, since it means all traffic is subjected to exactly the same checks and restrictions. Panda takes a simpler “We recommend you test in approach, working on a safe environment before the basis that if wireless internet traffic from going live – it will provide external APs is routed valuable insight into how through a dedicated tools and users interact” interface on the appliance, the Integra eSeries eSB can control it. It will work with any make of AP and can also provide login portals for wireless clients, complete with acceptable-use policies. When you stack up the cost of these appliances with the security features on offer, they really are remarkable BELOW Panda’s value. With prices for the appliance eSeries eSB hardware and a full one-year security dashboard shows subscription ranging between £316 which proxies are and £546, your business really can’t active, as well as afford to do without one – so turn traffic throughput on the page to find the right UTM to selected interfaces secure your network.
■ A big turn-off
None of the appliances has any hard-coded restrictions in terms of the number of clients, so an expanding business may be tempted to save money by continuing to use a single appliance across a growing network. However, the limitations of the hardware will soon become apparent as users start to complain about poor performance. As a short-term response to such complaints, we’ve heard of IT staff foolishly switching off security features: IPS usually gets the chop first, since its traffic inspection carries a heavy performance penalty; the antivirus scanner is next. Needless to say, we don’t recommend you do this. 99
Worldmags.net Cyberoam CR10iNG
The CR10iNG desktop UTM appliance has features and performance in abundance – it won’t be beaten for value SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE Appliance and 1yr TVS subscription, £316 exc VAT from 4gon.co.uk
C
yberoam’s CR10iNG hits the sweet spot for value, coming in at a price that many small businesses and SoHos will find difficult to resist. Yet the low price doesn’t mean a compromised product: the CR10iNG is as tough on hackers as Cyberoam’s enterprise appliances. For a one-off fee of £215, the CR10iNG hardware comprises a 1.8GHz Atom CPU, 1GB of system memory, a 4GB CompactFlash card for the OS and a trio of Gigabit ports. When it comes to security services, you can choose between the Security Value Subscription (SVS) or the Total Value Subscription (TVS). A one-year TVS costs £101 and includes anti-malware, anti-spam, web and application filtering, IPS, a hardware warranty and an 8/5 support contract. If you eliminate anti-spam, the cost of a one-year SVS goes down to £73. The CR10iNG functions in routed or transparent bridge modes, so it can provide its own filtering services or sit behind an existing firewall. We chose the former, and followed the web console’s quick-start wizard, which set up the network ports and offered us the option of a passive monitoring mode or applying a choice of predefined security policies.
Cyberoam’s identity-based security makes the CR10iNG incredibly versatile,by linking policies to users and groups. We installed the free corporate client utility on our users’ desktops, which logged them in to the appliance and applied a specific set of policies to their traffic. The action takes place in the firewall rules, which define sources and destinations, and enforce service filters, blocking actions and time schedules. The same rules are used to apply virus and anti-spam scanning, web and app filtering, an intrusionprevention system (IPS) and limits on internet usage. Once we’d created policies for the various security services, we could enable them from the dropdown menus in the firewall rules. Web filtering comes with 11 predefined policies – if those don’t suit, we found it easy enough to browse the 85 available URL categories and create our own custom policies. We then set up application control policies, where we selected from a list of more than 1,200 applications and decided to block them during working
hours. Virus scanning is a cinch to set up, and we chose to apply this to POP3, SMTP, FTP, HTTP and HTTPS traffic within our firewall rules. Using anti-spam policies, we chose to tag the subject line of suspect inbound messages. Quarantining isn’t supported, but you can opt to drop, allow or reroute suspect messages. A handy feature is that policies can be applied to outbound mail as well. The CR10iNG keeps up with bigger appliances when it comes RECOMMENDED to performance, with the lab’s Ixia Xcellon-Ultra NP load generators reporting a speedy 100Mbits/sec for HTTP traffic with antivirus enabled. It even held its ground with all UTM services enabled, at 65Mbits/sec. The web UI provides detailed logs of all activity, and we recommend getting acquainted with Cyberoam’s free iView syslog server. Its light footprint had no adverse effects on our Windows 8 host and it presents a superb degree of detail on all security services. From the iView console, we were able to pull up detailed graphs on “The firewall rules define web filtering, antivirus, sources and destinations, anti-spam and more. A useful feature is the and enforce service ability to view specific filters, blocking actions user activity, so you can see all web categories, and time schedules” domains and sites an individual has attempted to access. Cyberoam’s CR10iNG is one of the best-value UTM appliances around, punching way above its weight for features. A good choice for small businesses, it’s comparatively easy to configure and won’t be bested for performance either.
ABOVE It may be small, but the CR10iNG packs a punch when it comes to performance
LEFT Creating security policies is simple: select profiles from Cyberoam’s firewall rules 100
SPECIFICATIONS Desktop chassis ● 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 ● 1GB DDR3 RAM ● 4GB CompactFlash card (OS) ● 3 x Gigabit Ethernet (LAN, WAN, DMZ) ● 2 x USB 2 ● RJ45 console ● external PSU ● web browser management ● options: 3yr TVS, £232; 3yr SVS, £166 (both exc VAT)
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PandaGateDefender IntegraeSerieseSB
Modest performance, but plenty of security features and an internal hard disk for quarantining email SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE Appliance and 1yr subscription, £546 exc VAT from pandasecurity.com
P
anda’s GateDefender Integra eSeries eSB matches its lengthy model name with a similarly long list of security features – and backs them up with a decent hardware platform as well. The eSB has a 1.8GHz Atom in the driving seat, partnered with 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard disk for web caching, spam quarantine and log storage. Installation is taken care of by a startup wizard, which took us through the process of choosing bridged or routed mode, configuring port zones and enabling internet access. The appliance’s web console is easy to use, and we had the eSB up and running inside 15 minutes. We like Panda’s colour-coding system: using green, red, orange and blue for trusted, internet, DMZ and wireless services made it easy to work out where to apply our security policies. The blue zone simply defines a port on the appliance through which wireless access point (AP) traffic is sent for internet access; the firewall can be set to permit wireless traffic only between blue and red zones, and the HotSpot service can be used to create access and billing controls. As a bonus, it doesn’t care whose APs
you’re using. You can also redirect traffic to a login web portal, complete with an acceptable-use policy. Panda has proxies for everything, and uses them to control HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, POP3 and FTP traffic. For HTTP, there are non-transparent and transparent proxies; we opted for the latter, so our users didn’t have to change their browser settings. We used the HTTP proxy to apply virus scanning and web-access controls, and created filter profiles to block non-productive websites such as games and gambling. Panda offers five general URL categories with a total of 83 subcategories, so filtering can be easily fine-tuned. Policies assign filter profiles to sources and destinations, and we were able to enforce user authentication using the local appliance, Active Directory, LDAP or RADIUS. The web filter worked extremely well during testing, with no sites in the blocked categories slipping past Panda’s proxy. Tests using our Ixia load generators returned a respectable 262Mbits/sec HTTP firewall throughput. Activating the proxy hit performance hard, however, causing the reported
average to drop to 94Mbits/sec. With antivirus enabled on the HTTP proxy, we saw it dip to 72Mbits/sec. The Snort-based intrusionprevention system (IPS) is simply turned on or off for all inbound traffic, but enabling it created more overheads. Oddly, though, the 43Mbits/sec HTTP throughput we observed was 10Mbits/sec higher than Panda’s own claims. The POP3 proxy also applies antivirus scanning to inbound mail; the SpamAssassin service can be enabled too, but this only “Panda offers five general tags the subject line of suspect spam messages. URL categories, with a The SMTP proxy goes total of 83 subcategories, further, allowing so filtering can be messages passed to an internal mail server to easily fine-tuned” be scanned for spam and viruses and, if need be, quarantined on the appliance’s hard disk. Reporting is good, with the web UI offering detailed activity graphs on web, mail, IPS and virus scanning. We BELOW Panda’s had no problem finding out what was Integra eSB uses consuming our bandwidth, seeing colour-coded port which users were causing trouble, zones, making it easy and reviewing live logs of all services. to set up firewall rules Businesses with multiple appliances spread over different locations will find Panda’s Perimetral Management Console particularly useful: it lists all managed appliances, shows their operational status and provides remote upgrade services, plus remote access to their web console. Our main concern is that the Integra eSeries eSB’s comparatively low performance limits the number of users it can service. But it’s simple to deploy, and provides versatile security features at a low price, so smaller businesses shouldn’t rule it out. ABOVE With the help of a startup wizard, the eSeries eSB was up and running within 15 minutes
SPECIFICATIONS Desktop chassis ● 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 ● 2GB DDR3 RAM ● 160GB SFF SATA hard disk ● 4 x Gigabit Ethernet (LAN, WAN, DMZ) ● 2 x USB 2 ● VGA ● RJ45 console ● external PSU ● web browser management 101
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The Network BusinessFocus
@PCPRO
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WatchGuard FireboxT10-W
The T10-W delivers joinedup security for wired and wireless networks at a price small businesses will love
SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE Appliance with 1yr Security Suite, APT and DLP, £510 exc VAT from watchguard.com
W
atchGuard’s Firebox T10-W is an eye-catcher, not merely for its tomato-red chassis, but for its combination of wired and wireless security features. Businesses on a tight budget will also like its pocket-friendly price. The Security Suite is chock-full of capabilities, providing IPS, web-content filtering, anti-spam, antivirus, application controls and HTTPS inspection, as well as WatchGuard’s reputation-enabled defence. That’s not all: the price we’ve listed also includes WatchGuard’s optional advanced persistent threat (APT) blocker and data-leak prevention (DLP) services. With all these security features to hand, it’s easy to forget that the T10-W is a full wireless access point – partly because the aerials are tucked away inside. All the same, it provides three separate SSIDs, supports 2.4GHz or 5GHz operations, and can act as a central controller for WatchGuard’s own APs. We enabled the wireless gateway feature and set up a WatchGuard AP200, which was automatically discovered by the T10-W. After
pairing the two units from the latter’s web console, we were able to dish out SSIDs, enforce wireless security and use heat maps to view wireless coverage. We could also apply the same security services protecting our LAN users. Proxies are used to control all traffic types: HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, DNS, SIP, H.323, POP3 and SMTP. Firewall rules for each proxy define the physical interfaces they apply to and settings to be applied. We recommend taking time to practise setting this up, as it can be quite complex. WatchGuard provides predefined actions for each proxy, which you can clone and configure to create custom policies. To implement web filtering, we had to clone the HTTP client action, assign a profile to it, choose from 127 URL categories and create an HTTP firewall policy. The T10-W uses the spamBlocker service, and this also required a POP3 proxy action and firewall policyto tag dubious messages as “spam”, “suspect” or “bulk”. Gateway antivirus is easier to handle: simply enable it on selected proxies and
decide whether to drop or block infected payloads. The APT blocker service only works with policies where gateway antivirus is enabled. It’s virtually transparent, since it scans incoming files and compares their MD5 hash with the Lastline cloud service to check whether they’re known malware. Application controls are the best, with entries for hundreds of common applications and 11 for Facebook alone, so you can restrict activities such as logins, likes, media uploads and chat. DLP works with the HTTP, FTP and SMTP proxies, and we were able to create custom policies looking for specific keywords, or use the predefined policies for HIPPA and PCI. In terms of network performance, IxLoad reported an average HTTP throughput of 140Mbits/sec, which tumbled to 44Mbits/sec when we enabled the HTTP proxy, gateway antivirus and IPS services. That’s acceptable for the environment the T10-W is aimed at. The appliance provides real-time graphs for reporting, but “WatchGuard provides for further monitoring predefined actions for each you’ll need to set up Log proxy, which you can clone WatchGuard’s Server and Report and configure to create Server on a Windows host. These modules custom policies” belong to WatchGuard’s free Server Center suite, which also provides centralised management of multiple appliances. WatchGuard’s proxies can be tricky to set up, but you won’t find better security measures anywhere else for this price. The slick wireless features make it the perfect A-Lister.
ABOVE The T10-W is also a wireless access point – the aerials are tucked away inside the unit
LEFT WatchGuard’s smart web interface provides plenty of information about users, websites and network traffic 102
SPECIFICATIONS Desktop chassis ● 533MHz Freescale P1010 CPU ● 512MB RAM ● 3 x Gigabit Ethernet (LAN, WAN, OPT) ● USB 2 ● RJ45 serial port ● external PSU ● web browser management ● options: with 3yr Security Suite, APT and DLP, £883 exc VAT
Worldmags.net
Worldmags.net
The Network BusinessFocus
@PCPRO
PCPRO.CO.UK
ZyXELUSG60W
Complex to set up, but the combination of features and dual-band wireless make the USG60W a good-value choice SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE Appliance and 1yr UTM bundle, £351 exc VAT from pcworldbusiness.co.uk
Z
yXEL specialises in the small-business end of the network security market. The USG60W the top of ZyXEL’s current Performance Series of UTM appliances, and stakes its claim with impressive credentials and an attractive price. It’s a particularly good choice if you want redundant WAN links, since two of its six Gigabit ports are set aside specifically for these duties. We were able to create a network trunk using both WAN ports, and chose from three load-balancing algorithms to determine how traffic would be balanced across them. A trunk can also include a 3G USB modem to act as a failover link, although 4G isn’t yet supported. Meanwhile, the USB ports can be used for automatic log offloads to an external storage device. The four external aerials leave no doubt about wireless services; the USG60W supports dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz operations, and can manage up to ten ZyXEL wireless access points, using radio profiles to push configurations to them. These can define which bands are active, assign up to eight SSID objects to each one, and add encryption profiles. It’s a
versatile system, but we did find wireless services complex to set up, and the web interface provides only a basic list of connected systems and a simple graph depicting traffic. The USG60W offers a fine set of security features: the modest annual fee includes web-content filtering, antivirus, anti-spam, an intrusionprevention system (IPS) and ZyXEL’s own Application Patrol. Deployment took around 15 minutes, with a quick-start wizard setting up internet access with base firewall rules. The web console provides a smart widget-based dashboard that can be customised to suit. The four Gigabit LAN ports are by default placed in the same zone, but you can split them into two other zones, each with their own DHCP server and firewall rules. It’s important to sort out your objects before creating policies, since the USG60W uses these extensively to reference everything from users and groups to applications and time schedules. Along with zone details, schedules and services, rules are also used to apply UTM profiles. You can create multiple profiles for each of the five UTM services. Antivirus is simply a matter of
deciding whether infected files should be destroyed, and whether or not to peer into archives, while web-filtering profiles can block or allow any of the 60 categories on offer. To create an anti-spam profile, we enabled the sender reputation, mail-content analysis and virus-outbreak-detection features and requested the subject line of suspect messages be tagged. For IPS, we could pick from a wide range of predefined rules to protect against common exploits. ZyXEL’s application control has entries for more than 3,000 applications, including mail, file transfer, VoIP and media streaming. Application objects can also be created for Twitter and Facebook, which use profiles to prevent users from tweeting, Liking, following and posting. In our IxLoad test, the USG60W sustained a steady HTTP throughput of 70Mbits/sec with “ZyXEL’s application control antivirus enabled. Enabling IPS didn’t affect has entries for more it too much: throughput than 3,000 applications, dropped only slightly including mail, file transfer, to 65Mbits/sec. Reporting is average VoIP and media streaming” at best, with the web console showing us tables on port usage and traffic statistics. Webfiltering data is sent to the cloud, so we were able to use our MyZyXEL account to check on blocked and allowed websites. ZyXEL’s myriad firewall rules and objects complicate deployment, but are capable of providing versatile perimeter security. Reporting may be basic, but the USG60W and its dual-band wireless features are excellent value. DAVE MITCHELL
ABOVE USB ports can be used to log offloads to an external storage device
LEFT ZyXEL’s dashboard widgets can be moved around to suit, and show how well the USG60W is coping with traffic loads 104
SPECIFICATIONS Desktop/rackmount chassis ● dual-core 800MHz Cavium CN6020 CPU ● 1GB RAM ● 6 x Gigabit Ethernet (2 x WAN, 4 x LAN/DMZ) ● 5GHz/2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi ● 2 x USB 2 ● VGA ● external PSU ● web browser management ● 5yr limited warranty
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THE BUSINESS QUESTION
Canyousurvive a webavalanche?
How would your website cope with a sudden surge in traffic? Darien Graham-Smith examines the solutions that will help you keep a step ahead
I
f your business gets linked to from a major website, or referred to by a popular Twitter feed, you may find you suddenly have more traffic than you can handle – meaning visitors will suffer a slow experience or no response at all. So what precautions can you take to protect your site from a sudden flood of visitors?
■ Design for efficiency
The number of visitors you can serve is a direct function of how much bandwidth each visit consumes, so a good starting point is to try to minimise the amount of data from your end. Shrink down images, and use services such as YouTube and SoundCloud to embed media files on your page, rather than trying to serve them yourself. 106
Think about the load on your web server too, especially if your pages are dynamically generated: for example, WordPress pages are assembled on the fly using PHP and MySQL. When a thousand people are trying to connect at once, you may wish you’d chosen a static approach. James Kretchmar, EMEA CTO at Akamai, recommends that companies shouldn’t wait until the avalanche hits to think about such issues. “Keep track of how much load you expect,” he told us. “Make sure you’ve provisioned enough capacity, and monitor how much bandwidth and CPU you’re using.” All the same, he acknowledges the difficulty of properly preparing for the unknown. “The trouble is that you don’t know when it will
come, or how much it will be.” If you’re hosting your web server – whether on-site or in a data centre – it raises questions about provisioning resources. “You’re spending a lot of money for hardware and services that most of the year will go unused – just for those occasions when you have very high load,” Kretchmar noted.
■ The benefits of a virtual web server
A common way to respond to the challenge is to host your website on a virtual server. With this approach, it will be possible to arrange a dynamic, temporary upgrade from your provider to cope with a short-term surge. Don’t assume this will happen as a matter of course, however. “It’s important to be aware of the provider’s policy if your traffic exceeds your capacity,” warned John Graham-Cumming at CloudFlare. “Sometimes, people get a nasty surprise – their business ends up on TV, they receive a surge of interest, and then the hosting company decides there’s too much traffic. If you’re paying for cheap hosting, don’t be surprised if they switch you off. “You can test capacity for yourself. With tools such as ApacheBench, you can hit a website “It’s important to be aware very hard and see what of your provider’s policy – if happens. But first, go to the actual host and you’re paying for cheap talk to them about what hosting, don’t be surprised happens if you suddenly if they switch you off” get a flood of traffic.”
@PCPRO
PCPRO.CO.UK
■ Content-distribution networks
The most robust solution for unpredictable traffic is to sign up with a content-distribution network (CDN). At its simplest, the service caches the content of your site and re-hosts it from a global network of servers, using local DNS to direct incoming traffic to the nearest mirror. It’s a scalable approach that can cope with extreme variations in traffic. “If your site is linked to from a popular site, it can suddenly have a thousand times its normal traffic,” pointed out Kretchmar. “The difference between the peak traffic and normal is so huge that any technology you might put in a box in a data centre is going to have trouble keeping up. You really need to be on a distributed platform that can get the traffic far away from your data centre and close to the end user.” It doesn’t necessarily have to be a full-time commitment, either: “In the US,” noted Graham-Cumming, “a lot of businesses come to us if they’re going to appear on Shark Tank – the US equivalent of Dragons’ Den – or if they’re going to be mentioned on one of the daily news shows.” There are other benefits to using a CDN: a global network of servers means faster response times for those visiting your site from abroad, and it means the provider can apply other optimisations as needed. “At CloudFlare, we call ourselves an ‘edge network’,” explained Graham-Cumming, “because it’s our servers that your customers hit before getting through to your site. That allows us to do all sorts of things to your traffic to make it faster and better. For example, we can ‘minify’
Worldmags.net The Network TheBusinessQuestion your site – that is, reformat it for mobile clients. We can apply a firewall to deflect an attack. Plus, we have tools that can help with efficiency: there’s a service called Polish that can reduce the size of images and a tool called Railgun that can cache dynamic content.”
■ DDoS attacks
“People think distributeddenial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are something that only big businesses need to worry about – but it can happen to anyone,” warned Graham-Cumming. “The tools are so easy to come by that we receive calls from people every day saying, ‘help, I’m under attack’. We’ve heard of two rival spas in the US that were DDoSing each other to undermine each other’s business.” “Another big reason it happens is extortion: the bad guys say, ‘pay us this amount of money, maybe in bitcoins, or we’ll take your site offline,’” added Graham-Cumming. Of course, if your site goes offline at a crucial time – say, you’re a florist on Valentine’s Day – then your business will be in trouble.” Akamai’s Kretchmar agrees that DDoS attacks are a growing problem: “In 2010, the largest ever DDoS attack we’d seen was 68Gbits/sec,” he revealed. “Last year it was 360Gbits/sec. Our projection for 2014 is a further 50% increase.” Even a hosted site has little chance of standing up to this sort of bombardment, so what can you do? “DDoS attacks are growing, everchanging and sophisticated, so there
is no fool-proof plan,” said James Segil, CMO of Verizon Digital Media Services and former CEO of EdgeCast. Your best bet is a so-called “DDoSscrubbing service” that inspects packets and ditches suspicious ones before they reach your web server. By its nature, this is a job that’s done in the cloud: “A massively distributed platform such as Akamai’s can detect which is the malicious traffic and block it,” explained Kretchmar. “It can absorb huge numbers of packets per second, and “Since it’s our servers your customers hit before keep them away from the origin data centre.” getting to your site, we can Graham-Cumming do things to your traffic to agrees: “At CloudFlare, make it faster and better” we’re big enough to absorb the traffic, but if you wait until the attack is underway to pick up the phone, it will take time for us to change the DNS settings and start sending those packets onto our network. The best way to prepare for a DDoS attack is to already be with a service such as ours.”
ABOVE With CloudFlare, content is distributed closer to those visiting your site, hence speeding up its delivery
TheexpertviewDaveyWinder A sudden surge in web traffic is a challenge for any business, but it’s worth planning ahead – especially for a DDoS attack. The first you may become aware of such an attack is when your site is taken offline, often for as little as 30 minutes, just to prove that the threat is real. Then an “insurance” payment is demanded to stop it happening again. With limited time to respond, what would you do? Those organisations that pay up are likely to be falling for a scam: hiring a botnet to launch a short-lived DDoS attack can cost as little as £20. The scammers don’t really intend to pay for a more prolonged attack. They’ll demand an affordable one-off payment of between £100 and £500 to make the problem go away, knowing that a small business without DDoS protection in place is likely to pay up rather than risk the consequences.
Unfortunately, not all attacks are scams. Last summer, cloud-based source-code hosting provider Code Spaces announced that it was shutting up shop permanently after suffering a devastating DDoS attack. It turned out that Code Spaces had simultaneously been hacked and lost control of its Amazon EC2 control panel, meaning the attacker had full control of the company’s data. Code Spaces refused to pay the ransom, and by the time it had regained access to its control panel, the bad guys had deleted all of its backups. This left the company with no alternative but to cease trading. The Code Spaces incident highlights not only the importance of thinking ahead, but thinking sideways as well. Paying for DDoS defence is a start, but you also need to consider business continuity. Recent research suggests that more than 40% of enterprises don’t have a
continuity strategy, and I’d bet that you can at least double that number when it comes to small businesses. If Code Spaces had built proper data separation into its strategy then its backups would have been safe. Another issue was a lack of a structured response. If the company had involved Amazon Web Services support right away, the control panel could have been locked down and the data protected. Working with your provider should be at the top of the mitigation to-do list. One last warning: while many DDoS attacks are based on straightforward extortion, they can also be used as smokescreens to distract an organisation and its security team while a data breach is quietly being perpetrated elsewhere. Again, you have to think about more than just defence: you can’t afford to forget about response.
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Real world Worldmags.net computıng
EXPERT ADVICE FROM OUR PANEL OF PROFESSIONALS
JONHONEYBALL
“Itseemsmyfriendhasaninsatiable desiretosay‘yes’toanyofferthat popsuponhercomputer” Users are unwittingly installing tools and widgets that are playing havoc with their systems. It’s time to nuke them
I
t was a plaintive message on Facebook: “My computer has gone very slow, is there anything you can do about it?” I couldn’t refuse to help a friend, so I agreed to take her laptop in for investigation. It was clear from the start that something was slowing down her machine harder than a bottle of sleeping tablets. Everything took a long time, it was turgid and lethargic in operation and even logging on took an age. Clearly something was amiss. A quick check of the system with a few downloadable antivirus tools showed nothing of significance, so this wasn’t a pure malware issue, nor were there any of those nasty ransomware screens popping up asking for £100-plus to fix it. After a quick dig around Chrome (actually it was a pretty slow dig, but you get the idea), her default browser, the root of the problem became apparent. It seems my friend has an insatiable desire to say “yes” to any offer that pops up on her computer. As a result, a good dozen browser extensions were in play, mostly for unnecessary shopping optimisers, searchbots and the like. It took only a few seconds to nuke everything in there, which certainly helped a little. Then I turned my attention to the “Uninstall a program” section in the control panel; it’s useful to sort this list into descending order as it’s better to see which programs have hit the machine most recently at the top. As expected, there were several clusters of installations spread over several days during the previous few months. Each of these clusters showed that around half a dozen installations had taken place on that particular date, and each looked very suspicious indeed, with odd names and some curious misspellings. A
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good giveaway to their lack of respectability was that most didn’t contain Publisher information, which suggests they weren’t digitally signed, either. I know that many honest manufacturers and software authors can be careless about filling in their Publisher name field – I’m looking at you, Epson – but having nothing there is usually a sign that something isn’t right. To be quite clear, while its absence isn’t instantly damning, most reputable software has a Publisher name field. The dates were a giveaway, because on each of these occasions she’d said yes to some sort of download: a shopping speed-up tool; a better search bar; something that would solve world hunger. Each of them appeared to have dragged down a pile of other things, too, and this is why I was seeing a cluster of installs on each date. Fixing it was simple enough – just dump anything I didn’t recognise. I’d already ascertained that there was nothing of great importance on her machine in terms of user data, but I still prefer to clean up whatever is there (rather than nuke everything from orbit and start again) when dealing with a friend’s computer. That’s because I’m not sure what will happen as a result. Will their recovery solution actually work? At least on my own hardware I know I can do this and it will work every time. About an hour or so later, I’d pulled all dubious-looking items off the machine, and then rerun some antivirus and anti-spyware scanning tools and found it to be clean. A quick run through Windows Update ensured the latest patches were in place, including the Adobe files that would inevitably be out of date. This machine was back to a good working configuration and its performance was exactly what you’d expect from a PC of its vintage and specification. If the machine had been full of malware then my friend would have been horrified, but clearly there’s a
Jon is the MD of an IT consultancy that specialises in testing and deploying hardware @jonhoneyball
“We need a higher level of suspicion among the userbase to stop malware getting onto PCs in the first place”
disconnect in the minds of many users about what appears to be “useful tools” or “add-on widgets” and what is genuinely useful. I’m really not sure how to fix this problem. If someone is absolutely determined to install something then they will, and this is especially true on older versions of operating systems. It’s less likely to be an issue with current and future OSes, because they tend to be locked down so that only products from known publishers on known app stores will install. If ever there was a case for installing the latest version of your OS, then this would be it. But clearly we need a far higher level of suspicion among the userbase to stop such malware getting onto computers in the first place. My rules still apply: browser extensions are usually a bad thing; unknown apps with weird names and a lack of Publisher information are a bad thing, too. Nuke them all – and in future, tick “No” to anything that you’re not 100% certain about.
Windows 10 beta
The Windows 10 beta release rolls forward, and I continue to be impressed. However, there’s one item in the recent beta that has caused some users plenty of grief: it appears that Microsoft has removed the Placeholders facility by which you could choose what files would sync between OneDrive and your local machine. Placeholders enabled you to browse files on OneDrive without actually having them stored on your local machine – a clever facility, especially if you have generous OneDrive storage but limited local space. I can’t help but feel that this is a somewhat stupid move on Redmond’s part, which causes old-timers such as me to become hot and bothered and start reminiscing about all the other innovative storage technologies that Microsoft has half-baked then walked away from
Worldmags.net Jon Honeyball Opinion on Windows, Apple and everything in between – p110
Paul Ockenden Unique insight into mobile and wireless tech – p113
over the years: Cairo OFS; Structured Storage; the structured storage deconstruction to NTFS Streams (cancelled in NT 3.51 beta); Drive M: in Exchange Server (which was prone to self-immolation if you dared to run CHKDSK against it); SharePoint storage; SQL Server storage and the whole WinFS debacle. And can anyone, anywhere point to an actual user of the ReFS file system who has been supported in recent Microsoft server products? It’s supposed to be very clever and a big step forward from NTFS, but it lacks significant features and simply isn’t ready for primetime. I’ve yet to come across anyone who’s using it, but maybe you know different. We already have the ongoing “OneDrive for Business for Mac” debacle, and now it seems that OneDrive in Windows 10 will be neutered as well. Not that the competition is without fault. I run Dropbox on a PC at home to act as a home archive of my important work data. It decided to get stuck with 27 files that simply wouldn’t sync, and no matter how I poked and cajoled Dropbox, it wouldn’t play ball on that PC. Worse still, there aren’t any good enough debugging windows to tell me what’s going on, so that I could dig around and find the offending files. Sometimes I have to conclude that computers simply hate me.
Apple Watch
Apple has released its SDK environment for the Watch. From viewing the videos, it’s clear that it’s taking a conservative approach to how this will work, and is initially releasing only a subset of the tools. I’m impressed by the thinking. An app on a watch is essentially a visualisation of an app that runs on the phone – there’s a transport layer between the two that enables both pieces of the application to talk to one another, but the idea of getting the phone to do all the heavy-lifting is clever. After all, it has the more powerful processor, the bigger battery and the most sensor capabilities – GPS, for example. Putting such functions into the watch itself would inevitably have created space and power restrictions. And of course, tying
Professor Iain E Buchan The bright future of techassisted medical care – p116
the watch so firmly to the iPhone platform isn’t likely to hurt Apple’s phone sales either, which must be part of its intention. For the past few weeks, I’ve been living with the Motorola Moto 360 watch, which uses the Android Wear platform running on an Android smartphone. Checking out Android 4.4.4 and Lollipop 5, it’s clear that Android OS is now reaching maturity, and I could quite happily give up my iPhone and move over to an Android 4.4.4 or 5 device for my day-to-day work. Okay, I’d miss quite a few apps that I’ve come to rely upon, but these tend to be niche apps that I use only infrequently. The Moto 360 is interesting and has a beautiful screen – I love some of the third-party watch-face apps that have become available for it, but I’m not wholly convinced that
Davey Winder Keeping small businesses safe since 1997 – p118
ABOVE Apple has released a limited number of tools for its Watch device
“Can anyone, anywhere point to a user of the ReFS file system who has been supported in recent Microsoft server products?”
LEFT Tying the Watch firmly to the iPhone isn’t likely to hurt Apple’s phone sales
Steve Cassidy The wider vision on cloud and infrastructure – p120
I’m in tune with the way it performs notifications yet. It’s much better than the Pebble, another device to which I’ve just recently returned. This whole issue of notifications is key to the wrist-computing experience. Wrist-worn devices need to be lightweight, offering only sufficient information to make comprehension simple, fast and reliable, but never becoming a constant source of distraction and interference. I’m not convinced that either the Pebble or the Moto 360 has this quite right just yet, and I’d certainly prefer to have finer control over how demanding the notifications are from each information source. I’d like this control to be timesensitive, too; although the “out of hours” facilities found on recent Android and iOS devices are useful, I feel that this is still only scratching at the surface. For example, I want fewer updates when I’m driving, so why not tie in the accelerometers to the process? Maybe this is already happening, but I can’t find myself quite at ease with the notifications processes yet. The same is true of notifications that land on my desktop: once again, too much information, provided too frequently, becomes an annoyance. This fine-tuning is something that will take much learning by the vendors.
Router security
Your network router is a key element in your home or office network – it’s the bit that connects your internal network to the outside 111
Real world computıng
Worldmags.net all those external-facing remotemanagement interfaces. My friend sighed a deep sigh of relief. As a rule of thumb, don’t expose any interface that you don’t need. There may be some allowances for remote management, but if this is the case then ensure that you lock it down to accept only incoming connections from known IP addresses: from your home network, for example, or from an outfit that you know might in future need to remotely connect. Better still, set up a simple VPN tunnel to allow your remote computer to tunnel over the internet and appear back inside your network, just as if it were a local computer. Some people like using remote-control tools, but I prefer to keep things simple and involve only the necessary amount of technology.
IP scanner
world. Almost all routers do network address translation (NAT), which hides everything connected to your internal network behind a single, external-facing IP address, and there’s also a firewall in there to control how it responds to incoming and outgoing requests through the router. Most routers are set up by default to allow any outgoing requests to do so via any port, and to block every kind of incoming request. That should be the end of the matter, except there are some wrinkles. For example, your router will almost certainly have a bunch of interfaces enabled to allow for remote configuration and management: this is usually done via an HTTP or HTTPS web page, but it could involve SNMP, or other protocols such as Telnet or SSH. There’s clearly a decision to be made over where you want these interfaces to be visible – obviously to your internal network, but what about the outside one? Do you ever need to remote-manage your router from outside your own network, and if so, is this from any IP address – including a hotel in the Caribbean – or just the fixed IP address you have at your home? This being so, I was interested to see that Avast’s new antivirus
112
includes a network security-testing tool. How it works isn’t particularly well explained, but I think it calls a cloud service that then peeks back down your internet connection into your router and has a good look around. Using it on a friend’s network, I discovered they had their network-management interfaces bound to the external-facing network as well as the internal one. Fortunately, a strong password was in place, but it’s certainly an enhanced risk to leave ports and interfaces open when you don’t need them. A quick root around the web configuration from inside the network and I’d disconnected
ABOVE SecuritySpy enables you to keep an eye on multiple cameras from multiple vendors
BELOW Keeping tabs on your network is easy with IP Scanner Pro for OS X
If you want to keep an eye on your network, it’s useful to have a tool that can scan your system and present the results in graphical form. There are many ways this can be achieved using freeware or command-line utilities, but sometimes it’s nice to have a tool that displays a little more tinsel. I couldn’t locate the security cameras on my home network, since for some reason I’d allowed them to grab their IP addresses from DHCP but hadn’t set up any reservations for them. The particular DHCP server in question doesn’t display its reservations list in an attractive form, so I went hunting for such a tool, and found it in IP Scanner Pro for OS X. This quickly ran around my network, identified a bunch of devices and presented me with a good list that I could slice and dice
@PCPRO
PCPRO.CO.UK
as I wished. The free version can handle only a small number of IP addresses, but the Pro version will go the whole hog. IP scanning is always useful, but when you’re playing “hunt the device” it can be invaluable, although I’m not sure its value actually extends to the £21 cost of the Pro version. This seems a little steep – £10 would be pushing it, and I can’t help thinking that sales are being lost because of the price. However, given that it can root around subnets and take a good look around a business network, the pricing is perhaps to be understood in that context. The low IP count of the free version is probably a little too tight for home users who would happily pay a few pounds for a more home-orientated version.
Security camera software
Another piece of software I’ve come to rely on is SecuritySpy. This OS X app from a UK developer is excellent at keeping an eye on all of your security cameras. I use models from a number of vendors at the office and at home, and SecuritySpy has no problems consolidating them into a single, unified control surface. You can set up motion detection, recording, and numerous features such as alarms, out-of-hours support and so forth. It’s a solid piece of code that just works. It isn’t cheap, but there’s a full free trial that you can play with for a month. Pricing starts at £30 for one camera, rising to £75 for four and £150 for eight. An unlimited camera licence costs £649. Be warned, though: you’ll need quite a healthy computer to handle all the high-resolution streams from multiple cameras.
OS X 10.10.2 updating
Oh dear me, it seems that Apple has put out a beta update of OS X 10.10.2 that’s caused Google Chrome to explode. Chrome was using a particular API call that Apple has now deprecated, and it’s something to do with trackpad sensing. I’m sure that Google will get onto the case quickly enough and resolve this, but it’s a timely reminder that even the biggest players manage to overlook API changes now and then...
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Worldmags.net PAULOCKENDEN
“IjustwishGooglehadleft theoldappinplace–email supportinLollipopisamess” There are some rather odd goings-on in Android 5, the latest version of Google’s OS – but it’s not all bad news
B
y now, many Android users will have upgraded to Android 5, or Lollipop. If you have, you’ll have discovered that it’s a bit of a mixed bag. There’s much to like, but there are also a few annoying changes. My main bugbear is the fact that Google has ditched the standard Email app, and forced everything through Gmail. Thankfully, the Gmail app does now support Exchange Server, but there are some huge annoyances, particularly when used in a multiple-mailbox scenario. For starters, everything is red. Yes, I know red is the “official” colour of Gmail, but surely it should be possible to colour-code mailboxes so you can determine at a glance which one you’re viewing? An even bigger hole – one that has received many complaints – is that there’s no combined inbox view. This was a wonderful facility in the old Email app, which you could use either in the app or via the homescreen widget to view all of your email in one place. It’s dead and buried now, though. If you have half a dozen mailboxes on your phone, you’ll need a widget for each one. Even that’s currently broken: I’m finding widgets often don’t update until you click through to that mailbox. Sorry Google, but email support in Lollipop is a mess. I know there are various third-party email clients available, and I’ve tried many of them, but they all seem to have limitations. Some don’t support Exchange Server, others don’t offer Gmail account support. Some have trouble rendering HTML emails, others have less-than-flexible alerting options. I just wish Google
Paul owns an agency that helps businesses exploit the web, from sales to marketing and everything in between @PaulOckenden
BELOW Lollipop’s new Smart Lock is actually more of a smart unlock feature
had left the old Email app in place, or at least made it a downloadable option. It’s not all bad news for Lollipop, however. I particularly like the fact that you can set up device security so that when you’re at a particular trusted location (say, at home or in the office), you can unlock your handset without typing in a code or password. You can also add trusted Bluetooth devices, so if you’re in your car, for example, there’s again no need to bother with fiddly unlock codes. It’s a shame this only seems to work with full-fat Bluetooth devices; there doesn’t currently appear to be any support for Bluetooth LE devices such as iBeacons. The new notification system in Lollipop has divided opinion: whether you like it or not seems to depend on the method you previously used to switch your phone into silent mode. If you pressed the volume control all the way down, you’ll probably love the new setup, but if you preferred to hold down the power button and choose the silent option, you’ll be disappointed, because the option is no longer there. The power button is now just for, well, power! On Lollipop, the volume button gives you the option to disable notifications, either completely or for a set number of hours. You can also prioritise notifications; perhaps you’d like phone calls to be muted but still want to see calendar notifications. You can set any app to be a priority, and certain contacts too, so that even when the phone is muted their calls will still get through. It’s all incredibly flexible, although I suspect some users will find it a little confusing. What’s really odd is that even alarms are disabled in full silent mode – can you think of a situation where you might set an alarm and then not want to be alerted when it goes off? No, me neither. Parents who let their kids play with their phones will appreciate a 113
Real world computıng couple of the new options. The first is a Guest mode, which essentially starts a new user session that doesn’t have access to your personal data. This prevents kids from trashing your calendar, or sending naughty emails to your boss. Even more restrictive is the ability to pin a particular screen. This means you can hand over your phone safe in the knowledge that it’s locked to a single app – perhaps a game or a streaming video service such as Netflix. To unlock it, the guest would need to key in the phone’s normal unlock code.
Two birds with one SIM
Ask any hardcore techie for their opinion on the best broadband ISP and you’ll hear only a handful of names: ICUK, Zen, Xilo, iDNet – and AAISP, which is always near the top of the list. Although many now know only its abbreviated name, old-timers will always think of this company as Andrews & Arnold, the geeks’ ISP of choice for almost 20 years. Frustrated by tech-support staff that appear to know less about their network than you do? Then you might find AAISP a revelation. For example, much of AAISP’s support chat happens via IRC, which isn’t something you’ll come across with conventional ISPs. But while the company is perfect for geeks, it probably isn’t the kind of ISP I’d recommend for your nan. But I digress, since I’m not here to write about broadband providers: my actual topic is telephony. Remember that, the service at the heart of every smartphone, which tech writers and reviewers often seem to ignore? So, what’s the connection between having a tech-savvy internet service provider and making phone calls? Well, alongside its usual broadband, leased lines and hosting services, AAISP also offers telephony, with the usual SIP-based VoIP options that you’ll find from countless other providers. But to complement this, the company also offers something rather special in the form of its SIP2SIM product, and that’s what interests me here. SIP2SIM is a normal-looking SIM that you slot into your phone, but it doesn’t have an associated phone number. Instead, you must provision it (via a somewhat clunky web
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interface) to talk to a SIP-based VoIP service. AAISP does provide its own server, but it could equally be your own Asterisk server or one of many other commercial providers out there. I tend to use Sipgate, since I managed to blag a few accounts with easy-to-remember phone numbers a few years ago. The point is that it lets you carry a mobile with a geographic (01 or 02) phone number, which is perfect for local tradespeople such as plumbers and electricians, who reply to incoming jobs on their mobiles – many potential customers, especially older ones, may only have land lines and be reluctant to call a mobile due to the perceived cost. Being VoIP-based brings plenty of other potential benefits, too: for example, you can set things up so that whenever someone calls, your home phone, office phone and mobile all ring simultaneously, and you can pick up the call from any unit. VoIP on a mobile is nothing new, of course. Some handsets – most notably Nokia’s S40 and S60 ranges – always had SIP facilities burned right into their firmware. With more recent smartphones, it tends to be a capability you can add via an app. But what if you don’t have a smartphone? Maybe you’re attached to an old non-smartphone that lasts two weeks between charges. Until now, VoIP hasn’t been an option for you, but SIP2SIM doesn’t require any special software on the handset. As far as the phone’s concerned, it’s just another ordinary voice call – SIP handover takes place on a FireBrick inside AAISP’s data centre. Voice calls use normal voice channels, so don’t depend on sufficiently good mobiledata capacity being available, as would a traditional handset or app-based SIP client. For the first time, it also enables equipment such as alarm panels with voice alerts to be routed via VoIP rather than a traditional mobile network. As you can see, there’s a lot of potential
ABOVE AAISP’s SIP2SIM allows you to treat any mobile handset as a SIP-based VoIP endpoint
“SIP2SIM works like a charm and is brilliant for machineto-machine applications such as data logging and device tracking”
here – but wait, it gets even better. SIP2SIM is available in two flavours. The first, which does everything I’ve described above, routes calls, texts, and data back to AAISP’s servers via the O2 network. But as well as this UK-only version, there’s a UK/EU version that’s very clever. By default, it will stick to O2 (because it’s cheaper), but where there’s no O2 signal it will roam onto either Vodafone or EE. This is something that readers of this column have often asked for, especially those who live in or travel to parts of the country where mobile reception is patchy. Until recently, the only way to roam to local networks was to buy an overseas SIM, but even this wasn’t simple, since some countries require local ID before you can buy a SIM, and these SIMs give you an overseas phone number. I doubt many UK residents want a German or Dutch mobile number (although perhaps it might reduce those pesky PPI calls!). With SIP2SIM, your number is whatever your VoIP provider has given you, likely to be a geographic one (although there are 07xxx ranges available too). Just think about that – with the EU-roaming version of SIP2SIM you have a phone that’s available on a normal UK geographic number and can roam onto any of the UK mobile networks apart from Three. What’s not to like? This all works because the SIM has two identities: in normal use it appears to be just like any other virtual operator service running across O2’s network, but once the O2 signal disappears the SIM switches to present a Vodafone Netherlands ID instead. As far as the phone is concerned, it’s as though you’ve taken out one SIM and replaced it with another. Apparently there are a few very ancient phones that can’t cope with this switching, but every handset I’ve used with SIP2SIM – including some that are five or six years old – have worked just fine. There are a few downsides, however. First, you pay for all calls, in or out, at 2p per minute when the device is on O2 , and 10p per minute when roaming. Texts are charged at 2p and 5p, and data is 2p or 10p per MB. These charges are all in addition to any costs from your VoIP provider. A second downside is that, right now, data access is restricted to 3G and its faster variants – 4G isn’t available. And finally, as noted above, the configuration options are a little
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clunky in places. Once it’s all set up, though, it works like a charm. Not only is it a great boon to those who need other people to be able to reach them quickly, but it’s also brilliant for machine-to-machine (M2M) applications such as data logging, device tracking and similar. There’s really nothing else on the market that can touch SIP2SIM, especially the EU-roaming version. Various bodies are currently trying to force the mobile networks to offer this kind of national roaming, but any concerted movement in that direction is still a long way off. AAISP is offering a service that offers maximum contactability, on any device, and with a local geographic number, right now. It’s brilliant!
The best mobile-data deals for tablets
While I’m on the subject of SIMs, I received a query from a PC Pro reader asking for the best SIM-only deal for mobile data, for use with his new tablet. This question doesn’t have a single answer: there are many options available, and which is best for you depends on your usage pattern. The first thing to decide is how regular your use will be. If you use your tablet outdoors every day – say, as part of your daily commute – then you’ll almost certainly be better off with a monthly contract. However, if you primarily use it at home or work where Wi-Fi is available, and only very rarely out and about, then you may be better off on a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) tariff. Another important consideration is whether you travel abroad, since some options that may be cheap for the UK become very expensive once you start roaming.
Worldmags.net It’s hard to find a proper PAYG tariff that’s available for tablets. One of the best deals on the market is Three’s 321 tariff, but that’s only available for phones: the network is likely to ask you to switch to a mobilebroadband tariff if it catches you using it on a tablet. I guess this will have to change as the boundaries between phones and tablets become ever more blurred, but right now rules is rules! Most of the other networks will only provide data as part of a monthly bundle. One exception is Giffgaff, which offers true PAYG data. There’s a catch, though: your first 20MB of each day costs a reasonable 20p, but beyond that it’s a hefty 20p per MB. You won’t want to download huge software updates or stream HD video at that price. Giffgaff offers some “goody bag” bundles – for example, you can buy 500MB of data to last for one month for £5. If you go over this amount, you’ll be charged only 2p per MB rather than 20p. You’re even allowed to use this data for tethering or creating a mobile hotspot. If your use is more regular, even Giffgaff’s bundles look expensive next to a monthly contract. Three usually offers some good deals – for example, you can have 1GB of data for £7.50 per month, or 10GB for £15, which should be plenty for even the most ravenous of data consumers. If you’re prepared to look beyond the big networks, there are even better deals to be had. Take MobiData, for example, which piggybacks on Three’s network: rather than
ABOVE Globalgig offers great coverage throughout Europe
“If you’re prepared to look beyond the big networks, there are better deals to be had”
LEFT The SIP2SIM web-based configuration tool doesn’t pass the “could my gran use it?” test
charging £7.50 for 1GB, it charges only a fiver (although then charges £20 for 10GB, which is more than Three’s £15, so choose wisely). The good thing about MobiData is that if you commit for three months it will double your data allowance, so that £5 per month will get you 2GB. What if you travel a lot? Well, if you’re going to Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Macau, Norway, Ireland, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland or the US, then the answer is easy – go with Three’s “Feel at Home” contract, which means that in these countries you’ll be charged exactly as if you were in the UK. Same prices, same bundle allowances and the rest. That’s great value for money, and works with Three’s normal phone contracts too. It’s a good deal, but that list is limiting, especially within Europe – no Germany or the Netherlands for example, both of which are popular destinations for business and recreational travel. A great alternative for those who regularly flit around all of Europe comes from Globalgig. The heavy-use bundles can be quite expensive (for example, £48 per month for 2GB), but if you can keep your usage lower, far more interesting is the company’s Try Before You Buy plan. This gives you 100MB per month free for three months, and 15p per MB thereafter. That’s exceptional value for European roaming, and it includes Australia, New Zealand and the US, too. Pricing structures are bewilderingly complicated in this marketplace, and the deals above won’t suit everyone, but hopefully they’ll provide a flavour of what’s out there. @PaulOckenden 115
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PROFESSOR IAIN E BUCHAN
“Thisisamajorstepforward thatislikelytoengageanew generationofpatients” A bright future of digital health(care) is closer than you might think – if we can lift the cultural and organisational barriers
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hat horizon of digital healthcare have you been sold? Genetic profiling and an app for every ailment? If so, you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s a long way to go from the current experience of booking an appointment with your GP. Here, from my vantage point as director of the Health e-Research Centre, I’ll explore how information technology could transform the way we interact with health services. Before I look at what’s wrong, let’s not lose sight of what’s right: the NHS is the envy of policymakers the world over. Since the first NHS patient was registered in 1948, there’s been a commitment to universal healthcare free at the point of need. Every day, 1.5 million patients are treated by a workforce of 1.7 million. The UK experiences better health, and spends less on healthcare, than nations of equivalent or greater wealth. Yet the current route of entry to this wonderful ecosystem of services is a telephonic gauntlet, with busy receptionists acting as gatekeepers. Designed to triage GP access according to need, the system isn’t without fault: patients must endure long waits in electronic holding pens; key symptoms remain unrevealed despite probing questions; fantastic ailments are proffered in Oscar-worthy attempts to work the system; and – my late mum’s favourite backup plan – patients resort to sitting in the waiting room to door-step the doctor. Herein lies the conundrum: on one hand, we have controlled access to the NHS, which delivers world-leading efficiency; on the other, the public have come to expect the online, on-demand services of a digital economy. But here also lies an opportunity to use digital resources to support self-care, freeing up the
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Professor Iain E Buchan is a professor in public health informatics at the University of Manchester and director of the Health e-Research Centre at the national Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research @profbuchan
“A typical NHS hospital IT department can have tens or hundreds of databases from a variety of vendors”
RIGHT People often stop taking a course of antibiotics too soon: connected health technologies can help support persisting with treatment and thus reduce the risks posed by drugresistant bacteria
time of health professionals for those who most need their help. Can self-care be underpinned with helplines, algorithms and a web of self-help recipes? Well, the NHS Direct experiment led to the 111 phone line and online symptom-checkers. These meet part of the need, but they don’t empower patients with personalised, persistent information about their health and care. What’s required is an easy-to-use combination of medical records and medical “textbooks”, open to both the patient and their care team at the same time. Is the NHS ready for this culture shift? Allow me to share with you a story of how one GP surgery in Manchester created a sea change in opinion, gluing the digital tomorrow to the reality of today. In 2000, a GP and colleague of mine, Dr Amir Hannan, had a special need to re-evaluate the way his practice interacted with its patients. Following the trial of infamous GP and serial killer Harold Shipman, Dr Hannan was appointed to help rebuild the practice’s patient-doctor relationships. To do this, he and his colleagues set about creating a “partnership of trust”, involving transparency
in the way they interacted with their patients. Central to this was patient access to records online – a controversial innovation at the time. Explaining to his patients how and why they should use this facility, Dr Hannan gradually saw the project snowball: patients not only accepted the partnership, they loved it. From the ashes of a real-life horror story sprang a community of engaged evangelists taking ownership of their local healthcare services. One of the most passionate advocates of patient access to records was Margaret Rickson. Sadly, Margaret passed away this year, but she wanted her story to be told. Since she suffered from a long-term lung complaint, Margaret struggled to pick up repeat prescriptions without getting out of breath. So, when she heard about Dr Hannan’s initiative, she took up IT lessons – at the age of 77 – acquired her first PC and became the first person in her community to order a repeat prescription online, making the most of the home-delivery service.
Barriers to change
The technologies used then, and now, to enable online access to NHS records were commonplace: web-based authentication (using credentials collected from the practice) and readonly rendering of records in a browser. Indeed, the innovation wasn’t technical but social, empowering patients to become more engaged in their healthcare and to influence the way local health services are delivered. Today, there are technical barriers to further innovation in access to health information and care. First, in terms of systems’ requirements: to envision holistic digital healthcare,
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we must create a new understanding of what a patient is – less a passive recipient and more a coproducer of care. Second, in terms of legacy systems: to plug the blind spot of what is happening to a patient’s health in between contacts with the NHS, we must join existing clinical information systems with the developing consumer health technologies that are centred on patients/citizens. Although Google and Microsoft have tried to establish personal health record systems that interoperate with clinical information systems such as GP records, the results have been underwhelming. Google Health was canned, and Microsoft’s HealthVault is making slower progress than expected. This shouldn’t be surprising: a typical NHS hospital IT department can have tens or hundreds of databases from a variety of vendors, with only a handful of staff who know how to integrate them. Even the integrated offerings from large vendors are effectively delivered as a “kit car”. Considering that the NHS is one of the world’s largest stores of computable clinical information, you might expect industry/NHS partnerships to be forming a crucible of personal health record innovation. However, this isn’t the case.
Sensitive systems
Why? Well, in addition to the blizzard of legacy systems, harnessing the raw data as actionable information isn’t as easy as it might seem. Let’s take a look at a typical GP record system. There are two main databases: the “demographic file” record, containing facts about you such as your name, your address, your date of birth, your NHS number and the GP with whom you are registered; and a “journal file” of healthcare transactions, such as a diagnosis code with the date it was made, who made it, and a text-based “rubric” describing the code, which the GP can edit. Diagnostic observations such as “COPD r/o” (shorthand for “chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has been ruled out”) can be found – so the information isn’t as computable as it first looks. Furthermore, the traditional record-keeping culture is one of “note to self about my patient, and messages to colleagues” rather than “information that my patient, I and other care-givers
Worldmags.net have recorded to support (self) care”, so you can understand why some doctors may not want to open up the record if they’ve been using shorthand that might misinform or offend. But things are about to change. From April 2015, the UK will mandate patient access online to GP records. This is a major step forward that is likely to engage a new generation of patients to take a more active interest in their health data. The notion of access for consuming information about oneself is then likely to give way to what health informaticians refer to as “coproduction”.
Patient power
Coproduction is the crossroads where actively engaged patients meet with technological advancement and capability. The result? An empowered community involved in the generation of its own health information – and the point where the dawn of personalised medicine breaks through. Patient-driven notes could be used to assist conversations with health professionals, tapping into a new source of valuable information. No longer will the blunt instrument of “how did you get on with your tablets?” be necessary at a follow-up visit to a GP, who too late discovers the patient stopped their course of antibiotics early because they were feeling better. Instead, an online story – via an NHS app or SMS loop – showing a drop-off in tablets being taken as quality-oflife scores pick up could prompt an alert to be sent to the primary care team, which could respond with supportive messages encouraging the patient to finish their course of tablets, thereby reducing the risk of breeding drug-resistant bacteria. At the same time, new healthcare signals will emerge from the booming market in wearables. Most of the major consumer IT companies are introducing smartwatches that can record changes in heart rate, movement and skin temperature. Although not intended for clinical use, the data could help alert patients who seem to be running into problems. For example, a patient with chronic lung disease who’s developing a serious chest infection might have an increase in temperature and heart rate that signal the need for treatment. Early treatment in the community can prevent deterioration and keep patients out of hospital – lowering
ABOVE Healthpromoting smartwatches that sense heart rate, skin temperature, position and motion aren’t licensed as medical devices, but they could empower patients with an “early warning system”
their risk of premature death or catching other infections, alleviating suffering and saving money that can be used to help other patients. There are regulatory obstacles to overcome, including the legal classification of clinical predictive algorithms as “medical devices”. As such, the health applications of smartwatch data may be restricted to the fitness market, which is less regulated than healthcare. This could deprive patients with long-term conditions of necessary innovation. Let’s look further into the future and imagine the ideal GP record. Simple: there isn’t one. Instead, personal health information is synthesised from multiple sources, ranging from wearables to multiple healthcare settings such as hospitals, general practices, community nurse visits, pharmacies and opticians.
Vision for the future
“Smartwatches can record changes in heart rate, movement and temperature... this could help alert patients who seem to be running into problems”
This information may start to look more like a digital avatar than a filing cabinet. Indeed, it needs to have different “personalities” to maximise the engagement of individuals in reporting changes in their symptoms and other personal health information that can guide care, while presenting the same information in different ways to health professionals. Embryonic developments of this kind of interaction can be seen at clintouch.com, where apps empower people to monitor their own symptoms and medication. Critically, the personality of the app is co-designed by the main users – the patients. There’s a long way to go from today’s apps to tomorrow’s health avatar, but substantial benefits can be realised incrementally. Crucially, the ideas and the will to utilise technology in this way are already in place. Of course, demand alone may not provide the environment needed to incubate complex innovations such as the healthcare avatar. A social contract between public-sector service providers and the general public, similar to that underpinning the NHS, may be required to help protect and govern the advancement of holistic digital healthcare. In addition, multiple nations and companies will need to work together if the algorithms supporting care are to learn in efficient and transparent ways. Yes, this is a big vision. @profbuchan 117
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DAVEY WINDER
“I’mfarmoreconcernedwith sitesusingencryptedconnections thanthecolourofmyaddressbar”
Some large corporations will turn up their noses at free website security, but an easy-to-implement HTTPS system should be welcomed by everyone
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oogle recently went “on message” regarding security by announcing that it will start giving a higher ranking to sites that use encrypted HTTPS connections, rather than unencrypted, plainvanilla HTTP ones that are open to far more abuse. Given that, while content remains king, SEO has become queen of the online commercial landscape, anything that encourages site owners to tighten security has to be a good thing. Indeed, there’s now a move towards “encryption by default” within Google, as can be seen by the way it treats its own services. Unfortunately – and especially lower down the business-sizeversus-profitability graph – many people find the cost and complexity of migrating their sites to HTTPS a huge stumbling block. Unless you have sufficient cash to pay your web developer (assuming you had the cash to use one in the first place) to apply for and handle the implementation of the necessary certification, chances are you won’t bother. Attempting to do it yourself could prove worse still: misconfiguring your certificate is all too easy, given the bureaucratic nature of the application process, and that leads to error messages and authentication warnings that nobody wants. This is where a new initiative, due to go live by the summer of 2015, comes in.
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Davey is an awardwinning journalist and consultant specialising in privacy and security issues @happygeek
“Let’s Encrypt could make HTTPS implementation a one-click process”
BELOW Migrating to HTTPS could be one click away – see Let’s Encrypt’s demo on YouTube
Let’s Encrypt (letsencrypt.org) is being touted as a new certificate authority that could make HTTPS application and implementation almost a one-click process – or at least turn a three-hour ordeal into a 20-second breeze. Backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Cisco and Mozilla, with help from researchers at the University of Michigan, Let’s Encrypt will issue and manage certificates automatically for anyone who wants one. It promises that migrating from HTTP to HTTPS will become a one-command process, made possible by a new protocol, the Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME), which supports stronger domainvalidation methods than we have at the moment. The plan also includes the employment of “internet-wide datasets of certificates”, such as the EFF’s own Decentralized SSL Observatory and Google’s Certificate Transparency logs, which aim to make better decisions about when certificates are safe to issue than we’re used to. At the helm will be a new non-profit outfit called the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). If it delivers on its claims to enable any domain owner to get a trusted certificate at absolutely no cost, and to make secure configuration of that certificate painless and simple, then I’m behind it all the way. I like the fact this will be a fully transparent service – all the issued and revoked certificates will be publicly recorded and available to inspect – and I also like the open standard nature of the automatic issuance and renewal protocol. I’m less sure that everyone reading the technical “how
it works” blurb at the Let’s Encrypt website will enjoy its constant use of the word “nonce”, though. Please relax, child molesters are not knowingly being employed to check certificate authenticity: “nonce” in this context refers to an arbitrary number used once in a cryptographic communication. More seriously, does Let’s Encrypt mean that the commercial certificate bandwagon is about to shed all four wheels? I’d like to think “yes” with regard to certificate charges and all the hoop-jumping associated with registration (an internet scandal worthy of Anne Robinson’s attention for far too long), but I somehow doubt it. Certificate authorities, despite their costs, complexities and security concerns over the years, will remain viable for many reasons, not least because of the business-size scale graph I mentioned earlier. Once you shift up from the middle regions to the top echelons, you’ll find plenty of organisations for whom trust, not cost, is the issue. Traditionally, the corporate mindset is wary of conceptual “free lunches”, which is sometimes, but not always, a good stance. In any case, I’m afraid these firms will continue to maintain the status quo for no better reason than that it’s always been this way – they believe a free service can’t possibly be as good as people being paid a king’s ransom. If Let’s Encrypt can achieve some degree of commoditisation in the certificate-issuing business, this attitude may change, but I doubt it: this new initiative will offer only the simplest of certificates, of the Domain-Validated (DV) variety. There’s a reason for this – it’s the only kind that will be easy to automate, since it requires only proof of domain ownership to acquire. However, many larger organisations want the perceived greater degree of user trust that comes from an Extended-Validation (EV) certificate. These require much more in terms of documentation than domain ownership (and will turn your browser’s address bar green, if your browser supports such frills). These EV versions are business/ organisational certificates only, so we may soon see a split between business and personal users when it comes to certificate-authority use. I predict smaller businesses will inevitably be attracted towards the no-cost option, though. I repeat: I’m happy with that, since I’m
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far more concerned with sites using encrypted connections than the colour of my browser address bar.
Hotel Wi-Fi is dead
Like many PC Pro readers, I do a fair amount of business travel and stay in plenty of hotels and motels, which means I use a lot of hotel Wi-Fi. Actually, let me rephrase that: I used to use a lot of hotel Wi-Fi. This is no longer the case, because hotel Wi-Fi is for the most part dead, as far as I’m concerned, for reasons of speed, greed and insecurity. The first two failings – high costs and low speeds – fit naturally together: as broadband speeds have risen in the past few years (on paper, at least), so have the exorbitant rates being charged for what has essentially become a commoditised service. In Google’s definition of “exorbitant”, it offers the example “some hotels charge exorbitant rates for phone
calls”, which is accurate but rather dated, since everyone with any sense makes calls on their mobile nowadays. Similarly, anyone in their right mind should be using mobile data for hotel internet access – after all, you or your employer are already paying for a contract that includes data. The savvy user will have an unlimited data account and access to 4G networks, which are the final nails in the coffin of hotel Wi-Fi. Most places I’ve visited in the past six months have had 4G coverage, and a little in-room speed testing has shown download speeds as high as 38Mbits/sec and uploads at an impressive 17Mbits/sec. To compare and contrast with the Wi-Fi available in the same rooms, I coughed up for one exorbitant hour everywhere I stayed, which proved my point – the best it bought me was 18Mbits/sec downstream and 6Mbits/sec up. Both tests were completed on the
Worldmags.net same tablet (attached to a keyboard case, but the “hotel laptop is dead” debate this suggests is for another column). Even when I’ve stayed in backwaters where 4G has yet to arrive, I’ve found that 3G remains preferable: contention on hotel Wi-Fi systems tends to be so severe that there’s far less lag over a 3G connection, which means I get more work done for less cost. Wi-Fi leases are often kept up for far too long – eight hours in some cases – which just clogs up the network for no good reason. The budgeting becomes more complicated overseas, depending on which network plan you have and whether you can procure a local SIM with data included at a reasonable price. It’s far from impossible, though, and almost always a better deal than the hotel offering. The experiences of my fellow Real World columnists seem to confirm this: when Jon Honeyball is in the US, he simply tops up his SIM card, sticks it into an Android handset and turns on its Wi-Fi hotspot feature. If you work for someone else, you may not care about the costs, but I’ve been running my own business for 20 years and such expenses remain important to my bottom line (see Paul Ockenden’s column, p115, to find out which networks offer the best deals for mobile data overseas). Then there are security issues to consider – or, more to the point, insecurity issues, which arise when you use “guest” Wi-Fi in public areas such as the lounge, or when in-room internet access is free. Packet-sniffing applications, network analysers – whatever you call them – are out there by the score, and some of this software is very sophisticated indeed. It’s simple enough to be used by anyone with a little technical know-how – and the captured data will be easily understood by those with a little more – so such apps make it easy to pull passwords out of thin air. Readily available software even offers the chance to piggyback an open session while someone else is still using it, gaining access to their
ABOVE Kaspersky has published a free in-depth technical report on Darkhotel, available at pcpro. link/245dw
LEFT Certificates help to keep us safe online, whether or not the browser text is green
“You can mitigate the risk of using any unsecured Wi-Fi network, but the most secure option is to avoid using them at all”
account and data. Yes, we all know about using secure connections through VPNs, HTTPS and so on – assuming the server side supports them, of course. However, not all service providers support encrypted email connectivity from an external IP address if you venture outside your corporateinbox comfort zone, for example by indulging in a little personal surfing in your downtime. Oh, and just because the email connection is encrypted to the server doesn’t necessarily mean the pre-connection password handshaking is always secure. You can mitigate the risk of using any unsecured Wi-Fi network, but the most secure option is to avoid using them at all, since it only takes one error of judgement, one slip of the finger, to let in the bad guys. Ever heard of the Evil Twin attack, for example, in which a bad guy sets up a hotspot in a hotel with a plausiblesounding name, then sits back and reaps the stolen data rewards as client after client connects to it, thinking they’re hopping on the official hotel network?
Heartbreak Hotel
As I was writing this column, an even more sophisticated hotel Wi-Fi threat came to light, known as Darkhotel. This one’s interesting, since it appears to target not merely the business traveller, but specifically the high-value, executive-level business traveller. It’s part of a pretty sophisticated advanced persistent threat (APT) attack, whereby the bad guys identify their victim in advance – presumably by social engineering and spear phishing – to determine his or her travel plans, including hotel locations. Researchers at Kaspersky Lab, working in conjunction with a luxury hotel Wi-Fi management company in Asia, have determined that the Darkhotel group – a name that’s being applied both to the gang and the method of attack – has been active for at least seven years. Once the target connects to the hotel Wi-Fi network, they’re redirected, via a pop-up, to a software update that installs a malicious 119
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executable that already resides on the hotel’s server. Okay, so this is at the extreme end of the hotel Wi-Fi risk spectrum, considering how targeted these victims are, and it would appear zero-days, kernel-mode keyloggers and reverse-engineered security certificates are all involved in pulling it off. Given that all the targets to date seem to have been drawn from the defence or nuclear-power industries, there’s more than a whiff of statesponsored shenanigans in this ploy. This scam goes way beyond the arguments I’ve made above about insecure hotel Wi-Fi, but I felt it interesting enough to merit inclusion anyway, if only to highlight the danger that hotel environments can present to the unwary. My main problems with secure, in-room hotel Wi-Fi concern price and throughput rather than security. I’d expect any decent hotel, or more likely its third-party network provider, to keep the in-room network separate from the guest network, using VLAN/switch-port/ wireless isolation to prevent rogue users from accessing other network user resources. Similarly, employing a combination of Internet Control Messaging Protocol (ICMP) snooping, to stop the Evil Twin attacks, and firewalling of the access points – to drop private-network-routed IP traffic – helps keep the commercial network system as secure as possible. Unsecured, free access is a different matter. Let’s face it: when I’ve finished a hard day of work and get back to my hotel, I tend to kick back and relax, which often means frequenting the bar or lounge area rather than my room. That’s when I’m at my most vulnerable, and it’s precisely when the attacker wants to strike, since I’m more likely to make a silly mistake. To help keep bad guys from your data, remove hotel “guest” Wi-Fi from the equation; use VPNs and encrypted connections; don’t allow any software updates away from your own network; and keep your guard up at all times. Bear this in mind and treat all hotel networks as potentially dangerous – and as ridiculously poor value – and you can’t go too far wrong.
“Ourconversationaboutcollaborative technologiesservedtoshedlightinto thedarkercornersofhisjob...”
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Highlighting an organisation’s true way of working could have resulted in one employee’s decision to head for the door
I
think I may have just made someone walk out of his job in a fit of pique. It’s difficult to tell, because once they’ve gone, there’s no well-developed business etiquette for ringing them up to ask, “I say old chap, was that me?” However, since the departure followed soon after a meeting with me on the subject of “collaboration”, there are grounds for suspecting that I was the reason. Collaboration is something of a dirty word at the moment: it’s perfectly clear that a lot of marketmaking dealers in the big banks have been “collaborating” all right, in ways they weren’t meant to, and using tools they shouldn’t have been using. The most incriminating evidence in the latest market-rigging scandal was, after all, a series of log files that somebody had kept of chats in ordinary consumer-style chatrooms. I should declare an interest here, since I’ve been paid to work for at least one of the banking giants involved in the scandal, one that was indeed mentioned in Channel 4 economics editor Paul Mason’s superbly informal rant. A video of Mason’s words went viral (see pcpro.link/245net1), and it was the kind of media spotlighting, so I suspect, which drove that guy to storm out after my meeting in a huff, because just before news of that banking scandal broke, he was an unashamed proponent of both social communication and collaborative working. My interest in the idea of collaboration goes back to the days of dealing-room technology, when the mode of communication for official records was the Telex machine. Giant lumps of cast metal,
Steve is a consultant who specialises in networks, cloud, HR and upsetting the corporate apple cart @stardotpro
BELOW Back in the day, official information was recorded using the Telex machine
featuring columnar Bakelite keys, which drove a bucketful of powerful solenoids to whack out messages onto a multipart roll of paper, character by character with finger-tingling thuds. Sometimes, I’d look at these rolls that recorded a week’s worth of trades – at the leisurely pace of the Telex, “collaboration” was limited to “OK CU”, or perhaps at the end of the day “OK BIBI” between dealers who knew one another well. But even back in the mid-1980s (and starting far earlier), banks knew of the importance of recording the communication that flowed through their dealing rooms, because the rate of accusations of bad behaviour was fairly constant, even if the rate of bad intentions was a whole lot lower than today. Read chatroom transcripts from the current scandal, featuring words such as “numpty” and “mug” scattered throughout, and the evidence of malice is overwhelming. Back then, no matter what the means of conversation, the rules were firmly in place: the banks could reasonably request their staff to only communicate with customers and fellow traders using methods that presented an audit trail. No audit trail meant no commitment, and this
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applied equally to the traditional dealer’s method of working, which was over voice circuits: point-to-point spider webs of direct copper lines ensured that not even a dial-tone delay intruded into the completion of fast-moving market trades. They may sound like an ideal opportunity to scam the market, were it not for the presence of large, ponderously turning tape recorders in a rack in the corner of the room... Fast-forward to the 21st century and collaboration seems to be offered under two almost diametrically opposed headings. On the one hand there’s corporate collaboration, in which we employ Track Changes in Microsoft Word, forwarding trails of emails and attachments, group calendars, shared folders; pretty well the entire IT armoury when it comes to the ways in which teams can work together. On the other, there’s the intrusion of consumer-targeted services in the workplace, which is a complete nightmare since these consumer apps – starting from basic text messaging and working up to WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger – are delivered over the air, not via the corporate network. My esteemed colleague, Mr Winder, this month writes about the death of hotel Wi-Fi thanks to the rise of 4G networks, but my point is about another, unannounced, death – namely, the death of any chance of having your staff concentrate on their jobs, on the security and liabilities of your business, or even on the truck they’re driving. Whenever a message comes in, the implied assumption of all these mobile services is that your adult self should drop everything and encourage your inner child to grab the shiny, buzzing, flashing thing and read it. There are very few classical network-traffic style fixes for this problem. Even if shallow collaboration via bits of chitchat data is passing through your firewalls, most chat-platform makers retreat to standards whenever the question of logging and monitoring is raised. Yes, I do understand that Facebook Messenger uses an evolution of Jabber, and that Jabber is covered in the extensible messaging and presence protocol (XMPP) standards documents, but that doesn’t go anywhere towards helping me add a syslog or firewall rule to pull that traffic out of the stream in a coherent manner. Incidentally, while checking to make sure I wasn’t walking a plank
Worldmags.net with that assertion, I happened across pcpro.link/245net2, which should keep those hardcore techies who seek a low-level solution to this problem occupied for hours. Once you add mobile (over the masts, not via Wi-Fi) into the mix, the problem of tracking chatroom collaboration becomes worse still. The solution is likely to arise through mobile device management (MDM) – permitting only companyapproved apps onto company-supplied phones – but fine-grained control of collaborative chat-type traffic isn’t on the cards in Bring Your Own Device scenarios. The fact is that the banking disaster wouldn’t have been held back for very long by any such implementation, since the Bad Guys would have just brought in their own phones anyway, and taken the risk of being caught using them. I foresee a near future in which corporations at risk from unguarded, unthinking collaboration tools will invest in mobile-phone signal detectors and jammers. This could be the only rational response to the curiously permissive world of the mobile networks. Or perhaps in this future where companies can insist on a “messaging disclosure clause” as part of their employment contract, so they can approach a network operator or application-platform provider with a personal freedom-of-information request (another form of collaboration that members of staff, both good and bad, may find rather uncomfortable when used). The other type of collaboration – the sort that caused my man to resign – isn’t so much about informal back channels, juvenile chitchat and cliquish plotting. It’s of the kind that’s likely to become far more apparent following Microsoft’s recent announcement that it’s integrating Microsoft Office with Dropbox. This has all the hallmarks of giving in to the inevitable, since Microsoft’s cloud file-storage/sharing service isn’t quite as well regarded by customers as Dropbox. There’s already a whole generation of business people for whom the file server or NAS box is a strange, foreign object. I claim to be able to spot these folk from miles away – they’re the ones whose lights are still on in the wee small hours as they wait
ABOVE Conversations via collaboration tools within the financial sector need to be trackable
“I foresee a future in which corporations at risk of unguarded collaboration tools will invest in mobilephone signal detectors and jammers”
for absurdly large Dropbox syncs to complete (often between two machines in the same room). I’m aware that there are probably workarounds, but this sort of user doesn’t do workarounds – to them it’s all about brand names and free stuff. What they’re pursuing is a number of ambitious ideas floated during Dropbox’s expansive phase of the past few years, which aim to speed up publication through collaboration – but in reality the “collaboration” is simply the Word document being republished in a tablet-friendly format that can only be read and not edited. It appears that what made my not-quite-a-colleague resign so abruptly was that he’d suddenly realised that the business he’d recently joined wasn’t being wilfully backward and curmudgeonly by failing to use document collaboration. Rather, the whole way his business was structured was not about people working in open, ad hoc, equal-status teams, but instead a ruthless, top-down hierarchy in which individuals were given clear briefs that they were expected to work on in isolation, with the boss making the final decision about published content. Our conversation about collaborative technologies merely served to shed light into the darker corners of his job description, and revealed the true reason why his office was low on banter, paperaeroplane competitions and had no pool table. So he left.
Identity crisis
The modern-day identity crisis is best illustrated by another little anecdote from PC Pro’s friends down at the Millpool Community Centre in 121
Real world computıng Cornwall. On my last visit, they discovered that to accomplish their next task in server-side work, they had to investigate whether their basic BT Business router could support PPPoE, as a way of deferring to their firewall as the landing device for their external IP address. As is usual in such situations, they were obliged to call BT’s helpline to obtain the router device password and also the DSL authentication username and password. Now, normally, if I’m with a client when this sort of issue crops up, I go shopping – partly because, as I get older, I find it increasingly agonising to listen to the whole telephonesupport process, but also because I want to make very plain that I don’t want to be seen hanging around and charging money for simply waiting on some other business’ voodoo ritual. On this occasion (low season in southern Cornwall), there was no shopping I could do, so I waited around and got to be a fly on the wall as BT’s helpdesk tried to validate a technical enquiry call about a Business DSL account by asking for the mother’s maiden name. Millpool are a jolly lot, there was much tittering and everybody offered up their own mother’s maiden name to see whether there was a positive hit, but of course this only made things worse because the identityvalidation script in the call centre at the other end raises a red flag if the security questions are answered wrongly. Eventually, the gatekeeper at the other end saw the stupidity of the situation, sidestepped security and we received our answers, but the whole silly process took about 20 minutes, and it wasn’t the only case they’d been through like this. Quite a lot of the attendees at Millpool’s regular computer clinics arrive there to try to figure out what’s gone wrong with their password for one service or another, and this is, I think, going to turn into a whole new type of user support. We’ve been used to the idea that getting someone’s PC or tablet to run cleanly, securely and with a well-chosen spread of apps marks the end of responsibility for the classic support nerd. Fiddling about with email accounts and passwords is the province of the end users themselves, and they don’t expect
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to have to pay anybody to help them sort it all out. However, that attitude was only sustainable as long as your identity (or that of your company) remained separate from that email address. Now, the opposite is true: many utilities, social services, government departments, mega-corporations and charities all treat your email address as your first and best identity, even if you’re fronting an enormous organisation yourself. Identity validation and, more importantly, recovery is based on a fairly simple list of things about you, and when it goes wrong the recovery processes make use of a long time lag as the primary means to shake off the fakers. So we now have a situation in which Google Maps resorts to sending you a postcard, after a random delay of anything up to a month. Millpool’s other story was about a family whose Yahoo address had been compromised, but who couldn’t reach the security-validation emails that were being sent to their original, cable-TV-provider-supplied email ID following a house move away from the coverage patch of that supplier. They too were kept in a month-long limbo since paper validation has a built-in, deliberate delay. These types of folderols don’t feel technical in the slightest, but they stand in the way of any technical progress being made. Perhaps most perniciously, they also stand in the way of a techie being paid for a piece of work he’s agreed to do. I can’t think of any way of charging a home user a reasonable sum that will cover “oh yes, I’ll just stay on call to dash back and continue any time next month once your postcard from Google finally turns up”. I expect that in the future an entirely new kind of job will emerge, growing out of the IT support business more at an individual than a company level, and it will exhibit much of the look and feel of the old notary public – someone who knows how to approach these big cloud providers, and the weird government departments, and the insurance
ABOVE Hunting down the password and authentication username of BT’s router wasn’t a pain-free process
“Eventually the gatekeeper at the other end saw the stupidity of the situation... but the whole process took about 20 minutes”
companies; someone who tracks the way their procedures and their responses change, and how that might affect their customer’s ability to use their service portals. This new job would be deployed on a subscription basis, so you’d treat it a bit like professional-indemnity insurance, paying a peppercorn annual fee for the right to get in contact and request help with some pointlessly stupid bureaucratic trap that only looks technical because it’s suddenly been enshrined in a web page or a mobile app. Also in my dream future there will be a strong difference between consumer, fun and friendly trivial identities, and the far more serious and lifelong variety. Perhaps a life-insurance business, whose customer-retention periods stretch into the multiple decades, would be the one to issue that kind of address, with some flashy, physical identity management included so that it didn’t fall into the trap of bizarre and actively harmful identity validation. I have to relegate all this to dream status for now, first because the existing businesses and institutions best placed to take up such a role have manifestly failed to do so (British Telecom, j’accuse), and second, the whole tech-support business has passively allowed this to become a massive problem, by standing idly by while operations types dream up authentication procedures that look good as part of a slick sign-up process, but collapse later in the lifecycle of the relationship (or the user!). What’s needed more immediately is a nice label, a phrase that a techie can use to describe something that’s purely a validation problem; a matter of dancing the right dance at the right time when engaged with some indifferent, poorly regulated, gargantuan monolith, with no revenue stream attached to your request and no likelihood that under-servicing you will have any comeback to the individual or the business. I’d like to propose “Kafkaism” or “Kafka’s Paradox” as a suitable label, although I suspect that quite a few of the individuals whose indolence creates the problems aren’t actually educated to a sufficient standard to have come across Franz K’s work. Since most people’s reactions to these situations are to cover their phone mouthpiece and vent a string of expletives, perhaps a better label would be “four-letter problems”.
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Futures Slug Sectionhead
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We explore the trends and technologies that are set to shape the future
Creating digital art in Minecraft Virtual worlds for Tate visitors to explore p126
Gorilla Glass 4 The new drop-proof coating that could save your screen p127
Geek Day Out Experience the potential of 3D printing in Manchester p128
Arerobots really goingto take yourjob?
To avoid that outcome, Deloitte suggested, employees need to improve skills and companies must help with retraining. But are jobs really at risk? Any research is speculative, but the idea splits even AI and robotics experts; a recent Pew Research survey (pcpro.link/ 245pew) suggested that 48% believe “robots and digital agents” will displace blue- and white-collar workers, with the prospect of mass unemployment, while 52% said such technologies won’t displace more jobs than they create.
Oxford researchers have warned that a third of UK jobs could be lost to robots. Nicole Kobie separates the fact from the fiction
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obots and automation will take over more than a third of UK jobs over the next two decades, researchers have predicted – and if that sounds familiar, we’re not surprised. It’s hardly the first caution sounded over smart machines. The experts are in agreement. “There’s no sector of the economy that’s going to get a pass”, software entrepreneur and author Martin Ford has declared. MIT scientist Andrew McAfee warns that “the jobs that are going away aren’t coming back.” Economists Jeffery Sachs and Laurence Kotlikoff see a worrying potential “for smart machines to engender long-term misery”.
These dire warnings appear to be backed up by the latest research from the University of Oxford, with Carl Frey and Michael Osborne warning in a Deloittecommissioned report that 35% of jobs are at high risk of being lost to automation in the next two decades. Angus Knowles-Cutler, a senior partner at Deloitte, has argued that “technological advances are likely to cause a major shift in the UK labour market in the coming decades”, with many people facing unemployment. “A widening gap between haves and have-nots is also a risk as lower-skill jobs continue to disappear,” he added.
■ Which jobs could go?
ABOVE Rethink Robotics’ Baxter could bring robots within reach for small businesses
LEFT Robots have long been used in industrial settings such as car factories 124
Some jobs are clearly at risk: self-driving cars are already to be found on US roads, and Daimler has shown off its Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 – so named because that’s when the self-driving truck is expected to hit the roads. Meanwhile, US general Robert Cone said in January 2014 that drones and robots may let the army cut the size of a combat team by a quarter; California-based Knightscope has created the 5ft-tall K5 Autonomous Data Machine that can roll around a building as a security guard; and Amazon is running a competition to create automated shelf-pickers. IPsoft’s Amelia AI is already used to take customer-service calls (see issue 242, p128) and even burger-flippers may be replaced: San Francisco’s Momentum Machines has built a machine that cooks 360 burgers an hour to order, even slicing vegetables. The Oxford research suggests that low-skill, highly repetitive jobs are most at risk, such as sales staff, drivers, construction workers and office administration staff. “These trends are already well underway,” the report ominously noted. Not all jobs are at risk: the report concluded that 40% of jobs across the UK are safe from automation. Those in “skilled” management, financial services, engineering and science,
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Futures Robots
Workplaceaccidents Robots are hardly a new arrival in many workplaces – car factories being one obvious example – but as they make more inroads into industry, and become more advanced, there’s a greater safety risk. So far, there have been few accidents: a New York Times report revealed a total of 33
deaths or injuries in the US due to robots at work in the past three decades. Even then, details of some accidents suggest human error may have been the cause. However, at the moment, most robots are specialised machines doing repetitive work, often inside “cages” to keep human limbs out
education, media, the arts and healthcare are all secure from robot usurping – as are those in computing. Before readers breathe a sigh of relief, note that there’s disagreement over the jobs that will be affected. The Oxford research suggests those most at risk are lower-skilled, but in 2014 then science minister David Willetts pointed out computers are better at cognitive functions than simpler tasks. “Giving a cup of tea to a little old lady is a bigger robotics challenge than chess against Kasparov,” he said in a speech at Policy Exchange. Much of what we see as intelligent work isn’t hard to replace, such as accountancy, or “significant areas of” journalism, Willetts said, pointing out that Bloomberg has long used computers to automate reporting of corporate results, and that USA Today runs a computer-generated weather article on its front page. “Some of these things that we think of as quite high-level cognitive may be more likely to be computerised ahead of giving that little old lady a cup of tea.”
of the way; as that shifts to smarter machines that move around, there’s more of a risk of accidents with people. On the other hand, robots may improve safety: the majority of car crashes are human error; self-driving cars can’t get distracted, tired or drunk.
Asked about structural unemployment, Willetts recalled ecalled when offices were filled with th “typing pools” of young women – a role that no longer exists, sts, but where workers could find alternative employment easily – but admitted coal-mining areas of the UK were less flexible and hadn’t rebounded as well. “Advances in technology gy dramatically change the type of work we do, but they won’t mean there’s less work as a whole to go around,” he said. “We’ve had two centuries of dramatic technological change, and there are more British people in work than ever before.”
ABOVE A recent Pew Research survey revealed a lack of consensus over whether jobs are at risk from robots
Indeed, Rodney Brooks, the inventor of Baxter (see Meet Baxter, below), suggested to Wired that the rise of robots could bring manufacturing back to Britain. “We think of manufacturing as happening in China,” he said. “But as costs sink because of robots, the costs of transportation become a far greater factor than the cost of production. Nearby will be cheap. So we’ll get this network of locally franchised factories, where most things will be made within five miles of where they are needed.” Even if we do lose jobs to robots, there’s an upside: we rob can work less. However, we need nee to find a way to ensure people make enough to afford to peo buy the products of robot labour, noted not Noah Smith, an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook profes University – and to make sure all Univer the world’s labour doesn’t end up wo in the hands of a few US tech firms. In the same paper for Nesta, he added: “A society with cheap add robot labour would be an incredibly prosperous one, but we will need to find some way for the vast majority of human beings to share in that prosperity, or we risk the kinds of dystopian outcomes that now exist only in science fiction.”
MeetBaxter
Images of Baxter: Rethink Robotics
■ Job creation
Even if jobs do disappear, it’s nothing to be alarmed about, since such job churn is always happening, according to think tank the Adam Smith Institute. “The economy destroys 10% [of] (for the UK, three million) jobs each year,” noted senior fellow Tim Worstall in an essay on the think tank’s website. “Unemployment doesn’t rocket by that amount because the economy also, roughly you understand, creates three million jobs each year.” We can’t even imagine many of those new jobs yet. “As has happened before, as has been happening for centuries, as the machines take over the muck spreading, then the muck spreaders go off to do something else. Usually, something a little less smelly and more enjoyable,” Worstall said. However, while there may be the same number of jobs, they may be in different places or be less meaningful work – the number of “middle-class” jobs such as secretaries has already slumped thanks to technology.
Baxter is the Raspberry Pi of industrial robotics: it’s flexible, easy to use, and relatively cheap – at $25,000 for the base model, it’s potentially affordable for smaller businesses. Made by Rethink Robotics, Baxter is described as an “interactive production robot”. Rather than taking over one repetitive job from humans, Baxter can learn a variety of tasks. And you don’t need a degree in programming to teach it. Baxter can be trained simply by showing it what to do; hold its hands and run them through the process you need it to complete, and the OS will save the pattern.
Unlike other robots, Baxter doesn’t need to be caged off for the safety of co-workers. It’s been designed to be safe to work alongside humans, with no parts that can grab or pinch people, sensors that can tell what it’s touching, and a large Off switch. Rethink Robotics was founded by Rodney Brooks, who also set up iRobot – the company that makes Roombas. Not surprisingly, Rethink Robotics doesn’t think robots will steal jobs. Jim Lawton, chief marketing officer, said in a blog post: “The simple fact that technology makes human life better has been proven over and over and over again.”
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Welcometothefuture ofdigitalart:Minecraft TheTatehasteamedupwiththedevelopersofMinecrafttobringartworktolife insidetheinsanelypopularblock-buildinggame.Wespoketocreatorandartist, AdamClarke,tofindoutwhyhethinksthefutureofartisdigital PLAYERS OF MINECRAFT are used to building their own works of art, but now they can explore André Derain’s The Pool of London and Christopher Nevinson’s futurist look at New York, Soul of the Soulless City, while immersed in the popular game. And there’s plenty more to come. We blocked out some of creator Adam Clarke’s time to ask him a few key questions.
■ You first came up with the idea of art in Minecraft for a competition run by Tate, but you didn’t win. How did the project still happen? After I didn’t win, Tate got in touch with me and proposed a collaboration. They commissioned me to design eight Minecraft maps that explore different paintings – to create Minecraft maps so we could literally walk into those paintings and explore them and have a little adventure. We brought together some of the best makers of Minecraft maps in the world, and also some game designers in order to do Redstone [the name of Minecraft’s in-game programming tool] and some command-log stuff, and we built it all from scratch.
Images ©Tate
■ It’s been suggested that Minecraft is a good way to get children into coding. How do you think your project fits into that? We’re in a YouTube culture, where young people will tend to use YouTube rather than television or traditional forms of media to get the information on stuff they’re interested in. With this project, we’re going to be using YouTube to inform them about how we built the maps. If you’re interested in the coding part of it, you can look up how we coded these games, and even attempt to do it yourself. If you’re interested in the artwork side of it – making and building – you can follow that kind of pursuit. So it’s a whole range of different kinds of ideas. ■ Why is Minecraft so appealing to children? Minecraft has amazing appeal because it’s one of the few places children are allowed to be creative 126
and spontaneous. They have more freedom in the game than they have probably ever had in a classroom. Also, the Minecraft experience isn’t intimidating.
RIGHT & BELOW Christopher Nevinson’s Soul of the Soulless City in paint and in Minecraft BOTTOM André Derain’s The Pool of London reimagined
■ Are there any more pieces of art on the list? We have six more maps to produce. The two we’re working on next are a painting called The Toy Shop by Peter Blake and Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, by John Singer Sargent. ■ Do you think the future of art is digital? I have a six-year-old boy and he doesn’t see a distinction between digital [and not]. For him, digital things and paintings, they hold the same value. So something that’s created by me in clay, for example, has a similar value to something that’s coded or made up of pixels. I think the next generation of young people will take on board the talent behind a pixel and the talent behind a piece of clay as being of equal value to one another. I think this is already being talked about, especially in computer games and within the entertainment industry, which will lead to meaningful art and authentic digital experiences too. If you have Minecraft, you can download Clarke’s artwork-themed maps at pcpro.link/245minecraft.
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Whatis... GorillaGlass4? Everdroppedandsmashedyourphone?Theclever folksatCorningaretryingtopreventshattered displayswiththelatestversionofGorillaGlass
Futures
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OurpickofUKtech projectsonKickstarter andIndiegogo
SinclairZX SpectrumVega Is the ZX Spectrum really back? First released in 1982, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum is a British computing icon – and now it has been reworked as an ’80s-style games console. It’s being made by Luton-based Retro Computers, a start-up backed by Sir Clive Sinclair’s Sinclair Research. If you’re wondering about the use of the official Spectrum name, it’s under licence from Sky In-Home Service, which obtained the IP rights from Spectrum via Amstrad.
Smartphones are like toast: drop them and they always seem to land on the unfortunate side. But rather than smearing jam on your floor and ruining your breakfast, you’re left with a shattered display. Corning, the creator of the toughened glass that’s used to cover displays on more than three billion devices around the world, has decided enough is enough. Gorilla Glass? Is that for monkey exhibits at zoos? Don’t be silly – gorillas aren’t monkeys. Gorilla Glass is a specially strengthened glass – technically, it’s an alkalialuminosilicate glass – used on top of LCD or OLED panels. Corning strengthens its glass by dipping it into molten potassium salt at 400°C, which leads to an ion switcheroo: smaller sodium ions are drawn out and replaced by larger potassium ions. When it cools, the larger ions press together, increasing the tension and the strength of the glass. And this is used on all phones? On some models. Corning claims Gorilla Glass is used across 40 brands on more than 1,300 models – including the iPhone and iPad – but other phones and tablets use a different type of toughened glass, with the tasty name “soda lime”. Apple also uses sapphire glass to cover the fingerprint reader on newer iPhones. So exactly how drop-proof is this fourth version? The company realised that most smartphone displays are broken after being dropped, so it has focused its attention on making its glass stand up to fumbling fingers and gravity. It designed a test that
simulates a smartphone falling one metre and hitting a rough surface, such as asphalt or concrete. According to Corning, devices fronted with soda-lime glass shattered almost all of the time, while gadgets boasting Gorilla Glass 4 survived 80% of the time – and twice as often as “similar” alkali-aluminosilicate glasses, which we’re assuming means Gorilla Glass 3. You can watch the test video here: pcpro.link/245gg4. Sounds like dark magic. Well, we’re certainly being kept in the dark when it comes to details. The glassmaker is saying simply that scientists “formulated” Gorilla Glass 4 with “drop performance” in mind. There must be something you can tell me? Okay, okay. The new version is thinner: a 0.4mm sheet of Gorilla Glass 4 can handle twice the pressure of a 0.55mm sheet of Gorilla Glass 3, which means smartphone makers have another way to shave thickness from their devices.
How does it work? There’s little technical detail available, but the creators say it combines a low-cost ARM microcontroller with “a clever piece of software”. The device itself is a small Spectrum-style box, with a joypad and four keys on the top. It plugs into your TV, so you don’t need a monitor. What games can it play? The Vega comes preloaded with 1,000 Spectrum games, but it supports all 14,000 games that were developed for the original device, some of which Retro Computers will make available as free downloads (it’s working with “original Spectrum game developers” to secure their permission to run old games, and will give a software royalty donation to the Great Ormond Street Hospital). If you have any old Spectrum games – and we’re impressed at your nostalgia if you do – you can run them via an SD card. What does it cost? Here’s the bad news: the initial batch of 1,000 were snapped up within days. Retro Computers has already committed to a second manufacturing run, though, with prices likely to remain at £100 per unit – £25 cheaper than the original machine. You can also show support by shelling out for artwork and books autographed by Sir Clive himself, and £75 buys an invite to the launch party. We’re hoping booze is included. Likely to get funded? Already there – the £100,000 funding goal was surpassed within three days. You have until 30 January 2015 to take part, with the first units due for delivery in April. Link: pcpro.link/245spectrum
When can I expect my phone to toughen up? Gorilla Glass 4 samples are already with Corning’s customers, so expect it to start fronting phones and tablets from early 2015. It may well end up in other places, too, as the company is pushing its toughened glass as a stronger material for car windscreens and smart appliances in the home – it’s one thing to have to put up with a shattered smartphone, another thing entirely if it’s your fridge that’s cracked. 127
Futures
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GeekDayOut
Comingup
Manchester’sMuseumofScience&Industryisfocusingon3Dprinting,witha collectionofprintedobjectsthatrangefromheartsandbikestoapairofknickers
10TB SSDs
Intel and Samsung are both using 3D NAND to boost SSD capacity, with the former promising 10TB drives within two years
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as hree-dimensional printing has captured the imaginations of many, including the curators at Manchester’s Museum of Science & Industry. While a visit to MOSI has always been an excellent day out, it’s now even more enticing thanks to a 3D-printing exhibit, which features objects from a printed heart to a pair of printed undies – yes, really. “Everyone has heard of 3D printing, but many don’t know much about it,” curator Sarah Baines told PC Pro. “With this exhibition, we aim to help people understand what it is and how it might change their lives, both now and in the future.” Aside from a “surprisingly” wide collection of 3D-printed objects, if you visit at weekends or holidays, the “3D: Printing the Future” exhibit will also include a working printer and an expert at hand to explain how it works. “If visitors already own a 3D printer, I hope they’ll be inspired and fascinated to see what other people have been imagining and creating,” Baines said.
I hope visitors will be inspired and fascinated to see what people have been imagining and creating 128
ABOVE The world’s first 3D-printed fir bike frame is bik among other amo 3D-printed items 3Dshow at MOSI on sho
Baines’ favourite object is the Baines world’s first fully 3D-printed metal bike frame, by Bolton’s Empire Cycles. “It’s both stronger and lighter than a traditional frame, and it looks cool,” she said. “It’s not all metal; we have a pair of 3D-printed knickers as well, made of a revolutionary new 3D-printed fabric called Cosyflex,” she added. The museum also highlights the industrial history of Manchester, featuring a walkthrough Victorian sewer, a gallery of classic transportation and one stop in particular that PC Pro readers shouldn’t miss: “Don’t forget to meet Baby,” Baines said. “The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), nicknamed the ‘Baby’ computer, was the world’s first computer to store and run a program.” The 3D: Printing the Future exhibition is free to all visitors and is open daily until 19 April 2015. Head to pcpro.link/245mosi for more details.
LEFT 3D-printed knickers, made from a new 3D-printed fabric called Cosyflex
Solid-state drives offer thinner form factors and better performance than their hard-drive cousins, but remain far more expensive per gigabyte. Thanks to 3D NAND technology, this could be set to change. Intel and its partner Micron are promising a 10TB SSD within two years at a “breakthrough price”. 3D NAND architecture stacks memory chips vertically on a die, extending capacity in a smaller space – which in turn helps cut power consumption and interference. According to Rob Crooke, vice president of Intel’s Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group, the company is stacking 32 layers of NAND memory on each die for a density of 32GB to 48GB per die. This will not only enable Intel to offer 10TB SSDs, but it will also make it possible to provide 1TB of storage in a 2mm package, Crooke said – potentially offering a leap forward for mobile-device storage capacity. The technology should hit shelves within two years and be mainstream by 2018, he predicted at a meeting for Intel investors, where he also demonstrated an early working model. Intel’s won’t be the first SSD on the market to use 3D NAND, however. Samsung’s 850 Pro SSD (see p74) already uses the same technology, which the company refers to as vertical NAND or V-NAND. Samsung pointed out that not only can V-NAND offer a greater capacity, it’s also faster, more power-efficient and more durable than existing technologies. However, the 850 Pro 1TB model costs £448 inc VAT on Amazon; a comparable hard disk costs a tenth of that, so Intel’s promise of a “breakthrough price” could make the difference.
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Brainteaser
Codingchallenge Validate and correct erroneous data by calculating check digits
❱❱❱ Credit cards
❱❱ Check digits
Credit card numbers also use check Cre digits, which are worked out using dig a method called the Luhn algorithm. Of course, this is only one of many checks that are used to safeguard che your money, but it’s a simple way you to weed out mistyped numbers before starting to process a transaction. sta Again, the check digit is the last Aga one, so based on a 16-digit card one number, the digit is calculated like this:
Data entry is an error-prone process: numbers can easily become switched around while you’re typing. Mistakes can also creep in when data is transmitted electronically, thanks to the phenomena of electromagnetic noise. One way to check that data has reached its destination without errors is to send it twice; if the numbers aren’t the same each time, that points to an error. A more efficient approach is to include a “check digit” in the data, which the receiver can validate for themselves to confirm the integrity of the data they’ve received. This is the approach used for the ten-digit International Standard Book Number (ISBN), which is assigned to every published book. The last digit of every ISBN is a check digit, which can be used to spot errors in typing or transmission. The check digit is calculated using modulo arithmetic, which involves looking at the remainder after dividing by a number. The full algorithm goes like this:
1 Take the first 9 digits of the book code 2 Multiply the first digit by 10, the second by 9 and so forth, and add them all together 3 Divide that sum by 11 and find the modulo (remainder) 4 Subtract that remainder from 11 to find the check digit; if the remainder is 10, “X” is used So, for example, let’s say I tell you that an interesting book has the ISBN 1903112214. You can verify that this is a valid ISBN code by adding up (10 × 1) + (9 × 9) + (8 × 0) + (7 × 3) + (6 × 1) + (5 × 1) + (4 × 2) + (3 × 2) + (2 × 1) = 139; then finding the modulo of 139 / 11, which is 7. Subtracting this from 11 gives us 4, so it looks like the code has arrived intact. If the calculated check digit isn’t the same as the one provided, we know that an error has occurred somewhere in typing or transmission. Unfortunately, this doesn’t tell us anything about which digits are wrong; if we wanted to repair the mistyped code, we’d need to resort to a little trial and error.
1 Add up the sum of the first 15 digits, but for every second digit, double the number – if the result has two digits, sum them before adding to the total (so 7 + 7 = 14 1 + 4 = 5) 2 Once you’ve reached the 15th digit, multiply the total by 9 3 The rightmost digit of the result becomes the check digit
If the calculated digit isn’t the same as the one provided, we know that an error has occurred
For example, if we were validating the credit card number 4651 4675 5226 8042, the first four numbers would be calculated as 8 + 6 + 1 + 1. As you can see, the third digit becomes a 1, because 5 × 2 =10, and 1 + 0 = 1. Carry on in this vein and we end up with a grand total of 68, which we then multiply by 9 to get 612. This tells us that the check digit ought to be 2 – and since this is indeed the case, that points to a good likelihood that the card number has been entered correctly. This check-digit system won’t catch all errors. Try writing a program that validates credit card numbers, and then add a routine that works through a given number, transposing adjacent digits, and tests whether the outcome is still valid. How easy is it to accidentally mistype and still end up with a valid card number? DAVID HUNT
❱❱ Recovering a corrupt ISBN code
Let’s say you’ve noted down the ISBN number of a book you want to read – but in haste you’ve made a transcription error, switching around two of the digits. If the number you wrote down was 0752814149, can you write a program to work out which two digits were mistakenly transposed? In terms of structure, a good way to proceed is to create a function that validates ISBN codes, then pass it a selection of variations to test. Your chosen language may not contain an instruction for splitting up numeric codes into individual digits, so your function may have to convert the ten-digit integer into a string in order to break it up, then convert each character back into a numeric value in order to perform calculations on it. You’ll also need to decide whether this is to be a one-off solution or a more general-purpose program. If you want to take the former route, you might hard-code the various permutations to be tested – there are only nine possibilities, after all, so this would be quick to implement. For a more general-purpose solution, you’d want to create a loop that iterates through any given ten-digit code, switching the numbers one by one and feeding the result into the ISBN-validator function.
Nextsteps If you want to be ambitious, you could expand your ISBN-validating program with a second routine that kicks in if a valid ISBN number can’t be found by transposing digits. This might test for single-digit errors by working through the digits in the entered code and substituting each with the numbers 0-9 in turn. This is very much a brute-force approach, and it may find more than one valid variation on the code provided – but this might be enough to help you track down the book you’re looking for.
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igh-definition audio is a curious beast. The CD standard, known as Red Book, uses 44.1kHz sampling at a 16-bit data depth. That gives up to around 20/21kHz of audio, and about a 96dB signal-to-noise ratio. At the time when Sony and Philips released this format in 1980, it was thought to be more than enough, and it has served us well over the years. Studios needing extra headroom for mixing purposes, however, quite quickly moved on to 24 bits and a 192kHz sampling rate. In the meantime, the quality of our music libraries has decreased as we have moved into the era of the computer-based audio player. The need to save space has resulted in some quite unpleasant compression systems such as MP3. Based on a model of what the average user could hear, it has the same effect on music as a mincer on a prime piece of steak. Unfortunately, it was until recently a necessary downgrade if you wanted choice on your portable player. Today, we don’t really have an issue with storage on the computer, transfer speeds to a player, or even storage within the player itself. It hit a high spot of 160GB on the iPod classic that’s just gone out of production, but my new iPhone 6 Plus has 128GB of storage, which is certainly enough for plenty of music. With that much space, I can afford to forego compression to get the best sound quality. Unfortunately, at the same time we’ve moved on from on-device music to a world of music streaming. With services such as Spotify, we demand to have music on tap, running over trivial amounts of bandwidth. The issue has moved from storage space to pipe capacity. Meanwhile, there’s been a growing awareness that HD audio is worthwhile. My Pono hi-def player, backed by an impressive number of musicians, arrived yesterday. It plays 192kHz/24-bit audio, and output is truly immersive. It sounds like a master tape of my own recordings, made on my professional recording equipment at 192kHz/24-bit. So how can we get this HD quality working down a narrow streaming pipe? And do we need to anyway? Well, Bob Stuart at UK hi-fi manufacturer Meridian Audio appears to have the answer. The company has spent years working on neurological mapping of the 130
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Themostimportant upgradeof2015 couldbetoyour ears,according toJonHoneyball brain and understanding how the ears work. It seems that material above the Nyquist frequency (around 21kHz on CD format) does matter. Not in terms of what we hear directly, but in the way the ear/brain interface processes timing information. The research is quite compelling. At an Audio Engineering Society lecture in October, Bob Stuart unveiled the new MQA format. This takes 192kHz/24-bit audio and encodes it above 21kHz into a pair of subsignals that can be placed way down into the noise pattern of the baseband audio signal. The result is that it’s backwards-compatible, something that raw 192kHz/24-bit doesn’t allow for. You can play an MQA-encoded file on an ordinary player and it will work. If your player is MQA-compatible, it will decode these extra signals and regenerate the original studio-quality signal. Does it work? Yes. Careful listening to studio-quality audio shows that this encode/decode system delivers. It does so at a data rate of only 1Mbit/sec, and without the nastiness you get from MP3 and other lossy compression systems. MQA is, in effect, a lossless solution in the time domain, and this is critically important to how we actually hear things. Given that so much music today is consumed via smartphones and a set of headphones, it’s important that we rescue folk from what I would call “MP3 hell” – a set of mediocre encoders well out of date and relevance, which munges up the sound in a quite horrible way. And we must do so in a way that’s both backwards-compatible and low data rate streaming friendly, which rules out lossless formats such as raw 192kHz/24-bit and encoders such as FLAC. Meridian has said that there are major announcements to come in the first half of 2015, and a senior representative from Warner was present at the MQA launch. He made very strong noises about the industry’s desire to go down this route. I can only wish Bob Stuart, Meridian Audio and MQA success. Meridian has been doing leading-edge DSP work in audio for decades, and everything about this new format looks considered, thoughtful and properly researched. If you care about music, then keep an ear open for more information about MQA. It could just be the nirvana you’ve been waiting for.
The need to save space has resulted in some quite unpleasant compression systems such as MP3
■ Jon Honeyball is a contributing editor to PC Pro and an unapologetic audiophile, but still has a soft spot for 78s. Email
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