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ISSUE 248 JULY 2018 • NEW IPAD MAX PERFORMANCE • MIN PRICE REGULATORS ACT ON PRIVACY

GREEN IS
GOOD AGAIN
THOUGH THE EARTH WISHES IT COULD AGREE
ast month I wrote about Nvidia’s
L Geforce Partner Program (‘GPP’),
under the fetching title ‘The Green
Stink’. For those who may have
missed it, or the storm that engulfed much
of the PC tech internet in its wake, the
GPP was a contract Nvidia asked its card
partners to sign giving away the right to sell
non-Nvidia product under premium video
card brands. It took no sleuthing to realise it
was aimed directly at AMD, and everything
we knew publically gave little or anything
back to the partners in return for signing on.
The spotlight was solely on Nvidia’s threat
to withhold GPUs and technical support
for card and driver engineering for non-
compliance.
Well, between then and now Nvidia has
backtracked completely and pulled the
plug on the GPP. As it needed to. The whole
thing was a PR mess, further reinforcing
the long held and evidenced public opinion
that Nvidia can sometimes be distastefully
ruthless. It further hurt Nvidia by bolstering
the ‘underdog’ status of AMD that so many
tech fans are endeared to.
Anyway, it’s binned and good riddance.
But it’s not without casualties. For the brief
time it was in effect complying partners
either withdrew AMD-based graphics cards,
or launched new brands to get around
the GPP. Asus did, with its all-AMD Arez
brand. So, that’s a lot of time and money
wasted doing that, and I dare say some
unhappiness. I’m curious to see if Asus in
particular will maintain the Arez brand, or
roll AMD GPUs back under the ROG brand.
Ultimately for consumers it’s little more
than a distraction, and another chapter in
the never-ending shenanigans – both behind
the scenes and in the spotlight – that fuel
fanboy i res and give me something to write
about.
LOGIN TECHDESK
BITCOIN WILL KILL THE PLANET
And now, more alarmism. Crypto, and its
posterchild Bitcoin is all over the news.
And the mining boom is a tsunami. New
video cards are snapped up as soon as
they’re manufactured and custom mining
REAL TECH ADVICE
YOU CAN TRUST!
• Our tests are performed by
experienced reviewers in our
Labs in accordance with strict
benchtesting procedures
chips (ASICS) are pumping out from fabs in
• Our brand new benchmarks have
enormous quantities daily. Specialist ASIC
been tailor-made to reflect real-
mining box maker Antminer is buying over world computing needs
10 million chips a month from fab leader
• We put tech through its paces –
TSMC, and that’s just for one company, in seriously. From processing power to
one of its products (the Antminer S9). battery life, from usability to screen
All these chips, mining GPUs included, brightness, our tests are exhaustive
running at maximum power 24/7 are • We will always offer an honest and
currently eating at least 2.55 gigawatts unbiased opinion for every review
of electricity according to a paper just
published by Alex de Vries in the peer-
review journal Joule – and that’s just for THE PC&TA TEAM
Bitcoin – the igure doesn’t include any
other crypto currency. By the year’s end it’s DIGITAL EDITOR
TECH AND GAMING
estimated to rise to almost 8 gigawatts. As a David Hollingworth
comparison, Ireland consumes 3.1 gigawatts dhollingworth@nextmedia.
com.au
and Austria 8.2. T: @CptHoliingworth
This can’t continue. It must not. While the
SENIOR JOURNALIST
shift to renewable energy sources is gaining Anthony Agius
pace, a whole lot of coal is being burned for
an arguably intangible purpose.
Trading crypto and using it for new
i nancial models – all good. But mining is SENIOR JOURNALIST
doing real damage and it’s increasing at an Chris Szewczyk
alarming rate.
Yes, I understand mining in an inherent
part of how crypto works, but the electricity
and ultimately environmental cost is a clear SENIOR JOURNALIST
and present danger. Nick Ross
We’ll be making noise about this, as many
others already are, and you should too. I
wish I had a solution. Lower power chips
and mining processes are coming, but the ART DIRECTOR
Tim Frawley
vast and growing numbers in operation will
likely negate any wins.
CONTACT US
p: (02) 9901 6100
e: inbox@pcandtechauthority.com.au
Ben Mansill f: www.facebook.com/pcandtechauthority
EDITOR t: @pctechauthority
bmansill
@nextmedia.com.au advertising: cferris@nextmedia.com.au
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 3
CONTENTS JULY 2018
FEATURES
26 25 64
DO YOU STILL NEED AV? RETRO
As new technologies in Windows The Sinclair ZX Spectrum
and Android help ward off
online threats, we ask LABS
if standalone protection is
still necessary 38
INTEL B360 MOTHERBOARDS
30 Budget boards that offer almost
DIGITAL? OVER everything
MY DEAD BODY?
Not everyone is enamoured 64
with the digital world. We meet SMART SPEAKERS
the photographers, gamers and Now is the time to add a digital
Filofaxophiles who won’t turn friend to the family. We Labs-test
their back on analogue 16 AI assistants

34 FUTURES 31
DNA STORAGE
Forget SSDs - DNA storage 82
could be on its way FUTURE OF THE INTERNET
The Facebook data scandal has
TECHDESK inally forced regulators to take
action on privacy. We examine
8 reveals what it means for the
26
NEWS future of the internet
Intel’s improved threat-detection
tools, and Gmail inally gets a RWC
major overall
100
12 HONEYBALL
CHIP NEWS Jon tries to discover why one pair 34
Intel inally starts selling a 10nm of SSD drives is wearing quicker
CPU, while Nvidia retreats from than another, how to certify his
controversy emails, and whether or not the
WORM has turned
18
SYSTEM NEWS 110
Shift’s in crypto mining mean DELL’S MEGAFACTORY
video cards are back on the Steve visits the Dell laptop store
market for the rest of us you can see from space
8
25
20 108 98
INVESTIGATOR
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 CONTENTS

REVIEWS
PCS & LAPTOPS
DreamMicro Crypto HPC 51
Dell XPS 13 53
Gigabyte X5 laptop 54
63 Asus Zephyrus M GM501GS 55
Razer Blade Stealth 56
Gigabyte X5 laptop 54

COMPONENTS
ASRock Fatal1ty

46 B360 Gaming K4
Asus ROG Strix
40

B360-F Gaming 41

52 MSI B360 Gaming Pro Carbon

Gigabyte Aorus B360 Gaming 3
42
43
Samsung 970 Pro SSD 46
Intel 760P SSD 47
Aorus Gaming 7 motherboard 48

TABLETS
Apple iPad (2018) 58

PERIPHERALS
D-Link Covr mesh Wi-Fi 49

57 D-Link AC2600 range extender

Aorus K9 optical keyboard
50
50
Asus ProArt PA32UC monitor 52
Razer Core V2 57

HANDHELDS
Huawei P20 Pro 62
Sony Xperia ZX2 Compact 63

GAMES
Battletech 86

40 Frostpunk
Warhammer: Vermantide 2
87
88

SMART SPEAKERS
55 Amazon Echo
Amazon Echo Dot
70
71
43 Amazon Echo Plus 71
Apple HomePod 72
Google Home 74
Google Home Mini 74
Amazon Echo Show 76
Amazon Echo Spot 76
JBL Link 20 77
KitSound Voice One 77

53 Libratone Zipp
Libratone Zipp Mini
78
78
Sonos One 78
Ultimate Ears Blast 80
Ultimate Ears Megablast 80
Zolo Halo 80

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 5

TECHDESK INBOX

INBOX
SAY IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT

TRUSTING A VPN OFFICE WARS Microsoft Word can’t do it any

I read your feature on choosing a VPN with interest I have bought several versions of
(see issue 246, page 30), but it’s left me with questions. ScanSoft OmniPage Pro because
First, how do you know that the VPN you’ve chosen is Microsoft Ofice didn’t have an
trustworthy? Couldn’t it be capturing and selling your OCR feature… or so I thought. A bit
data without your knowledge? And second, doesn’t of research turned up the following
using a VPN just alert the authorities to the fact you on Microsoft’s support site: “The
might be up to no good? OCR tool that is available in Ofice
OSCAR Document Imaging [ODI]may not
recognise all text format styles that
NIK RAWLINSON REPLIES: are present in the source document
There are many legitimate uses for a VPN. Crucially, that image. Therefore, after you copy
passes over the air is encrypted, and kept safe “authority” the text from a document image
could argue against this. VPNs are outlawed in some to a Word document, you must
countries, but usually as part of state censorship. manually format the text.”
That said, we wouldn’t recommend using a VPN to cover OmniPage Pro is more effective,
up misdeeds. If you are doing anything illegal, this could be but even with this in place I
clocked and reported by your provider, which leads us back despaired of the DOC conversions
to your irst question. You can never know for sure what it made. It was far quicker to scan
your VPN provider is doing with your data when it passes the plain text and reformat it in
through its servers, but the same is true of your ISP and Word. I found ancient Word a
whichever mobile network provides your data connection. nightmare for large documents,
Pick a reputable, paid-for service that’s had good reviews, with embedded images and text
and be prepared to move if necessary. disappearing, headings getting
out of sequence and iles getting so
A POINT ABOUT POP corrupted that they crashed Word
Stuart Andrews’ feature on moving away from Ofice on opening.
(issue 247, page 34) was very interesting, but the section Further web searches
about Outlook would have beneited from a mention revealed that Microsoft ODI was
that Focused Inbox doesn’t work for POP accounts.. discontinued with Ofice ¬2010, and
AUTHOR NAME that the last version of Ofice to use
it was the ¬2007 release.
PCTA REPLIES: However, the description for
A point well made, David. It doesn’t work with IMAP, a LibreOfice extension reveals
either: Focused Inbox is tied to Exchange and outlook.com that, “LibreOCR is a LibreOfice
accounts as the sorting is done on the server rather than by V5 extension which helps users to
the email client itself. upload images and convert them
to editable documents using an
external OCR service.” So, while
more, LibreOfice can.
I don’t blame LibreOfice for
not accurately supporting older
versions of Word or Excel and
have only noticed minor problems,
such as fonts changing. Nor have I
found problems with other people
failing to open DOC, DOCX, XLS
and XLSX documents generated
by LibreOfice – but I now use
its ability to export as PDFs as a
universal media for all platforms
ROY
RIP GPP
I was interested to read your article
on Nvida and their GPP contract.
In Australia the practicing of
such a contract would be legally
challengeable under consumer
competition legislation for a start.
Any one - including consumers
negatively affected by an anti
competitive action by a company,
especially one that is dominant in
the market place would be entitled
to get a review of this potentially
‘illegal’ tactic.
CRISETTA
BEN MANSILL REPLIES:
Thankfully Nvidia saw the error of
its ways and has dumped the GPP.
Perhaps for legal reasons – certainly to
correct the PR damage!

WANT TO GET IN TOUCH?

The PC&TA app m: Inbox, Level 6, Building A, 207 Pacific
Highway, St Leonards NSW 2065
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6 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
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TECHDESK NEWS
TECHDESK NEWS
INTEL GETS GMAIL SET
GRAPHIC ON SECURITY FOR OVERDUE
CHIPMAKER LOOKS TO REBUILD CONFIDENCE WITH THREAT-DETECTION TOOLS
ntel has devised a new
i
framework that will
result in security
software running
on the graphics chip
instead of the potentially
overburdened CPU.
Intel has laid out two
security features under the
banner of Intel Threat Detection
Technology, in an attempt to shore
up its reputation following the recent
Meltdown and Spectre breaches.
Firstly, it said an “Advanced Memory
Scanning” feature will shift the grunt work
of antivirus scanning from the CPU to the
GPU, reducing the system impact of security
scans. This will also allow security software
to do a more comprehensive job.
According to Intel, some malware evades
i le-based antivirus software by never
writing anything to disk, which makes
it hard to spot and means that security
software must monitor system memory.
Scanning system memory, however, can
have a huge hit on performance – up to 20%,
Intel claims.
“Malware likes to hide in memory, but
scanning that impacts users in terms of
performance and power usage,” said Rick
Echevarria, vice president in Intel’s Software
and Services Group. “We’re offloading
memory scans onto integrated graphics and
by doing that we can increase the frequency
of scans, which should improve detection
while balancing performance.”
Intel said that its early benchmarking
on test systems showed CPU utilisation
dropped from 20% to as little as 2% when
the GPU was the primary number cruncher.
Intel is positioning Advanced Memory
Scanning as a feature for third parties to use
and the company said Microsoft’s Windows
Defender Advanced Threat Protection
would add GPU-based memory scanning.
8 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
Intel’s Advanced
Memory Scanning
feature will shift
antivirus scanning
from the CPU to
the GPU
It should
work with sixth,
seventh and eighth-
generation Intel
Core chips and security
companies said they would
implement the technology in
future products.
“Using the graphics processor
(GPU), should allow endpoint
protection products to scan for
‘i leless malware’ without big
impacts on CPU performance,”
Sean Sullivan, security advisor
to F-Secure, told PC Pro. “And as
i leless malware is an increasing
risk, that could very well be an
important beneit. It’s always a
beneit to reduce CPU impact.”
The second element of Intel’s
new focus on hardware threat-
detection involves telemetry and
studying processor activity to
monitor for anomalies. Windows
Defender, for example, already
monitors machine activity, looking
for spikes that might suggest the
presence of malware even if it can’t
identify the actual strain.
Intel’s “Advanced Platform
Telemetry” is similar, but rather
than looking at what’s going on
within the operating system, Intel’s
telemetry uses metrics such as the
processor’s integrated performance
counters to spot unusual processor
activity. Intel says the telemetry
information should spot rogue
processes without creating false
positives.
THE LATEST TRENDS AND PRODUCTS
IN THE WORLD OF TECHNOLOGY
OVERHAUL
GOOGLE’S GMAIL MESSAGING
SERVICE IS BEING GIVEN ITS FIRST
MAJOR UPDATE SINCE 2011
Gmail is getting a much-needed facelift. Google
sent a message to G Suite administrators
highlighting the changes, which includes a host of
new features as well as a design refresh.
According to the leak, the desktop version
of Gmail will incorporate features from the
mobile version, such as the artificial intelligence-
generated auto responses, but there are also
completely new features in the oing.
Leaked screengrabs show tools such as a
snooze function that will temporarily remove
incoming messages when users are too busy
to respond immediately. There will be options
to make the message reappear an hour, day or
week later, rather than being buried below newer
messages.
Google is expected to make space for Calendar
and to-do lists within the interface. With privacy
concerns becoming more prevalent, Google is
also expected to introduce a new “confidential
message” feature, which will give users the ability
to set a time limit on messages to self destruct
after a set period.
It’s unclear exactly how the feature will work
on email accounts outside the Gmail fold, but
recipients could be required to enter an SMS
password to access messages, and Gmail would
prevent such sensitive missives from being
forwarded, printed or downloaded.
However, the confidential messages would
still be susceptible to screengrabs and could also
pose problems in industries where companies
are required to keep emails to comply with
regulations.
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TECHDESK NEWS
GAME NEWS
THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
MICROSOFT LAUNCHES NEW
ADAPTIVE CONTROLLER
FOR XBOX AND PC
MS WANTS EVERYONE TO PLAY GAMES, AND
THIS NEW CONTROLLER IS A FANTASTIC EFFORT
his is pretty impressive - Microsoft
T  has just announced a neat new
controller designed to help gamers
with limited mobility to play
games with greater ease. The Xbox Adaptive
Controller has been designed to work with
many of the adaptive switches that many
mobility impaired people may already own
in an easy-to-use, plug-and-play manner.
The controller was designed in partnership
with a number of organisations, including
The AbleGamers Charity, The Cerebral Palsy
Foundation, and Warighter Engaged. As
well as working with adaptive switches, the
controller also features two large buttons
already built-in, which can be customised to
act as any input from a standard controller.
Microsoft’s Chief Accessibility Oficer,
Jenny Lay-Flurrie, said in a blog post :
“Today we celebrate the seventh annual
Global Accessibility Awareness Day and
10 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
announce new technology and resources for
people with disabilities. The goal of GAAD
is to get everyone talking, thinking and
learning about accessibility. For us, it’s also
about digging deep into how technology can
empower the 1 billion people worldwide who
have disabilities. Not only is it important
that we do this for our customers and
our employees, it’s also an exciting area
for technology and innovation to drive
incredible impact.
In 2011, the World Health Organization
changed the deinition of disability to
the result of a mismatch between what a
person wants to achieve and the environment
or society that he or she lives in. Technology
can play a leading role in bridging the
gap. It’s both exciting to think about the
tremendous opportunity to empower and
humbling to think about our responsibility to
get it right.”
PROPER
MULTIPLAYER
IS HITTING NO
MAN’S SKY AT LAST
THE NEXT BIG UPDATE
TO THE SPACE EXPLORATION SIM IS
COMING IN JULY, AND IT’S BRING
SOME MUCH AWAITED CHANGES...
No Man’s Sky promised... well, the sky,
but what it actually delivered was
somewhat less. The game offered no
multiplayer, which was always implied
to be a big part of the game. But, since
launch, No Man’s Sky has crept a lot
closer to that initial realisation, and
next big update, coming on July 24 for
all platforms, will finally add that long-
awaited multiplayer content.
The update will add random player
encounters to the game, and let players
join up to explore space, planets, mine,
dogfight... the whole shebang. Or, you
can be a jerk and turn pirate.
This is a fantastic offering from
Microsoft. The Xbox Adaptive
Controller will be available later his
year, for Xbox One and Windows
10, and will retail for $US99.
TECHDESK NEWS
CHIP NEWS
INTEL FINALLY POPS OUT A SMALL CHIP SECRETLY, AREZ IS THANKFULLY NO MORE
AND TRACING RAYS! MARK WILLIAMS COVERS SOME OF THIS MONTH’S CHIP NEWS
CPU
INTEL DOES 10NM, SORT OF
After months of heartache in Intel’s labs trying
to get its new 10nm node manufacturing up
and running, Intel has inally got something
to market. But all isn’t well. Intel hasn’t made
any fuss or even told anyone about it, which
immediately says a lot. It took some observant
consumers looking at laptops to realise that
the Lenovo Ideapad 330 being sold in China
was shipping with something rather unique
in it. The CPU within is a Core i3-8121U. Intel
hadn’t even put up its ark specs page for this
CPU model at that time it was discovered,
only once the word started leaking did they
add it.
The CPU is fairly average but has a couple
of odd twists. It’s a 15W dual core hyper-
GPU
GPP IS DEAD, REJOICE!
Nvidia has capitulated to media and consumer
pressure and put an end to its potentially anti-
competitive GeForce Partner Program (GPP).
Nvidia was claiming from the start that the
GPP was about clarity and transparency, to
make sure that “gamers who want Nvidia tech
get Nvidia tech”. When Nvidia themselves
remained quite tight lipped about the whole
thing even after it leaked (thanks to an AMD
tip-off) to the HardOCP website, the claims
of transparency and clarity are rather hollow
indeed.
With no oficial detail on what the GPP
entailed, the leak was all the wider community
could go off and judging by the bifurcation of
top tier gaming brands like Asus’s Republic of
Gamers (ROG) to only contain Nvidia parts it
was obvious Nvidia was demanding quite a bit
for companies to remain “partners”.
Nvidia cancelled the GPP amid “rumours,
conjecture, and mistruths” (strange for
something supposed to be so transparent and
clear, no?) and “to avoid any distraction from
the super exciting work we [are] doing”.
With AMD cards already being sold with
12 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
threaded CPU that clocks up to
3.2GHz. Nothing interesting there.
It now supports LPDDR4 and
LPDDR4X which is great for further
power savings over previous gen
products. The twists that makes this
CPU quite oddball is that is supports
AVX512, something only on offer in
the desktop i9 series processors, and
it has no iGPU which again is very
Core i9-like and extremely strange
for a low powered laptop part. The
Lenovo laptop in question instead
relies on AMD Radeon RX 540
discrete graphics.
It would appear Intel are just
pushing out small quantities of
the ROG branding again and Asus’s
AMD only Arez brand having
disappeared seemingly overnight,
I think we can call this marketing
nightmare over.
THE YEAR OF THE RAY
With Microsoft having already
released ray-tracing extensions
to DirectX 12 with the DXR API,
Nvidia who has been working hard
on its own ray-tracing language has
Brands like Asus’ Arez were launched to comply with
Nvidia’s now abandoned GPP, will it live on?
as small a CPU as they can to get
some money – any money – for all
the effort it’s pumping into this
stubborn 10nm node. The small chip
size will reduce wafer wastage on an
obviously still immature node.
Don’t expect 10nm high end parts
any time soon. Next year in all likely
hood. Baby steps is still progress
after all, but chances are AMD with
its 7nm tech via Global Foundaries
(said to be equivalent to Intel’s 10nm
process) may get to mass production
irst, by this year even. For the irst
time, I believe ever, AMD may well
lead Intel on the manufacturing
technology front.
announced that it is working with
the Khronos Group, gatekeepers
of the open source DirectX 12
alternative, Vulkan, to implement
Nvidia’s new RTX technology via a
“VK_NV_raytracing” extension to
the API.
This is big news as it means
Linux (and by extension Android)
and MacOS and iOS etc can all join
in on the ray-tracing bandwagon.
Certainly, ray-tracing won’t be
coming to mobile devices any
year soon but this multi-vendor
standard for ray-tracing starts the
ball rolling for GPU designers and
game/application developers to
start implementing it into future
products.
After some thirty plus years of
rasterization in computer generated
real time graphics, it’s about time the
industry takes a major step forward
in how we process scenes. The future
on this front will be exciting to watch
unfold.
MOST WANTED
ANTHONY FORDHAM SURE DOES LOVE INNOVATION

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Remember when we had to rely on well-known trusted brands to build our PCs, and that TURRIS MOX
meant the only form-factors we ever got were the ones they’d subjected to hundreds of MODULAR ROUTER
hours of focus-groups, market-research and ergonomic testing? BORING. Thank goodness Do you ind it annoying how the
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will never use? Such as gigabit
MOST WANTED: Success with its Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign means the Mi Mini ethernet, GWAN (“G-WAN
PC now packs an Intel Core M3 and 16GB of RAM (although this is still TBC at time of better uses CPU Cores to make
writing, so please do check) and sells for less than $350. It might not be pretty, but it comes the Internet of Things fly
with a folding keyboard and just so many ports you guys. thousand times higher! (sic)”),
micro-SD slot, USB 3.0 etc? Now
NOT WANTED: The creator Leo “Hi My Name’s Leo” Cheung, has not disclosed in his here’s a router that’s modular.
Indiegogo pitch-video that the Mi Mini PC uses the same case as the two-year-old GOLE1
Mini PC, which in turn uses the same case as some thing that came out even earlier you can MOST WANTED: The Turris
get on gearbest.com for like $30. The Mi Mini PC does ditch the external Wi-Fi antenna and MOX can be built as simply or
adds a USB-C port, but otherwise relies entirely on its up-rated internals to be interesting. as feature-packed...edly as the
user desires. Starting with an
ultra-simple (and ultra-cheap)
basic router, you can add Wi-
Fi, Ethernet, a board that lets
you plug in an LTE modem,
SFP connector (we think that’s
something to do with ibre
optics), and an mPCIe slot.

NOT WANTED: Despite all the

talk about how the Turris MOX
is all about not having too much
useless stuff in your router, the
basic package includes all the
usual useless stuff you ind in
a router. This is not necessarily
a bad thing, it’s just kind of
annoying.
 MOST WANTED TECHDESK

BLUEWAVE GET
Do you habitually ride the ragged edge of
being an audiophile who also listens almost
exclusively to portable music? By which we
mean music delivered via a portable source
such as smartphone or ridiculously overpriced
high-resolution audio player? Then you already
know about headphone ampliiers. But can you
get your head around the concept of a Bluetooth
headphone ampliier?

MOST WANTED: The Bluewave GET does

TIME SINCE LAUNCH
The battle for most indulgent and borderline useless timepiece goes ever
on, and the PCTA Labs’ treasured Mr Wolf flip clock (where instead of
numbers, there are pictures you have to interpret as numbers, like an
old US bomber for the number 52, geddit?) still reigns supreme. Though
Mr Wolf needs to watch out: a new contender has arisen, combining a
time readout that means nothing for day-to-day usage with a “pull the
pin to start the clock” aesthetic, creating a sensation that really cannot be
described any other way than “ultimate wank”.
MOST WANTED: This is an attractive piece of desk ornamentation
with its gasketed aluminium end-caps and borosilicate glass tube. All
the artfully exposed electronic connectors are gold-plated, and it uses a
Maxim Integrated DS3231 temperature-compensated crystal oscillator
chip to count time for the entirety of its 40-year battery life.
turn non-wireless headphones into wireless
headphones, and it does provide an optimised
dedicated ampliication circuit, and there are
no capacitors because “we were dedicated and
optimised our circuit”. Dedicated ampliication
with optimal capacitance is good. We assume.
NOT WANTED: The idea of a Bluetooth
headphone ampliier should make the average
audiophile’s eyelid twitch at least a little bit, but
Bluewave does point out this is not intended to
be used with lossless iles. Even so, at $170 plus
shipping, it’s hard not to wonder if just buying
a better set of headphones might not be a better
solution. (Top Tech Tip: It absolutely is.)

NOT WANTED: Note we say “count time” not “tell time”, because the
Time Since Launch doesn’t actually tell time. When you pull the pin, it
starts counting up seconds, to a display-maximum of 999,999 days, 23
hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. The idea is that the Time Since Launch
“creates your personal epoch” from whatever moment you choose.
The birth of your irst child seems noble enough, but other suggestions
include “since I quit drinking” and “because it’s Tuesday”. Still, the idea
of a device that uses the very best in durable and accurate timekeeping
technology, but which doesn’t in fact tell time, is very much our kind of
ridiculous.

POLYMULE
As a PC and related technology magazine, we would never dedicate space
to a wheelbarrow. But this is no wheelbarrow. It’s a Polymule. That either
means a mule made of polycarbonate, or a device that has the utility of
multiple mules. Either way, we’re super-excited.

MOST WANTED: On the premise that you will be unable to contain YOUR
excitement and end up buying multiple Polymules, you can pull the wheels
off and stack them for storage. Also, the Polymule has far better ground-
clearance and twice the number of wheels as most wheelbarrows. It also
offers electric uphill assist, which is a small electric motor to take the strain
as you shift rocks or whatever.

NOT WANTED: The Polymule wants you to buy a roofrack kit because it
believes what we really want as consumers is a wheelbarrow we can mount
on our car. Also, the promotional material makes a big deal of mocking “the
garden cart” which we’re not sure is a product that even exists.

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 15

WAR
THUNDER!
THE BEST BATTLE ACTION
THE INTERNET HAS TO OFFER
t’s one of our all-time favourite games here
I  at PC & Tech Authority, the editor plays it
more than any other game and has been
at it for years, and we’re here to share just
why it’s so fantastic if you haven’t had a look
before, or if it’s been a while since you last
looked so we can help excite you about how
far it’s come.
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT, THEN?
Fighting in planes, tanks and ships, in short.
In a massive multiplayer environment where
there’s always huge numbers of players going
at it, and all in beautifully structured game
modes and maps that cater to raw beginners
through to hardcore simheads.
It all started as a flight combat game with
planes covering WW1 through to just after
WW2 and the early Korean War aircraft. It’s
since been expanded to include epic ground
warfare with a huge variety of tanks, mobile
artillery, AAA vehicles and several very funky
vehicles, all with unique uses in the tactical
environment.
Most recently naval warfare has been added
and is being developed through its public
beta phase with ships of ever increasing size.
It started with fast torpedo boats and the
developer Gaijin is now rolling out much
larger destroyers and cruisers, and with those,
whole new strategic ways to play.
The historical period has just been extended
with the recent 1.77 Advancing Storm update
with many new vehicles that cover the 1970s
and very early 1980s and that includes beastly
vehicles like the M1 Abrams tank!
WHO PLAYS WHO, AND HOW?
It’s super easy – log in, choose the vehicle
from your collection that you’re in the mood
for and it quickly launches you into battle.
Most games are structured around two teams
16 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
going at it, with teams determined
by whether their vehicles are Axis
or Allies, or NATO v Warsaw Pact
for later stage vehicles, or generally
how the countries were at it for the
Korean War or other conflicts.
You will be ighting alongside
other vehicles from around the same
time period too, so your little WW1
biplane won’t be hammered by jets!
Once a battle starts it’s all on
until the enemy team has been
eliminated or the main objective
achieved. Because the game covers
so many vehicle types everyone has
a unique role to play. If, for example,
you chose a ighter then you need to
destroy other ighters, try and take
out their bombers while protecting
yours, and maybe shoot up some
ground targets. Bombers are a lot of
fun to play too, and can win or lose
a battle if they get through to their
targets.
Meanwhile on the ground you
may well have team mates in tanks
slogging it out, or mobile artillery
or rocket launchers raining death
from above on key targets or enemy
vehicles. If you’re the one in a tank
you sure do appreciate some air
cover because you will have your
hands full ighting in the best
“it all adds up for an
amazingly engaging
gaming experience”
tank game on the internet. A good
team will communicate, calling for
support when needed and marking
targets to get the win, and the
community itself it one of the best
and very welcoming to new players.
HOW HARD?
Not very, or intensely challenging –
depending on what you feel like and
can handle. There’s three basic game
modes: Arcade, with simple flight
physics and unlimited weapons. It’s
a high intensity battle that throws
you into the action immediately and
is huge fun. A step up is Realistic,
which has far more detailed physics
and limited ammo. Realistic maps
are also generally larger and you

start some distance from the combat zone so
it’s great to take that time to race to a good
strategic position in your tank, or gain altitude
ready for the dogight. Sim mode is the
hardest with full physics and vehicle controls.
If you’re flying, Sim mode also forces you to
use a joystick and cockpit view, so that’s the
one for the super hardcore.
In Arcade and Realistic modes most people
play using a mouse and keyboard which is
partly why War Thunder is so popular – you
don’t need any special setup and Gaijin has
done a great job of making mouse control fun
and effective. You can also choose the view
you like best – in the cockpit or turret/driver’s
position, third person external so you can
see your beautiful vehicle or full irst-person
mode with no vehicle bits to get in the way of
your view.
It’s all about guns in War Thunder. The
time eras mean there’s nothing with radar or
guided missiles – it’s all down to your skill
and gun battles mean the action is always
close and intense.
And, if you don’t feel like multiplayer
or just want the time to cruise around and
igure things out at irst, there are many
beautifully designed tutorials and
single player missions.
With the immense variety and
number of vehicles, the ability to
easily choose your dificulty and
realism, and a massive player base
it all adds up for an amazingly
engaging gaming experience.
DO I NEED A
SUPERCOMPUTER?
Hell no. Gaijin’s Dragor engine
is one of the modern miracles of
gaming, it looks incredible yet
runs beautifully smoothly on
any game-capable PC. Netcode is
also remarkable, able to handle
thousands of bullets, bombs rockets
and shells flying around at a
time, extremely detailed hit zones
and ballistic damage modelling
-- all with potentially dozens of
players from around the world in
each match. We even have a local
Asian region server for the lowest
pings, but on any global server the
performance is still totally playable.
TELL EM THE
PRICE, SON!
It’s free. And can stay free for as
long as you want without penalty.
War Thunder isn’t ‘pay to play’ at
all and that makes it extra fantastic!
If you want to improve a vehicle’s
performance you can certainly buy
in-game Gold to do that quickly,
WAR THUNDER ADVERTORIAL
but anyone can level up a vehicle
through experience without
paying a cent.
IT’S A KEEPER
War Thunder is addictive and
easy to keep coming back to. Gajin
regularly adds new content, features
and game modes as it has since the
very beginning. Special events are
regularly hosted, usually based on
historical events as commemorative
battles, or just silly stuff for the fun
of it like the annual Floatplanes
battle weekend, or Gaijin’s now
legendary April Fool’s Day
shenanigans.
The future is very bright. Over
time you will level up your pilot and
gain access to new eras, you will
unlock countless new vehicles, you
will win medals and awards and
might even be featured in the weekly
highlights reel. The War Thunder
community is warm and welcoming,
Gaijin itself engages with the
community and the sense that the
game is constantly evolving is real
and makes it all the better.
We love it. Head off to www.
warthunder.com and download the
game where every single battle is a
memorable adventure!
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 17
SYSTEM NEWS
GRAPHICS CARDS ARE NO LONGER AN ENDANGERED SPECIES
ON SHOP SHELVES! MARK WILLIAMS LOOKS AT WHY
t was a big moment when news broke in
I 
early May that Nvidia was once again
selling its graphics cards on its own
website at the original retail price in the
US. Not because selling them online was new,
but because it marked an important point
where GPUs were suddenly back in stock
after months of shortages.
Both Nvidia and AMD have been posting
record revenues of late due to the high
demand for their products thanks to the
crypto mining boom, and while they’ve been
gracious and playing down the effect crypto
mining has had on these numbers, make no
mistake, it is most likely the primary reason.
Both however are already forecasting that
the next quarter or two will show drastically
reduces sales igures. They can already see
that the writing is on the wall for the crypto
boom.
With the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum
markedly lower than the boom peak, and in
an eye-squinty way somewhat stabilized at
much lower values, buying a new graphics
card just to mine on is now almost not
worth it.
For context, I built a mid-range mining rig
just before the mining peak hit. When the
peak came it was mining at around $40 per
day but was mostly at around the $25 per day
range pre and post peak. Now, the same rig
would be lucky to be doing $8 per day. For the
amount of electricity it chews through, that’s
just about enough to pay for its running costs
and not much else.
No wonder new graphics cards aren’t being
SOURCE: https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/video-card/
18 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
snapped up. New hardware bought
now likely won’t ever pay itself off.
And things will probably
continue to get better for gamers
and worse for miners. With
Ethereum soon to switch from
“proof of work” to “proof of stake”,
meaning the horsepower you
bring to the table doesn’t matter
as much anymore. As the most
mined cryptocurrency, a drop in
how effective your hardware is at
mining Ethereum will further lower
the rewards.
Then there is the much talked
about Bitmain product that is said
to be coming very soon. With
silicon dedicated to, and designed
speciically for mining Ethereum,
it should theoretically blow even
GPUs out of the water and do to
Ethereum what Bitmain did to
Bitcoin - start mining so fast the
dificulty will ramp up quickly
and make even GPUs effectively
worthless at mining it.
As reported in Shop Talk,
Australia is inally seeing GPU
availability coming back to retailers,
unfortunately the associated price
drops haven’t flowed through just
yet, but I suspect it shouldn’t be too
much of a wait before that happens.
US price of the AMD RX 580 over time.
It’s almost back to normal
SHOP TALK
HAS THE AVAILABILITY OF GRAPHICS
CARDS IMPROVED FOR YOU RECENTLY?
CAN YOU FORESEE PRICES COMING
DOWN ANYTIME SOON?
JAIMIE, LEADER COMPUTERS:
“The Crypto market has definitely suffered
over the last couple of months (although it is
strengthening again as I write this) and we have
seen graphics card availability stabilise and
prices start to drop back to more reasonable
levels. The trend towards Nvidia over AMD cards
towards the end of the boom, particularly with
the very popular Ethereum currency, means that
Radeon and Vega cards have been available for
the last eight weeks or so, and Nvidia followed
suit about four weeks later as the massive
demand tapered off.
Leader has plenty of stock available now,
good news for gamers with the US Summer
games sales rapidly approaching! My advice for
gamers would be get in quick, you never know
when another crypto market spike will drive the
punters insane once again.”
CHRIS, SCORPTEC COMPUTERS:
“The availability of stock has definitely improved
a lot recently. Whilst pricing has already come
down a little bit from where it was, we don’t see
any further drastic decreases for the pricing to
return where it used to be.
There are other market conditions affecting
this, e.g. Exchange rate and shortages of
components such as RAM.”
JOHN, TI COMPUTERS:
“Yes, we start to see better availability of stocks
for the mid end and popular mining graphics
cards. However, the stock for the high-end
graphics cards, naming GTX1070 and above
is still not able to fulfil the market demand at
this stage. It is due to this reason we do not
expect the graphics card price to come down
dramatically any time soon.”
 SYSTEM NEWS TECHDESK

MARKET WATCH
SAMPLING SELECT SYSTEMS IN THE MARKET TODAY

SCORPTEC INTEL EXTREME JW COMPUTERS

MASTERS 1080 TI GAMING PC GMR X3000-IEM1070
$3,799 • https://tinyurl.com/y7uw78js $2,435 • https://tinyurl.com/y7h6ome9
Do you like to win at everything? Then this is the rig for you. It’s This is a surprisingly capable machine.
got the fastest gaming central processor, it’s got the fastest gaming The hex-core CPU will run at its peak
graphics card, it’s got a great motherboard, it’s water cooled, it has 4GHz boost clock all day long with the
enough RAM to run any game and enough SSD capacity to store stock cooler on it, so no troubles there,
a sizable Steam library on. It has tempered glass and is a nice step up from an i5 quad
everywhere and it of course has RGB out the core of previous generations.
wazoo. Matched with the GTX 1070, 1440p
It has a monstrous amount of gaming with all details up high should be doable in
compute power for you to win at just most games too.
about everything but has an equally There’s two issues with this build though, the Optane + HDD
monstrous price tag to match. But who pairing and the 8GB of RAM. Optane is great to boost HDD
cares, you’re a winner, right? If we performance if you’ve no other choice in the matter. For a new
have one criticism about this rig, it’s system though, do yourself a favour and choose the Intel 600P
the 600P SSD. Just be mindful of it 128GB SSD option during checkout for an extra $30, money well
if you intend to do large ile copies to spent. The RAM capacity is slightly less of an issue, but if you
it often. can spare a further $120 for the 16GB option it’ll future proof the
system considerably.
KEY SPECS
CPU: Intel Core i7 8700K Cooler: Corsair H100i v2 Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix KEY SPECS
Z370-F Gaming Graphics: Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti OC 11GB CPU: Intel Core i5-8400 Cooler: OEM Motherboard: Gigabyte B360M HD3
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 3000MHz DDR4 Storage: Intel 600P Graphics: Gigabyte GeForce GTX1070 Memory: 8GB DDR4 2133MHz Storage:
512GB SSD, Seagate BarraCuda 2TB HDD Power Supply: Corsair RM650x 650W Intel Optane 16GB, Seagate 1TB HDD Power Supply: CoolerMaster 700W
Case: Corsair Crystal 460X Black ATX MasterWatt Lite Case: CoolerMaster MasterBox Lite 5 RGB

TI COMPUTERS PLE COMPUTERS

AMD 2700X GAMING WORKSTATION RIVAL TUF
$1,786 • https://tinyurl.com/yc6xl93g $2,515
• https://tinyurl.com/ya33hxgz
What happens when you drop AMD’s
latest and fastest CPU into a PC? That case! It’s like some kind of alien
Something that performs just a few futuristic architecture. Inside there’s
percentage points behind Intel’s best in some interesting choices. The CPU is
games, but dominates Intel as soon as the top end non-K variant, so don’t
anything productivity related or heavily expect to overclock it. Paired with a
multithreaded comes along. Making the GTX 1070 Ti this has plenty of grunt
“Gaming Workstation” name for this for most game titles. 8GB of RAM
system very apt indeed. works, but you may be feeling the
The 16GB of RAM is listed as itch down the track for more.
2400MHz, which given Ryzen 2’s new support for The 512GB SATA SSD as the sole
2933MHz is a disappointment, especially when Ryzen absolutely storage device is a bold move. SATA keeps the price reasonable but
laps up all the memory speed you can feed it. leaves IO speeds in a very average middle ground compared to
Apart from that minor flaw, the rest of the system is a pretty NVME drives. Not to mention no HDD for mass storage. Owners
good offering. The GTX 1070 Ti is a nice sweet spot unit that is so will need to keep an eye on space usage as time goes on.
fast it is essentially a GTX 1080!
KEY SPECS KEY SPECS
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Cooler: Cooler Master Liquid Cooler Motherboard: CPU: Intel Core i7 8700 Cooler: OEM Motherboard: Asus TUF Z370-PLUS
Asus Prime X470 Pro Graphics: GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Memory: Crucial 16GB Gaming Graphics: Asus GeForce GTX1070Ti TURBO Memory: Crucial 8GB DDR4
DDR4 2400MHz Storage: 250G Samsung 960 EVO SSD, Seagate 2TB HDD Power Ballistix Sport 2400MHz Storage: Intel 545s Series 512GB SATA Power Supply:
Supply: Cooler Master 750W Case: Cooler Master CM593 eVGA GD Series 650WCase: GamerChief NEO Gaming Mid Tower

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 19

TECHDESK INVESTIGATOR
ELECTRICITY EXPLAINER
– SHOW ME THE MONEY
BARELY A MONTH GOES BY WHEN WE DON’T READ OR HEAR ABOUT HOW ENERGY
PRICES ARE SPIRALLING UPWARDS. BUT WHERE DOES THE MONEY GO?
ome of the money
S you send to your
retailer does
the electrons
that flow into your
gadgets but much of it
pays for infrastructure,
meter readers, data
management and
other parts of the power
system.
We often hear about the
electricity spot or wholesale
price. But it’s not the only
market price for energy.
Retailers (the companies that
send you your power bill) can
contract directly with generators
and effectively bypass the
wholesale market.
THE WHOLESALE PRICE
If you’re using power from the
National Electricity Market (NEM),
that electricity is produced from
a number of different generators
that bid energy into the system.
The supply and demand balance is
managed by the market operator,
the Australian Energy Market
Operator (AEMO). They igure
out how much power is needed
to supply the market every
ive minutes and decide which
generators get used, based on the
cheapest way to supply the market.
Let’s say the market needs
10mWh for the next ive minutes
and there are ive generators in
the market. Here’s what the ive
generators bid into the system:
• Generator 1 can bid 2MWh at $5
and 3MWh at $6
• Generator 2 can bid 1MWh at $2
and 3MWh at $4
• Generator 3 can bid 4MWh at $7
and 3MWh at $10
• Generator 4 can bid 2MWh at $4
20 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
and 7MWh at $9
• Generator 5 can bid 6MWh
at $8 and 3MWh at $12
In this scenario, the least
expensive way to fulil
the 10mWh need would
be:
• Generator 1’s 2MWh at
$5 bid and 3MWh at $6
• Generator 2’s 1MWh at $2
and 3MWh at $4 bids
• 1MWh of the 2MWh at $4 bid
from Generator 4
In this case all three generators
will be paid $6 per MWh as there’s
no way of tracing which electrons
are used.
THE OTHER MARKET
Electricity retailers can enter into
contracts with generators that
specify that the retailer’s customers
will use a certain amount of energy
over a period at an agreed price.
This protects the retailers and, in
theory, us from the price volatility
of the spot market.
When you see the electricity
price spike, it’s important to realise
the spot market is only part of the
story.
GETTING THE
ELECTRONS TO YOU
Once those electrons are produced,
ANTHONY
CARUANA
they get to you via the transmission
has worked for and distribution networks. Those
almost every major networks cost money to build,
masthead in the
Australian IT press. maintain and operate. So, their
As an experienced costs get added to our bills as
IT professional
– having worked
supply charges and you pay them
as the lead IT whether you use a single electron
executive in several or not. Their prices are ixed by
businesses, he
brings a unique regulators as they operate as
insight to his regulated monopolies.
reporting of IT for
both businesses The distribution networks also
and consumers. collect your meter readings and
“Their prices are fixed
by regulators as they
operate as regulated
monopolies”
process the data, so it can be used.
So, that’s another thing that needs
to be paid for.
DO WE NEED SHOPS?
What value retailers add to the
chain other than preparing and
sending your bill? Those contracts
I mentioned earlier protect us from
spot market volatility. Retailers
have an invisible role in protecting
us from the minute-by-minute
fluctuations of the market which
can vary between a mandated
maximum of $13,500/mWh to a
minimum of -$1000/mWh.
They also provide us with a
single pint of contact into a complex
market in case we have a problem.
WHO GETS THE MONEY?
Retailers only earn margins on
power bills of between 10% and
20% typically although, depending
on whether you’re taking advantage
of discounting that can get a little
higher.
The transmission and
distribution collect about 40%
of what you pay with generators
collecting just a quarter of the cash.
Those numbers vary from state to
state as the rules for how prices are
set vary.
NEED HELP? EVER HAD AN
ISSUE AS A CONSUMER?
INVESTIGATOR CAN HELP.
If you’ve had an issue or had something
happen and you think investigator
could help, email your problem to
investigator@pcandtechauthority.
com.au
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Memory: Up to 2 DDR4 SODIMM (Max 32GB Memory)
Storage: Up to 2x M.2 SATA or PCIe SSD Drive
Graphics: Radeon RX Vega M Graphics
IO: 2x Mini Display Port, 2x Thunderbolt 3,
F+R HDMI 2.0a, USB-C, Dual GbE LAN
Audio: 7.1 Digital, Microphone, TOSLINK Output
Connectivity: Intel Wireless-AC 8265, Bluetooth 4.2
Warranty: 3 Years Warranty

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TECHDESK ACS
RAMI-
FICATIONS
MANIPULATING VIDEO FOOTAGE
TO MAKE ANYONE SAY ANYTHING
ou’ve probably seen
Y  the trailer by now –
Mr Robot star Rami
Malek playing Freddie
Mercury in the long-awaited Queen
movie Bohemian Rhapsody.
While tentatively hoping this will
be brilliant, the more I watched the
trailer the more I felt that Malek –
and no offence to him as an actor,
he personiies Mr Robot like no
other actor likely could – just didn’t
quite look as close to Freddie’s
iconic visage as one might hope.
Now granted Freddie has perhaps
a rather unique facial structure to
replicate, and Malek is probably as
close as you’re going to get casting
wise to ill these shoes. Maybe it’s
just the trailer, but I couldn’t see
him as Freddie.
A problem, of course, for all
actors when trying to replicate
famous people. But maybe for not
much longer. Advances in machine
learning, and subsequently deep
learning, has already made it
possible to replace facial features
of one person with another in
video, with nothing more than your
humble PC and source material
to feed into the system – easily
done for celebrities from movies or
featured in mainstream media.
Last year this came to the fore
when it was used to insert Wonder
Woman Gal Gadot’s face into porn,
sparking a deluge of copy-cats on
Reddit that eventually saw the
sub-group banned. Known as ‘deep
fakes’, it was also used for comedic
value to insert Nicholas Cage’s
face into movies he didn’t belong,
occupying the bodies of both sexes
for some truly disturbing movie
sequences.
Of course, this is just visual.
What about voice? This, too, is now
22 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
One is real, one is
fake. Can you tell
them apart?
a ield rapidly advancing, making
it possible to replicate another
human being’s distinct vocal tones
thanks to deep learning. Like deep
fakes, this works by feeding in the
original person’s voice with enough
data until you can create whole
sentences of speech in their voice,
but saying the words you want
them to say.
“a video of Obama warning of
fake videos. Except it wasn’t
Obama, and the voice wasn’t his”
So conceivably it won’t be long
before we’ll see actors like Rami
Malek play famous people, but
where the actor provides their body,
and little else – the face, the voice,
could all be re-created from source
material of the original person, and
thereby bring them back to life as a
literal representation of themselves.
Freddie Mercury, as Freddie, on the
silver screen.
Of course, such a tool has
incredible potential for abuse.
Indeed, last year also saw a video
ASHTON MILLS of Obama himself warning of the
has been writing
about technology dangers of deep fake videos. Except
for 20 years and it wasn’t Obama, and the voice
still gets excited
for the latest techy
wasn’t his. Visually convincing, but
gear. He’s also the voiced by comedian Jordan Peele,
Outreach Manager Obama talks out of character before
for the Australian
Computer Society concluding with “See I would never
(www.acs.org.au), say these things. But, someone else
you can email him
on ashton.mills@
would.”
acs.org.au. It only took 14 hours of footage
to create Synth-O-Bama, and
through him you could say
whatever you want. Importantly,
while the original deep fakes were
made by deconstructing videos,
replacing frames, and re-encoding
them the Obama example was real-
time, produced by mapping Peele’s
facial movements onto Obama’s
visage.
The implications are clear:
lacking a discerning eye, anyone
can become a puppet.
Inevitably, the potential for
propaganda and information
warfare here is a forgone
conclusion – manipulating public
sentiment through videos of well-
known politicians or personalities
that, even when if later decried
as fake, would already have
succeeded in creating doubt and
disseminating mixed messages.
Later this year, DARPA (Defense
Advanced Research Projects
Agency) in the States is inviting the
world’s leading digital forensics
experts to compete to develop the
most convincing AI-generated
fakes – and in turn the tools to try
and catch these fakes automatically.
In a war of information developed
using machines, it is only logical
we’ll need machines to combat it.
Whether this will be enough
only time will tell. With ‘fake news’
questioning the validity of what
you read online, very soon you’ll
need to question what you see as
well.
TECHDESK ASK GRAEME
IN THE GAME
ESPORTS PROS AND LIFE-LONG GAMERS MAY BE SEPARATED
BY YEARS AND PRIZE MONEY BUT THERE IS A COMMON BOND
eing a sponsor of the
B Australian E-Sports
League’s (AEL) University
Cup in its inaugural year,
D-Link this month was invited to
participate at the Intel Extreme
Masters (IEM) event held at Qudos
Bank Arena at Sydney Olympic
Park, and I made some time to
make sure I got along.
Apart from being close to
the oldest person in the venue,
participating in this event opened
my eyes even more to the E-Sports
fraternity, and where it is heading.
Whilst I’ve always considered
myself a bit of a gamer, from the
early games such as Doom and
Quake, to strategy games such as
Total Annihilation, Command &
Conquer and its ilk, and now to
Xbox games such as Rocket League
and the FIFA football franchise, I
was really interested to see what
the latest and greatest games, and
the people that play them, were
like.
E-Sports in Australia, according
to the AEL, has a larger fan base
than either Netball or Swimming,
and they explain that more than 27
countries now recognise E-Sport’s
as an oficial sport. I was also
24 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
surprised to hear that for one game
alone, DOTA 2, the total prize pool
at the 2017 DOTA 2 International
event held in Seattle in the US
was over USD$24M and in the
same year, 73M viewers watched
the League of Legends World
Championship. No matter which
language you speak, these are big
numbers.
We saw many gamers come
along to our stand at the event to
try out their skills in taking out the
fastest lap time of the day on our
dual racing simulators running
iRacing and RFactor, some old
school, but with very realistic
physics, racing simulation software,
and the lines were 10- deep at some
stages across the weekend. Being
a local business, of course we had
GRAEME
to have a V8 Supercar set up to run
REARDON on Bathurst’s Mount Panorama
is the Managing circuit, and the rivalries of some of
Director of D-Link
Australia and the drivers who had a shot at glory
New Zealand and was intense. PC&TA’s very own Ben
has had over 20
years’ experience
Mansill, who, despite a nasty bump
working with major on the way down through Skyline
networking brands and having his bonnet clouding
including Cisco.
Graeme has half his screen for most of his lap,
a borderline still managed a very respectable
obsessive passion
for all things
2:15 minutes for his flying lap.
IT-related. Much kudos though goes to our
“the memories came
flooding back, but
certainly the old snap
twitch has lost its flair”
overall lap time winner across the
event, Edward V, who came in with
a 2:07 min lap and took home a
Cobra AC5300 Modem Router as a
result.
So of course, later that day I get
home and ire up the PC and Steam,
with my all-time favourite irst-
person shooter, Modern Warfare 2.
I found myself putting off things
that I should have been doing
all weekend, like tidying up the
garage and ixing kids bikes, and
instead ind myself with a can of
coke, headset irmly plastered to
my head, and camped out with a
couple of 18+ year old kids on a
LAN session with The Estate map,
and battling juggernauts to give
ourselves enough iring space to
pull out the trusty Intervention
to take it down. Oh the memories
came flooding back, but certainly
the old snap twitch has lost its flair,
now I prefer grenade launchers,
and I get laughed at online as a
result (probably just because the
young kids can’t handle being
taken out by the old man!).
The result of these past weeks
IEM since has been the reflection
that what was once a pastime has
now become a mega industry in its
own right, but also that my gaming
life is somewhat reinvigorated, and
I can’t wait to see the line up at the
AEL University Cup Grand Final
on June 2nd at Sydney Uni, and to
see who takes out the trophy (and
if anyone can beat my new lap time
on the racing simulators). Until
then, good gaming.
YOU CAN ASK GRAEME
Ask Graeme about networking, the
internet, getting the most from your
gear and this wonderful digital world
we live in. Each month we’ll choose one
for Graeme to answer here.
askgraeme@pcauthority.com.au
 ZX SPECTRUM RETRO

Remember this? Manic Miner was a ZX

Spectrum star

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 25

FEATURE ANTIVIRUS
DO YOU
STILL NEED
ANTIVIRUS?
AS NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN WINDOWS AND ANDROID HELP
WARD OFF ONLINE THREATS, NIK RAWLINSON ASKS IF
STANDALONE PROTECTION IS STILL NECESSARY
verybody needs antivirus software.”
E  That’s the message that’s been drilled
into us for decades. And thanks to the
odd high-proile incident – such as 2017’s
WannaCry ransomware attack – most of us
recognise that the risk is real, and take steps
to protect our PCs.
But is it still necessary to keep paying
for protection? Today, the vast majority
of security breaches rely on out-of-date
vulnerabilities in Windows, for which patches
have been released. The best thing you can
do to protect your online security is to ensure
that Windows Update runs regularly. That’s
why, in Windows 10, the feature can’t be
disabled. On top of that, Windows 10 contains
an impressive set of built-in security functions
– effectively there’s an entire security suite
running under the bonnet – with new
capabilities in the Fall Creators Update.
Microsoft claims that all of this make it the
most secure Windows ever. So do you still
need antivirus software?
THE WINDOWS
SECURITY CENTRE
Windows 10’s security features are
all accessed through the Windows Defender
Security Centre. You’ll ind its distinctive
shield-shaped icon in the notiication area,
though you’ll probably need to click the
up-pointing chevron to show it. Right-click
the icon and select Open – you’ll see that
the Security Centre is organised into logical
sections, where you can look at different
aspects of your security.
The antivirus section speaks for itself.
Many people will stick with the free Windows
Defender Antivirus, but if you’ve installed
something else then the Security Centre will
work with that instead. Click “View antivirus
providers” and you’ll see which third-party
tools have been detected.
26 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
When a standalone security
product is detected, Windows
automatically switches off its own
built-in antivirus engine – but
there’s nothing stopping you from
turning it back on again. To avoid
a conflict, Defender Antivirus
won’t carry out real-time scans
while there’s another antivirus tool
running, but it will still perform
periodic check-ups. To enable this,
switch back to Security Centre and
click “Virus and threat protection”.
Expand the Windows Defender
Antivirus options section and click
the slider to enable Windows’ built-
in protection.
CONTROLLED
FOLDER ACCESS
Historically, Defender Antivirus
has been a simple signature-based
scanner that inspects the iles
on your system for known types
of malware. In the Fall Creators
Update, it also gained the ability to
The firewall controls how
your apps access the outside
world
Controlled folders
are monitored to stop
applications changing your
files
keep an eye on speciic folders, and
steps in if an unauthorised app tries
to make changes to their contents.
So, even if a piece of ransomware
slips through the net, Defender
Antivirus should prevent it from
locking up your iles.
Be warned, though – this feature
might not be switched on by default.
To enable it, click through “Virus
& threat protection” to “Virus &
threat protection settings”. Scroll
down and toggle a switch to enable
“Controlled folder access”. Once
you’ve enabled it, your documents,
photos, videos, favourites and
desktop folders are protected. To
add another folder, such as a synced
Dropbox folder, click “Protected
folders” and use the “+” to locate
and add new folders.
When controlled folder access is
enabled, Microsoft automatically
allows a range of known
applications to access your folders; if
it erroneously blocks something you
need to use, add the application to
your whitelist. Click “Allow an app
through controlled folder access”
and select the app from the Explorer
window.
Before you start celebrating,
though, be warned that there’s one
limitation. Controlled folder access
relies on Windows’ continuous
protection feature, so Defender
Antivirus has to be running in
the background for it to work.
That means you can’t use it in
combination with third-party virus
protection – although nowadays
many security suites include their
own anti-ransomware measures.
If you’re managing multiple
machines, you can also conigure
controlled folder access using
the Group Policy Editor. To ind
it, click through to Computer
Coniguration | Administrative
Templates | Windows Components
| Windows Defender Antivirus |
Windows Defender Exploit Guard
| Controlled Folder Access. Then,
to enable the feature, open the
“Conigure Controlled folder access
policy”, select the Enabled radio
button and set the “Conigure the
guard my folders feature” to Block.
You’ll notice that there’s also
an Audit option, alongside Block
and Disable. This lets applications
make changes freely, but records
what they’ve done in the Windows
event log. This probably isn’t
appropriate for your work PC, but
it could be a useful diagnostic tool,
allowing you to see exactly what a
suspect package does on a safely
quarantined machine.
Enabling “Controlled Folder
Access via Group Policy Editor”
only protects the default locations.
To add supplementary folders,
step back to the Controlled Folder
Access branch and edit the settings
accessed via “Conigure protected
folders”.

WINDOWS FIREWALL
The Windows Firewall was
originally introduced back in 2003,
in direct response to a devastating
worldwide attack from a pair of
worms known as Blaster and Sasser.
Since then, this type of attack
has been all but eliminated, and
there’s good reason to question if
a third-party irewall is necessary.
Indeed, many security suites have
ditched their own-brand irewalls;
when you do see one advertised,
the claimed beneit usually relates
to user-friendliness rather than
effectiveness.
Happily, you won’t normally need
to conigure the Windows irewall,
as it comes preconigured to offer a
balance of security and convenience.
Still, if you know what you’re
doing you can tweak the settings
manually: just click on “Firewall &
network protection” in the Security
Centre to access its settings.
By default, the irewall groups
connections into three types, with
different security settings that apply
to domain networks (such as the
network at your workplace), private
networks (a home or ofice network
where you know and trust the other
devices on the same connection) and
public networks (such as a Wi-Fi
hotspot in a café or hotel).

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 27

FEATURE ANTIVIRUS
Do you need a security
app for Android?
It’s not just on the desktop where operating systems are
getting smarter about security. Historically, Android has been
notoriously susceptible to malware, since its open design
allows users to install even untrusted code.
In response to this, the current version of Android
(8, codenamed Oreo), introduced a new feature called
Google Play Protect. This continuously scans your apps for
vulnerabilities or known malware. Android’s app sandboxing
model also keeps every application isolated, so that it can
only access its own data. If it tries to load your contacts
when it shouldn’t, or pull in your Instagram feed without your
permission, it will be blocked.
There are still advantages to third-party security apps,
however. Avast Mobile Security, Kaspersky Mobile Antivirus
and AVG AntiVirus Free for Android – all of which can be
downloaded free from Google Play – not only protect
you from pop-ups, viruses and trojans, but also offer an “app
lock” feature that prevents specified apps from launching
unless a PIN is provided. This ensures that a thief can’t access
your online banking apps, as well as blocking clever malware
from making premium-rate phone calls or send pricey text
messages.
And things will get even easier later this year with the
next version of Android – currently known just as “Android
P” – which promises to make a unified biometric interface
available to all apps. This should allow you to authenticate
specific operations with a fingerprint: effortless for you,
impossible for criminals.
TOP: You can block applications from accessing the
net over unsecured connections
BOTTOM: The longer you run an unpatched PC, the
longer you are exposed to exploits
You can block all incoming connections to
one or more of these network types by clicking
its header and ticking the box at the bottom
of the following screen. For greater control,
you can also set up access rules for individual
applications. Click “Allowed applications”,
scroll through the list of apps installed on
your machine, and selectively tick or untick
the Private and Public boxes.
To dig deeper, step back to “Firewall &
network protection” and click “Advanced
settings”. Select either Inbound Rules or
Outbound Rules in the sidebar, then again
scroll through your installed applications until
you ind the one you want to modify. Select it,
tap Properties in the Actions bar, then use the
tabs to see its full settings. One smart tweak
appears on the General panel: here you can
grant an application network access only if the
connection is secure.
PASSWORD AND
THEFT PROTECTION
What happens if your laptop is stolen? Many
security suites offer “anti-theft” features, but
28 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
Windows 10 has built-in capabilities
that may be able to help you recover
your machine – and ensure that the
thief can’t get into your personal
iles and websites.
To track down a stolen PC, just
visit account.microsoft.com/devices;
here you’ll see a list of all Windows
systems registered to your Microsoft
Account. Click the “Find my device”
link on any one to see its last known
location displayed on a map.
It’s also a good idea to make sure
your PC is set to require a password,
not just when it’s powered on but
every time it wakes up from sleep.
To do this, open Settings and
navigate through Accounts to Sign-
in options. Set the option to require
sign in “When PC wakes up from
sleep”.
By default, once you’ve set a
password in Windows 10, it remains
valid forever, but if you’re managing
someone else’s machine (or just
want to enforce a bit of discipline on
yourself) it’s also possible to require
periodic password changes, so that,
if someone discovers a password, it
will only be exploitable for a short
time.
To do this, type “lusrmgr.msc”
in the Cortana box to launch Local
Users and Groups; click Users in
the sidebar; then double-click your
account in the main pane. Untick
the “Password never expires” box,
then click Apply and OK. From now
on, each new password will only be
valid for 30 days before it needs to
be changed.
SO DO YOU STILL
NEED PROTECTION?
With so many security features built
into Windows, you might think you
don’t need to worry about security
at all. But remember, the number
one threat to your security isn’t a
virus: it’s you. Many exploits rely
on tricking the user rather than the
computer. This is where third-party
security software can come into
its own. One thing that Windows
lacks is built-in web protection, to
warn you when you’re visiting sites
that are known to host deceptive
downloads, or when a phishing
email has directed you to a fake
login portal, in a bid to steal your
credentials. These tools are included
in many commercial security suites.
Then there’s the security of the
browser itself – it’s not just Windows
that can get compromised. Updates
to Chrome and Firefox are pushed
out regularly. Keep a close eye on
the menu buttons, and when you see
a notiication dot, you should restart
to install the latest patches.
Even if you keep your browser
up to date, though, it’s possible
for deceptive extensions to spy on
your activity, or for insecure pages
to accidentally leak your personal
information. Again, Windows offers
no built-in protections against this
– but several standalone security
suites include a separate secure
browser, intended for use only on
banking and shopping sites, which
is guaranteed to be free of malicious
code, and which will flag up any
potential risks.
Finally, don’t overlook the
possibility of your personal data
being spied on as it travels over the
network. This could happen if you
connect to a rogue Wi-Fi hotspot – or
it could be that a service provider
has been compromised. There’s
nothing Windows can do to protect
you from this very real threat – but
you can protect yourself with
another form of security software,
namely a VPN, which securely
encrypts the data channel between
your PC and the VPN provider. This
stops snoopers in their tracks, and
can more broadly protect your
privacy by ensuring that not even
your ISP can monitor which sites
you’re visiting.
DIGITAL?
OVER MY
DEAD
BODY
NOT EVERYONE IS
ENAMOURED WITH
THE DIGITAL WORLD.
WE MEET THE
PHOTOGRAPHERS,
GAMERS AND
FILOFAXOPHILES WHO
WON’T TURN THEIR BACK
ON ANALOGUE. WORDS
AND PICTURES
BY DAVE STEVENSON
 would love a digital detox,” says
I  Jayson Brinkler, a photographer
in his forties with an exhibition
in Paris.
Given he has a shade under
70,000 followers on Instagram,
Brinkler is a surprising advocate
for being less connected, as well
as being a passionate advocate of
ilm photography. “Film is a dying
art,” he tells me. “Kodak went into
liquidation, Agfa went, Polaroid
went, all the big institutions that we
know in photography that kept the
industry going have disappeared.”
In its place, disposable digital
images, samey Instagram feeds and
a constant demand to upload more.
“It is exhausting,” said Brinkler.
Six photographers are freezing
and on a bi-monthly photowalk
organised by Abdul Hye, a dental
nurse in his mid-30s. The catch?
There’s not a single SD card or
CMOS sensor in the cameras draped
from each photographer’s neck.
Except Brinkler, that is. “I was
half expecting to be lynched today,”
he tells me, for only bringing his
iPhone, albeit with a handsome
Zeiss lens strapped to its rear
camera.
Our photographers aren’t
alone either. A survey released in
February 2018 listed the top ive
things people missed that had
been replaced or killed entirely
by technology: while creating mix
tapes topped the list, photography
was writ large. Putting photos in
albums, hanging printed photos,
and the thrill of opening a pack of
newly-developed photographs made
up three of the remaining four slots.
But in the face of the technological
onslaught, groups around the world
are resisting the march of time.
Film photographers are the thin end
of the wedge: there are those who
swear not only by the design and
tactile appeal of their leather-bound
planners but also by their eficiency
beneits, and those who would
rather push pieces around a board
“THERE ARE THOSE WHO
than dispatch Nazis in Call of Duty. WOULD RATHER PUSH
There are hints of a trend: in 2017 PIECES AROUND A BOARD
Facebook revealed it had lost 700,000
daily users, while the amount of THAN DISPATCH NAZIS IN
time spent on the site dropped by CALL OF DUTY”
50 million hours per day. And, with
a 2017 study reporting that heavy
users of social media reported worse
mental health, the loss of analogue Maria
pursuits could be to everyone’s Gillies, Andy
Wingrave,
detriment. Felix Godfree
and Anne
BULLDOZED BY TECH Learoyd play
Alex Batterbee tells me he feels Imperial 2030
“bulldozed” by the constant Abdul Hye
using a 35mm
demands of digital. He breaks off to Olympus film
concentrate on the Indonesian coast, camera
where one of his warships has been
abruptly sunk by the Chinese navy.
Alex is one of the organisers of a
community who meet in pubs across
to indulge in the apparently simple,
old-school joys of board games.
Alex and ive others are around
a table on the mezzanine floor of
a hotel where they and around 50
other gamers have met to peruse
a huge selection of board games
that allow them to colonise Mars
(Terraforming), pit the forces of
good against evil in the middle
ages (Avalon) or, in the case of
Alex and his group, set a nation
on course for world domination
(Imperial 2030). The game is so
bewilderingly complex that I watch
it for an hour and manage to leave
knowing less than when I arrived.
“This board is kind of dry,” admits
Andy Wingrave, looking up from a
byzantine set of rules. “But it’s just
really fun to play because of the
 interactions with everybody.”
The idea that analogue pursuits
are the preserve of Luddites and the
left-behind are quickly dispelled
“HERE, EVEN THOUGH by the “boardies”. In between
SOMETIMES WE’RE outbreaks of internecine warfare
PLAYING WITH STRANGERS, and complex tax negotiations, it
turns out virtually all of the group
YOU GET TO TALK ABOUT are enthusiastic technologists.
HOW YOU ARE” “Video games are a massive part of
my life,” says Wingrave. “I started
actually coming here to get out of
Just some of the house.”
the games Maria Gillies adds: “I’ve always
available played video games, ever since I
to play at a
recent event was a kid. I used to play more video
Steve Morton games than actually going out with
holds his human beings.” The difference
leatherbound between board games and online
paper games? “You don’t talk about how
organiser,
ready for
your day was,” she says. “Here, even
action though sometimes we’re playing
with strangers, you get to talk about
how you are, and how your life’s
been. It’s that social interaction.”
Social media gets a colder
reception. “I’m a developer,”
Wingrave tells me. “I work with
technology all day, but I don’t
use Facebook and I don’t use
Instagram.” Gillies tells me she’s
another social media refusenik
and Anne Learoyd takes a break
from managing the United States’
military to admit to being on
Facebook but nothing else.
GETTING IN THE
WAY OF LIFE
“I think that a lot of digital
technology interrupts your life,”
Charlotte Longworth tells me.
Longworth runs a group whose
1,500 members meet up to shoot
images on ilm, while Longworth
herself runs workshops helping
beginners process their own rolls.
“I think there’s a thing now where
people feel a bit overwhelmed with
technology,” she says. “[They’re]
overwhelmed with being sat in
front of a computer all day – there’s
something getting back to them in
ilm that feels real and physical.”
For those coming from digital
photography – high-quality,
forgiving on sloppy technique and
near-instant – the appeal of ilm can
be oblique. “People like having the
discipline,” says Longworth. “What
you’d think would be its weakness is
actually one of the strongest things
about it.”
The gaggle of photographers
agrees. The group’s organiser,
Abdul Hye, argues ilm forces
photographers to be more
thoughtful. “When you shoot ilm
you’re kind of editing as you’re
going along,” he says.
Film photography isn’t only for
amateurs looking for hip-looking
kit. “You learn your craft,” pro
Jayson Brinkler tells me. “Anyone
can turn up with a digital camera
and be trigger happy and shoot lots
of images. [But] if you slow your
process down, you’re thinking about
the light, you’re thinking about the
composition, you think about your
subject matter. Everything slows
down.”
He recounts a portrait shoot
in which the subject unexpectedly
asked him to shoot a colleague as
well. Shooting on a single roll of
medium-format Hasselblad ilm,
he found himself with six frames
per subject. “That’s all I had to
work with, and one of those frames
that I came away with is now in
the archive of the National Portrait
Gallery, so if you think about what
you’re doing, it slows your process
down and you make sure you come
away with the goods.”

DISCOVERING
ANALOGUE
Getting into analogue might seem easy –
whether you’re about to give up Outlook in
favour of a Filofax or start shooting 35mm,
eBay and a series of unfortunate Buy It
Now decisions are only a few clicks away.
However, unless you’re already familiar
with your chosen old-school technology,
There are practical beneits, too.
One of the photographers, Marcus
Walker, is using a Bronica camera
that he picked up for $300 on eBay.
“My medium format equipment is
equivalent to 100 megapixels [in a
digital camera],” says Brinkler. “If I
was to buy a 100-megapixel camera,
I’m looking at $50,000 to $70,000.”
PAPER PLANNING
The practical beneits of analogue
technology are familiar to Steve
Morton, who in 2008 joined
Philofaxy, a blog that passionately
expounds the beneits of paper
planners. “Passion” is the right
word: when I go to meet Steve and
a small cadre of Filofaxophiles
in a restaurant, one lady tells me
she’s driven a hundred kilometres;
another literally flew in to share her
enthusiasm for Mia Cara stationery
(Morton tells me such efforts are
“not unusual”).
Morton’s enthusiasm is rooted in
practicality. “It’s speed,” he tells me.
“Getting your phone out, unlocking
the phone, going into the app and
typing into the thing just takes a lot
longer than my organiser.” Attendee
Sara Williams agrees that onscreen
reminders don’t work. “You just
ignore it,” she says. “And you forget
it because you’ve ignored it, because
it keeps annoying you by popping
up, so eventually you just delete it,
rather than actually dealing with it.”
Williams started the day the proud
owner of 73 Filofaxes and planners;
by the time we talk the number has
increased by two.
Those practical beneits don’t
mean Philofaxy’s followers are
immune to the mid-century
aesthetic charms of a paper
planner. The tables are strewn
with planners inished in soft,
the initial excitement may fade once you
realise that analogue hobbies rarely come
with the shallow learning curve of modern
gear.
“People can be scared to get things
wrong,” said Charlotte Longworth.
Particularly when it comes to film – every
under-exposure and missed focus costs real
money. But, “you have to do things to learn
how to do it.”
The internet holds plenty of help: Alex
Batterbee explained that YouTube is a great
embossed leather, such as Jacqui
Wapshott’s Gillio planner – hers
for “only” $140 secondhand.
“Normally they’d be about $200,”
she says. “It is a beautiful, tactile
object.” Ian Dawes, whose business
cards, I notice later, have three
perfectly spaced holes drilled into
them to make them easier to clip
into a Filofax, inds his stationery
spans the gap between beauty and
practicality. He found his planner
in a charity shop for $6. “If you
were to buy it from the US brand
new, it’s $400.” There’s a pause. “I’m
not kidding.” A recent convert to
David Allen’s Getting Things Done
(GTD) method of time management,
Dawes also believes eschewing
computerised time management
makes him more eficient.
It may also make him more
future-proof. “Technology moves
on so fast that it’s a whole exercise
in itself just to keep up,” says Max,
whose Filofax ownership started in
the late 1980s. “It appeals to me that
the format of diary I’ve used for the
last 20 to 30 years, I can carry on
“THERE’S MORE MONEY
IN SELLING AN IPHONE
EVERY TWO YEARS THAN
A FILOFAX EVERY TEN”
DIGITAL REFUSENIKS FEATURE
resource for picking up the finer points of
board games, while the most cursory of web
searches is likely to reveal plenty of expert
advice. But since analogue pursuits hold an
obviously offline appeal, there’s much to be
said from learning from the like-minded.
Meetup.com is a gigantic repository of
classes, get-togethers and tutorials run by
hobbyists and professional instructors alike,
many requiring no down payment greater
than a sense of enthusiasm for your new
hobby and a willingness to learn.
using that forever.” That’s hard to do digitally.
“If I want to know when I went to a certain
country on holiday I can go back and look,
whereas if I’ve been doing that electronically,
those records would have vanished long ago.”
UNEARTHING GEMS
He might ind a kindred spirit in Jayson
Brinkler, who once discovered a box Brownie
camera in an antique shop. “What interested
us wasn’t the box Brownie – it was loaded with
a roll of ilm.
“You could tell from the cars that it was
taken in 1950, so these images had been stored
in this camera for 50 years and hadn’t seen the
light of day. That’s the beauty of ilm.”
“You couldn’t do that with digital,” he says.
“In, say, 20 years’ time, you probably won’t
have access to any of your images. You can
only store them on media like a computer
hard drive or external hard drive, [and] a lot of
those hard drives won’t be accessible in years
to come… whereas with ilm you haven’t got
that problem, you just keep your negatives and
you can have access to them any time.”
Vivian Maier is a case in point – an
American photographer whose work was
unknown while she was alive. It was only after
she died that boxes of her negatives and prints
came to life and she won plaudits for her work.
Analogue has its work cut out. Technology
crackles onwards, and there’s more money
in selling an iPhone every two years than a
Filofax every ten. But as long as old-school
practices continue to offer practical, tactile and
aesthetic beneits, a hardcore of users
will still be illing out their diaries, hanging
their photos and rolling their dice. I mention
mix tapes to Ian Dawes at the Philofaxy
gathering. “I miss them!” he tells me. “I had
a Fisher hi-i system in my bedroom and it
had two decks, so you could copy.” He
recorded the chart rundown. “I wouldn’t
get rid of those [tapes] for love nor money.”
He tells me he’s thinking about giving them
to his two-year-old son one day. “He won’t
have a clue.”
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 33
FORGET
SSDS
DNA
STORAGE
IS ON ITS WAY
SUCCESSFULLY PROGRAMMING
DNA COULD OPEN THE DOORS
TO A BRAVE NEW ERA OF
BIOLOGICAL COMPUTERS. ALEX
REIS UNRAVELS THE STRANDS
ur reliance on gadgets is creating
O  an unprecedented amount of data.
Humans produce a staggering 16
zettabytes every year, which equates to 16 x
1021 bytes. And, last year, research group IDC
predicted that we’ll be creating more than 160
zettabytes per year by 2025.
Hard drives and silicon chips have served
us well, but with all this data we’ll soon need
more than they can offer. Faster. Bigger. Better.
Researchers are looking for the next big thing,
and one of the potential new materials is
rather surprising: DNA.
BETTER STORAGE
Researchers have known for a long time DNA
can be used for data storage. In 1961, Richard
Feynman was talking about the potential
for sub-microscopic computers, and the irst
attempt at using DNA for this purpose came
in 1994 with Leonard Adleman. Our genetic
code is in many ways a perfect match for a
computer. After all, it stores the blueprint for
making every living creature on this planet.
As a bonus, it transmits from one generation
to the next with incredible reliability, with
many of the genes today remaining virtually
unchanged for countless generations. And, if
you think DNA is fragile and delicate, think
34 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
again. DNA is incredibly tough and
long-lasting; if kept under the right
conditions, it will stay intact for
millions of years.
It’s no big surprise, then, that
researchers are trying to turn DNA
into computer storage. DNA can
be treated like a standard storage
device: the binary code comes
from using the bases thymine
(T), guanine (G), adenine (A) and
cytosine (C) to represent 1s (T and
G) and 0s (A and C). Researchers
have already squeezed an 1896
French movie, a computer virus, a
$50 Amazon gift card, Shakespeare’s
poems, a clip of Martin Luther
King’s “I have a dream” speech,
and Watson and Crick’s work
describing the structure of DNA
into DNA itself. However, “saving”
and “opening” iles stored in DNA
memory doesn’t work exactly in a
way we recognise. In fact, it’s a read-
only process at the moment, and the
information has to be accessed as
a whole, not in sections. If current
computers were like that, you
wouldn’t be able to save any new
data and would have to open all the
iles in a folder at once.
Despite these dificulties, interest
in this ield has boomed over
the past few years. In 2012, there
were some of the irst attempts to
go beyond just coding data into
DNA. Researchers from Stanford
University successfully wrote
and rewrote one bit of data into
bacterial DNA. Their goal now is to
increase from a single bit to eight
bits – a byte – of programmable
genetic data storage.
In the intervening years,
researchers at the University of
Illinois took this a step further and
encoded the Wikipedia pages from
six American universities, before
successfully inding and editing
parts of the text from three of those
institutions, within the DNA. In this
case, the researchers “password-
protected” each block of information
with a speciic code, to make it
easier to flag up the sections to ind.
The latest development comes
from a collaboration between
universities in Italy, Sweden and
Ireland, where researchers are
taking advantage of bacteria
and their small rings of DNA
called plasmids. Crucially, these
microorganisms “swap” plasmids
between themselves in a process
known as conjugation.
The idea is to “save” data in
plasmids trapped in a speciic
location. To “open” these iles,
researchers send mobile bacteria
to visit their trapped counterparts.
After conjugation, they return
carrying the desired chunks of
data. “If bacteria get within each
other’s reach, information, in [the]
form of DNA, can pass from a
donor to a receiver,” said Alberto
Giaretta, doctoral student at Örebro
University in Sweden and one of the
authors of this study.
“Our idea is to build an archive
by encoding information in
non-motile bacteria [unable to
propel themselves, and therefore
immobile]. Later on, this
 DNA STORAGE FEATURE

DNA CLOUDS
However, there are still many
challenges to overcome. All this
work relies on eficient DNA
sequencing which, although it
has taken huge leaps since being
introduced in the late 1970s, is
still bulky and expensive. In
addition, the kind of problems DNA
computers can solve right now
wouldn’t be of much use for posting
a picture on Facebook or writing a
Word doc.
“Currently we have a proof-of-
concept implementation, but we
need to develop the techniques
DNA isn’t just useful for data storage –
incredibly, it can also be taught to perform tasks further to achieve the potential.
One of the technical challenges is to
make DNA computations reliable
information can be read by motile bacteria code is recognised by a shorter piece at a large scale and minimise the
that, by using a sort of GPS for bacteria, [will of DNA, which then causes the number of errors in computations,”
be able to] move towards the archive, read the rest of the DNA to be copied. Once says Korovin.
information through conjugation and then the code is recognised, it can be What makes this ield exciting
deliver such information to a third point.” speciically altered to make a new as we approach the next decade is
In keeping with tradition, the team command. This is done by a process that large companies are starting
generated the DNA sequence coded for called PCR [polymerase chain to notice the potential hidden
the message “Hello World”, which was reaction], a widely used technique inside DNA. Microsoft has recently
inserted into a group of trapped bacteria and used to copy DNA.” announced its interest in adding
successfully retrieved after conjugation from The consequences of this capacity DNA storage to its cloud system.
a group of motile bacteria. “We used several increase are incredible. If you “Interest from technology leaders
known techniques, but in a different way and imagine a computational question such as Microsoft, and research
for a different purpose – a clever way of using as a maze, DNA computers take developing at the pace which it
known molecular biology techniques for a a completely different approach currently is, makes it likely that
very different application”, added Lee Coffey to solve the problem compared DNA storage will be a reality versus
and Triona Dooley-Cullinane, researchers at to standard devices. “Standard a fantasy in the coming years,” said
the Waterford Institute, Ireland. electronic computers, when they Coffey and Dooley-Cullinane.
come to a T-junction, have to choose It will take some time for DNA-
GROWABLE COMPUTERS which path to take, whereas [our based computers to come into
While this is certainly impressive, storage isn’t DNA computer] doesn’t need to existence – if they ever do – but
the only application for DNA in computers. choose, as it replicates itself to there are many other potential
Incredibly, researchers at Manchester follow both paths at the same time, applications. “We have some
University have shown DNA can even be thus inding the answer faster,” thoughts as to how DNA computers
“taught” to perform operations. said Philip Day, reader in synthetic might be made available, and one
“Current computers work on the principle of biology and quantitative genomics such idea is that these computers
reading a code (stored on the hard drive) and at the University of Manchester. will be irstly accessed through the
performing a command (using the memory In other words, it’s like using cloud and used to work on larger
and processor),” explained chemist Andrew millions of computers at the same computational problems,” said the
Currin, one of the authors in this study. “Our time to solve the problem. “In our University of Manchester’s Philip
DNA computer has the same principle, except DNA computer, each computation is Day.
that our hard drive is the DNA sequence and represented by a single DNA strand, It’s not that dificult to imagine
the processor is the enzyme used to copy the which allows us to utilise many DNA computers being introduced
DNA. You could easily imagine DNA storage trillions of computations happening into living cells to mingle with
and DNA computers would work very well at the same time. This type of existing biological mechanisms.
combined together.” DNA-based computer can have Extraordinary examples on the way
What distinguishes DNA computers from huge advantages over conventional include an intelligent method to
our run-of-the-mill devices is that they can computers. We could have a deliver drugs only when needed or a
“grow”. Not iguratively, but literally. As DNA computer more powerful than all more accurate detection of cancer.
performs a command, it replicates itself and computers in the world combined If scientists can crack DNA
doubles in capacity. “Everything happens in and it it in a pocket,” explains computers, it may not be long before
a tube. No living cells are used, and the DNA Konstantin Korovin, senior lecturer the lines between natural and
is entirely synthetic,” Currin said. “The DNA at the University of Manchester. artiicial programming blur.

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 35

IN THE LABS WE TRY BEFORE YOU BUY

BUDGET BOARDS
BEN MANSILL DWELLS IN THE LAB

‘ll tell you why we usually bring in only top end motherboards THE COALFACE

I when a new chipset comes out and we do a group test. Premium

boards generally have a full suite of features, many – but not all
– of which trickle down to lower-end boards. The thinking here
On the mining front we have a couple of interesting products.
There’s the built-for-purpose rig from Pioneer on page 51. While a
good overall concept it is defeated by economics, and redundancy
is that if you are considering a lower-end board it’s quite possible well before it has the potential to pay for itself. That box is a
the important aspects have been covered in our review, like the traditional super-basic PC stuffed with gaming video cards. Nick
audio codec for example, and you can use that knowledge when has run the numbers and alas they don’t add up.
you’re shopping for a budget board. But, while Razer’s Core V2 (review on page 67) is ostensibly
That said, we know how popular premium motherboards are. intended to add meaty GPU power to a regular laptop, being,
And we get why, they’re hard to resist while being relatively easy if Razer’s dreams come true a Razer Blade Stealth (marvellous
to justify given you’re likely to hold onto it for at least a couple of machine, review on page 56). Razer being Razer it’s marketed as
years - Intel’s recent trend towards eliminating CPU backwards a device that adds gaming horsepower, and indeed that’s how
compatibility notwithstanding. most of these will end up in life. But for a single GPU product that
So here we are doing a budget board group test! These usually has had its cost already rationalised as something for fun and
follow our premium group tests by a couple of months in line fun only, it’s a logical step to have this machine earn a few dollars
with these product’s release cycle. mining for you, too. Being in a separate box its heat won’t damage
This month it’s all Intel, speciically the impressive B360 chipset the rest of the PC. Very elegant, indeed.
and a board from each of the Big Four. Our man Chris was
thoroughly impressed and two of these boards scored a perfect
5/5 and a Recommended award. Not bad! And, as he discovered,
there’s very little to separate the premium from the budget. Unless
you want to go hard with overclocking it’s perfectly possible to
pick up a well selected B360 board that’s premium in all but name.
The action kicks off on the following page.

EDITORlAL & PRODUCT SUBMISSION: PC & Tech Authority welcomes all information on new and upgraded products and services for possible coverage within the news or reviews pages. However, we respectfully point out that the magazine is not
obliged to either review or return unsolicited products. Products not picked up within six months of submission will be used or donated to charity. The Editor is always pleased to receive ideas for articles, preferably sent in outline form, with details of author’s
background, and – where available – samples of previously published work. We cannot, however, accept responsibility for unsolicited copy and would like to stress that it may take time for a reply to be sent out.

36 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
 INTRO REVIEWS

HOW WE TEST REVIEWS

Our benchmarking tests are the best in the PCS & LAPTOPS
business. Read on to find how they work… DreamMicro Crypto HPC 51
Dell XPS 13 53
2D TESTS Gigabyte X5 laptop 54
Desktop PCs and laptops are tested using our own custom bench testing suite, which has Asus Zephyrus M GM501GS 55
been carefully designed to test all aspects of a system and rate them in a way that’s useful Razer Blade Stealth 56
to you. Our benchtesting cover three main tests: a typical video editing test, a demanding Gigabyte X5 laptop 54
4K video editing test and a multitasking test that stresses all aspects of the system. We
look at the time it takes for each test to run, wh ich is then compared to our reference PC COMPONENTS
to produce a normalised result. This score is shown on a graph, and to help you understand ASRock Fatal1ty
just where the PC we’re reviewing sits in the grand scheme of things, we will often include B360 Gaming K4 40
other system’s scores. Asus ROG Strix
B360-F Gaming 41
On occasion we will run publically available bench testing software, predominantly PCMark MSI B360 Gaming Pro Carbon 42
10 from Futuremark. This is run in the Home setting, in Accelerated mode. You can get Gigabyte Aorus B360 Gaming 3 43
PCMark 10 as well as 3DMark (below) from www.futuremark.com Samsung 970 Pro SSD 46
Intel 760P SSD 47
3D TESTS Aorus Gaming 7 motherboard 48
For video cards, as well as Integrated Graphics Processing Units, we use:
• 3DMARK FIRESTRIKE TABLETS
• RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER Apple iPad (2018) 58
• TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER 2
• GHOST RECON WILDLANDS PERIPHERALS
•FAR CRY 5 D-Link Covr mesh Wi-Fi 49
D-Link AC2600 range extender 50
3DMark is designed specifically to test video cards, and you can download and run the same Aorus K9 optical keyboard 50
tool as us to help you gauge where your own GPU ranks compared to what we are reviewing. Asus ProArt PA32UC monitor 52
The games were selected because they are relatively well balanced in performance Razer Core V2 57
between AMD and Nvidia, favouring neither. Rise of the Tomb Raider supports DX12. Ghost
Recon Wildlands is a cutting edge 3D engine and can be optimised to stress either the CPU HANDHELDS
or GPU, while Total War: Warhammer is particularly good at stressing CPUs, and has beta Huawei P20 Pro 62
DX12 support. Sony Xperia ZX2 Compact 63
Tests are run using three resolution ranges, depending on where the GPU sits in the
market: GAMES
Battletech 86
ENTRY LEVEL: 1920 X 1080 Frostpunk 87
MID-RANGE: 1920 X 1080 – 2560 X 1440 Warhammer: Vermantide 2 88
HIGH-END: 4K
Battery life SMART SPEAKERS
Video playback
BATTERY TESTS 5hrs 0min Amazon Echo 70
Screen brightness is set to 120cd/m2, Amazon Echo Dot 71
Benchmarks
playing a 720p video on loop until the Amazon Echo Plus 71
device runs out of power. OVERALL 40 Apple HomePod 72
0 25 50 75 100 125 150 Google Home 74
BREAKDOWN IMAGE EDITING VIDEO EDITING MULTI TASKING
Google Home Mini 74
SCORES 97 50 15
Amazon Echo Show 76
Amazon Echo Spot 76
JBL Link 20 77
WHAT OUR RATINGS MEAN WHAT OUR RATINGS MEAN
KitSound Voice One 77
PC & Tech Authority’s
Libratone Zipp 78
comprehensive Real World testing
sorts out the best products from the Libratone Zipp Mini 78
pack. Any product recommended by Sonos One 78
PC & Tech Authority is well above Ultimate Ears Blast 80
average for features, value for Ultimate Ears Megablast 80
money and performance. Zolo Halo 80

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 37

INTEL BUDGET BOARDS WITH THE B360 CHIPSET INTEL AND ITS PARTNERS DELIVER A PLATFORM THAT’S
HIGH ON PERFORMANCE AND LOW ON COST. CHRIS SZEWCZYK POWERS UP

38 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
 COMPONENTS REVIEWS

hen Coffee Lake processors It can certainly do that, but there are some

W  launched back in October, the

line-up was pretty thin on options
with Z370 motherboards being the only ones
to choose from. That’s all changed now that
Intel has launched the budget oriented H370,
H310 and B360 chipsets which inally puts
Coffee Lake into the realms of mainstream
affordability.
For so long, Intel based systems aimed
at budget users have seen incremental
improvements. As we move well into 2018,
it’s clear that users expect more from their
computers. Gaming, Netflix, streaming,
smartphone video conversions, video calls
and so on. A dual core just doesn’t cut it
anymore. A CPU like the Core i5-8400 with
its 6 cores capable of 4GHz means that users
can do more than ever, but until now, there
haven’t been budget oriented chipsets to
match.
THE BUDGET OPTION
Enter B360. At the most basic
level it is similar to Z370, with Coffee Lake
CPU support, four memory slots, PCIe 3.0,
SATA 6GB/s etc. but as you dive under the
hood, there are actually quite
a few differences. This doesn’t mean they
aren’t capable of handling a powerful rig.
signiicant limitations that separate B360
from the more expensive Z370 chipset.
Primarily, B360 does not support
overclocking of either the CPU or
memory. The latter point means that B360
motherboards are limited to DDR4-2666
only. In a nutshell, if you want to overclock,
or run high speed memory, skip B360. There
are a few other limitations with regards
to the number and type of USB ports, the
number of PCIe lanes and RAID, but for the
most part these things don’t affect a user
with a common system coniguration.
NO COMPROMISES
If you’re running a single graphics card,
2x8GB of RAM, a fast NVMe SSD and some
additional SATA drives then B360 will
function exactly as it would as if you were
using Z370. Why pay extra for stuff you
don’t want or need? That’s the kind of option
B360 brings to the table. It’s not cheap or
nasty, it just omits some features a big chunk
of the market will never need or use.
With all this in mind, we’re pleased to
have four B360 motherboards on hand for
review over the following pages.
Read on!

X264 FHD VIDEO

CINEBENCH 15 CINEBENCH 15 7ZIP PCMARK 10 AS-SSD
ENCODING
Million Instruction
FPS Multi thread Score Single thread Score Score Score
per second
Asus ROG Strix
34.04 943 173 25566 4966 4453
B360-F Gaming
ASRock Fatal1ty
33.95 939 172 25669 4937 4412
B360 Gaming K4
Gigabyte Aorus
33.82 943 172 25897 5005 4405
B360 Gaming 3
MSI B360 Gaming
33.99 937 171 25571 4976 4413
Pro Carbon

RISE OF GHOST TOTAL WAR:

3DMARK
THE TOMB RECON: WARHAM- FAR CRY 5
FIRESTRIKE
RAIDER WILDLANDS MER II
1080p, Low, 1080p, Low, 1080p Low, 1080p Low,
Score
DX12, Avg FPS Avg FPS DX11 Avg FPS DX11 Avg FPS
Asus ROG Strix B360-F 20322 (12254
224.34 179.18 225.7 152
Gaming Physics)
“As we move well into ASRock Fatal1ty B360 20483 (12275
224.15 178.98 225.7 152
2018, it’s clear that Gaming K4 Physics)

users expect more Gigabyte Aorus B360

Gaming 3
20303 (12307
Physics)
226.74 180.10 226.3 153
from their computers.” MSI B360 Gaming Pro 20497 (12285
223.99 177.38 225.8 151
Carbon Physics)

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 39

REVIEWS COMPONENTS
ASROCK
FATAL1TY B360
GAMING K4
ASROCK NAILS IT
SRock, perhaps undeservedly at times,
A  has a reputation for being a value
oriented brand. While there’s nothing
wrong with that per se, it does a bit of a
disservice to ASRock, which deserves credit
for some outstanding products over the years
as well as its willingness to take a few risks
(X299 ITX board anyone?) Motherboards in
this range are the bread and butter for ASRock
though. The Fatal1ty B360 Gaming K4 is easily
the cheapest board in the roundup, yet at the
same time, its speciication is as good as any
board here. Straight up that makes it a strong
contender in this market.
One of the little things we like about
ASRock is the way it packs its motherboards.
Most boards come in an anti-static bag inside
the box, but ASRock goes an extra step and
packs the motherboard into a secure foam
shell. This is a small thing in the overall
scheme, but it inspires that little bit of extra
conidence when your board is with the not so
careful courier.
Looks wise, the Fatal1ty B360 Gaming
K4 is a real improvement over some of the
red accented Fatal1ty boards. In the age of
RGB, a subtle design is all the go, allowing
the lighting to become the dominant visual
feature. The K4 follows this ethos, with a nice
grey on black colour scheme that in no way
looks cheap. There’s a few splashes of RGB
lighting around the chipset heatsink, audio
section covering and adjacent to the I/O ports.
A look at the board shows ASRock has
not skimped out on the features in order
to bring down the price. Perhaps the only
high level thing missing is a M.2 heat shield,
though at this price, it’s hard to be critical
of something like that. There’s a pair of M.2
connectors plus an additional M.2 E-key slot
for a Wi-Fi card. The power delivery section is
particularly strong. A 10+2 phase design and
beefy heatsinks are more than is necessary
for current generation Coffee Lake processors
which cannot be overclocked on B360
motherboards. If Intel release 8 core CPUs
with higher power requirements, it’s deinitely
40 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
better to have an excessive power
delivery system.
The rear I/O is equipped with
most of what you need. There are
two USB 3.1 ports Gen 2 ports, one
of which is a Type-C. Additionally,
there are two USB 3.0 Gen 1 ports
and a pair of USB 2.0 ports. In
terms of video ports, you’ll note
a VGA port (why?!) in addition to
“if you are ooking for a solid
board for not too much money,
this is the one to get”
a HDMI and DisplayPort. LAN
duties are handled by the Intel
I219-V controller. It’s nice to see
ASRock didn’t take any shortcuts
with the audio system. There are
the standard ive audio jacks,
complemented by an S/PDIF port.
Audio is controlled by a Realtek
ALC-1220 chip with a Creative
SoundBlaster 5.0 Cinema software
overlay. No shortcuts there!
The K4 is equipped with an
easy to navigate BIOS with logical
groupings and many advanced
options to sink your teeth into.
ASRock deserves credit for having
one of the easier to navigate BIOS
layouts on the market.
The Fatal1ty K4 performed pretty
well against the rest of the ield. It
didn’t do anything surprising, but
it didn’t lag behind either. Gaming,
memory and CPU performance was
all on par. As this is the cheapest
board in the test, it’s nice to be
able drop the savings on a better
CPU or GPU as they are the real
performance differentiators.
ASRock’s venerable Fatal1ty
brand continues to soldier on. Here
we have another entry that offers
terriic value, without compromising
on notable features. It’s got a nice
subtle design with a splash of RGB,
good build quality and a quality
feature set that matches or exceeds
the more expensive boards. If
you’re on a budget, don’t care about
overclocking and are looking for a
solid board for not too much money,
this is the one to get.
KEY SPECS
Intel B360 Chipset • Socket 1151 Support for
8th Generation Intel Core Processors • 2x M.2
• 1x M.2 E-Key • 6x SATA • 2x USB 3.1 Gen
2, up to 4x USB 3.1 Gen 1, up to 6x USB 2.0 •
Intel I219-V Gigabit LAN • 7.1 Channel ALC-
1220 Audio • ATX Form Factor
$169 • www.asrock.com

ASUS ROG STRIX B360-F GAMING
ROG ON A BUDGET
nly a couple of years ago, an Asus
O  Republic of Gamers motherboard
with a budget chipset would have
been unheard of. The market has spoken
though, with users increasingly seeking
a better balance of high end features and
value. There will always be a place for $500+
motherboards, but they will always be halo
products. The real volume comes from the
mid-range and lower end market. The ROG
Strix B360-F Gaming is likely to be one of the
biggest selling ROG motherboards boards
ever and we always have high expectations
from every ROG board, so how does this
one do?
The B360-F Gaming is one of the most
expensive B360 motherboards. One glance
at it and it looks very much worth it. Casting
an eye of the board reveals a few noteworthy
things. Firstly, the SATA ports are not the
typical double stacked connectors; they
are single. The adjacent chipset heatsink
is a hollow design that promotes
airflow coming in from the front
of the case that would otherwise
be blocked by double ports. It’s a
quite clever way of increasing the
surface area of the heatsink by
a big margin. There’s a screw in
metal heatsink for one of the two
M.2 connectors as well. The PWM
cooling and power delivery system
is more like what you’d expect to
see on overclocking capable Z370
motherboards. Perhaps it’s even
overkill. Still, it’s better to overkill
than… underkill.
Any gaming oriented
motherboard has some form of RGB
lighting present, and so does the
B360-F Gaming. It’s quite subtle
though, with just the ROG logo and
a strip adjacent to the rear I/O ports
featuring RGB lighting. It looks
“It’s a quite clever way
of increasing the surface
area of the heatsink”
really nice when combined with
the grey on black board colouring.
If you placed this board next to one
at twice the price, it wouldn’t look
out of place. The whole board really
does ooze premium quality.
The I/O area has an integrated
shield (unique in this roundup)
and has all the ports you’d expect
from a board at this price. There’s
three USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, one of
which is a Type-C. The video ports
cater for almost all conceivable
scenarios, with DisplayPort, HDMI
and DVI-D ports all present.
VGA has no place on all but the
most budget motherboards these
days. The single Gigabit LAN
port is provided courtesy of an
Intel I219V controller which will
handle your pings nicely. There’s
COMPONENTS REVIEWS
the standard ive analogue audio
jacks complemented by an S/PDIF
optical output and inally a PS/2
combo port. All in all it’s a good set
of ports, though there is no Wi-Fi
present, which is the case with all
the motherboards in this roundup.
Asus’ ROG UEFI BIOS is
typically feature illed and will be
instantly familiar to ROG users.
One of the curious things we
spotted were options for memory
speeds above DDR4-2666. This is
of course not possible on a B360
board. We didn’t expect DDR4-
2800+ to work, and it didn’t, so
we wonder why these options are
present at all.
The B360-F Gaming performs
typically well as we’d expect,
particularly with multi-threaded
applications where it was at the
head of the pack. It was also the
best performer in our storage
test and was right there in every
other test. Though the differences
are small, every little bit counts.
Of course, like every other B360
motherboard, it’s not possible to
overclock the CPU, but that’s ok.
When some Coffee Lake CPUs can
boost to 4.5GHz and higher, do you
really need to OC?
Asus has produced an excellent
budget minded motherboard
that impresses with its design,
reinement and performance.
Though it’s priced a bit high
when compared to other B360
motherboards, we feel it’s worth it
in this case. If you don’t care about
overclocking and want to spend a
few extra dollars on a better CPU
or GPU, you can skip Z370 and give
this Asus a serious look.
KEY SPECS
Intel B360 Chipset • Socket 1151 Support
for 8th Generation Intel Core Processors •
2x M.2; 6x SATA; 3x USB 3.1 Gen 2, up to 2x
USB 3.1 Gen 1, up to 6x USB 2.0 • Intel I219-V
Gigabit LAN • 7.1 Channel ALC-1220 Audio •
ATX Form Factor
$229 • www.asus.com.au
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 41
REVIEWS COMPONENTS

MSI 360
GAMING
PRO CARBON
A SOLID BUT UNCOMPETITIVE BOARD

SI’s Gaming Pro Carbon

M  motherboards are always strong

contenders right in the sweet spot
for good features at attractive prices. MSI
very aggressively target the gaming market
and are perhaps the most ‘gameried’ of
all the motherboard brands. Like the other
contenders in the hotly contested premium
B360 market, this is a very important product
for MSI. It promises to be another strong
Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard, though the
competition is tough as always. How does it
stack up?
The MSI B360 Gaming Pro Carbon looks
like a quality product when you irst look at
it. There are no increasingly common acres of
plastic anywhere in sight. There’s a healthy
dose of RGB lighting present, with the right
side of the board, chipset heatsink and audio
PCB separation line all able to be controlled
via MSI’s Mystic Light app. If we had to be
critical, we’d say the set of radiating lines
printed on the lower half of the PCB look a bit
plain and out of place. We also note the lack
of M.2 drive cooling, somewhat surprising
given MSI were the irst to push this on many
previous generation motherboards. We like
the internal Type-C USB header. Type-C is
the future and it will certainly become a more
common feature on computer cases as we go
forward.
The power delivery system is robust and
will have no problem powering any Coffee
Lake CPU (though of course overclocking
is not supported). If Intel decides to release
higher core count processors supported by
the current generation platform, then this
PWM design should easily be capable of
powering those as well. The PWM is cooled
by large metal heatsinks, though perhaps
MSI is cost cutting a bit as the heatsinks have
a lot of empty space underneath them. They
are adequate though and will not present any
limiting factor.
The B360 Gaming Pro Carbon has a very
healthy set of I/O ports. There’s a pair of USB
3.1 Gen 2 ports, one of which is a Type-C along
with an additional four Gen 1 ports (provided
by an ASMedia controller). Lastly there’s a
pair of USB 2.0 ports. Display Port and HDMI
ports take care of video capabilities. The single
Gigabit LAN port is hooked up to
an Intel I219V controller which is
a good quality, capable NIC. The
audio ports consist of the typical ive
analogue audio jacks complemented
by an S/PDIF optical output. Finally
there’ a PS/2 combo port. Like all
the other boards here, there is no
WiFi, but the good complement of
USB ports makes this a very good
rounded set of I/O for the MSI.
The MSI UEFI BIOS
implementation is always a strong
point and the B360 Gaming Pro
Carbon doesn’t disappoint. It’s easy
to navigate and closely follows MSI’s
tradition of logical grouping with a
quality feature set. MSI’s Fan control
system deserves a mention and
again it works well here.
The MSI did largely what we
expected in terms of performance,
but then it didn’t really stand out.
It trailed a little in the game tests,
though not by a lot. The difference
are always small but it’s better to
be leading tests instead of trailing
them.
“a couple of little things
prevent it from getting
on the top step”
MSI have produced a well-
equipped motherboard that ticks
almost all the boxes, but a couple of
little things prevent it from getting
on the top step. The PCB printing
detracts from a premium look and
its performance is just that little bit
behind in a couple of places. These
are small things, but they are there.
It also has the signiicantly cheaper
ASRock Fatal1ty board to ight. In
the big picture, the MSi is still a
good board. The BIOS is excellent
as always and we like the presence
of extra USB ports. If you are a fan
of MSI, by all means it won’t let you
down, but the competition is really
tough in this part of the market.
KEY SPECS
Intel B360 Chipset • Socket 1151 Support
for 8th Generation Intel Core Processors • 2x
M.2; 6x SATA; Up to 3x USB 3.1 Gen 2, up to
6x USB 3.1 Gen 1, up to 6x USB 2.0 • Intel
I219-V Gigabit LAN • 8-Channel ALC-1220
Audio • ATX Form Factor
$209 • www.msi.com.au

42 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU

GIGABYTE
AORUS B360
GAMING 3
GREAT PRICING WITH A FEW SACRIFICES
igabyte’s Aorus motherboards are
G  continually impressing us thanks
to the very good value they offer.
Obviously Gigabyte is being very aggressive
on price in recent times. Most Aorus boards
place a strong emphasis on design and
aesthetics thanks to a healthy dose of RGB
lighting. We were big fans of the Aorus X470
Gaming 5 in our AMD X470 motherboard
roundup, so how does this value B360
contender fare in a highly competitive
marketplace?
Aorus motherboards have a history of
being really loaded up with RGB lighting,
with some examples overdoing it perhaps.
The B360 Gaming 3 RGB implementation
dials it back a notch, with just the chipset
heatsink and audio PCB separation line
featuring RGB lighting. The little orange
accents look nice, and there’s silk screened
image of the Aorus hawk. Overall it’s a
good looking motherboard that looks like
it should be worth more than its $185 street
price.
A visual inspection of the board reveals
a few little nuggets. In addition to the
standard pair of M.2 slots, there’s an
additional slot for an Intel Wi-Fi card.
Gigabyte offer a variant of the Gaming 3
with this card included for a few bucks
more. There’s also a chunky M.2 heatsink
positioned above the top most PCIe slot.
This position means your M.2 drive should
stay nice and cool thanks to airflow that’s
likely to pass over it from either a CPU
cooler or towards the rear case fan. On the
downside, we note the presence of push
pins for the PWM heatsinks. We’d like to see
screws used here.
In the quest to deliver a motherboard at
a cheaper price than competing Asus and
MSI products, Gigabyte has unfortunately
had to sacriice a few features. The power
delivery system is nothing too fancy. It’s
still adequate for non-overclocked use but
it’s noticeable. It’s the only motherboard in
the test that uses the older Realtek ALC-
892 audio controller. If analogue audio or
“It was the only board to
crack 5000 points in our
PC Mark test too”
headphone performance is vital for
you, this is something you’d want
to keep in mind.
The I/O area contains an
adequate complement of ports as
you’d expect, but it’s not the class
leader in this roundup. There’s
four USB 2.0 ports and just a
single Type-A USB 3.1 Gen 2 port.
There are three Gen 1 ports, one
of which is Type-C. This should
be ok for most, but an extra couple
USB 3.1 Gen 1 or 2 ports would
be welcome. The video outputs
consist of DVI-D and HDMI ports.
Rounding out the rear ports is a
single Gigabit LAN port controlled
by an Intel I219-V chip. There’s a
set of six analogue ports, but no S/
COMPONENTS REVIEWS
PDIF port so you’ll need to
use an alternative output if
you if intend to use a digital
audio signal.
The Aorus B360 Gaming
3 performed particularly
well in our gaming tests,
winning every test, though
as always the differences
between motherboards are
small. It was the only board
to crack 5000 points in
our PC Mark test too.
Overall the Gigabyte
was strong in all tests.
The Gigabyte UEFI
implementation is simple
and easy to use, and really
that’s all you need for a B360
motherboard. The key features
are easy to access. Given that
B360 motherboards do not allow
overclocking, just a few simple
little adjustments are required to
get your system up and running.
Gigabyte has clearly tried to
keep the B360 Gaming 3 at an
affordable price level relative to
other premium B360 boards, but
this means a few things have
had to be sacriiced. If these little
things are not important to you,
then by all means the Aorus B360
Gaming 3 will deliver very good
performance and look good while
doing it. Perhaps a hypothetical
B360 Gaming 5 with a few extra
bells at about $220 odd would be
the true gem we would like to see.
KEY SPECS
Intel B360 Chipset • Socket 1151 Support
for 8th Generation Intel Core Processors •
2x M.2; 6x SATA; 1x USB 3.1 Gen 2, up to 5x
USB 3.1 Gen 1, up to 6x USB 2.0 • Intel I219-V
Gigabit LAN • 7.1 channel ALC-892 Audio •
ATX Form Factor
$185 • www.gigabyte.com.au
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 43
RELEASE
THE THE PERFECT GAMING HEADSET
DOESN’T EXIST...OR DOES IT?

KRAKEN
44 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU

Choosing a sound companion for our a variety of colours to showcase
gaming marathon sessions can be tough, your personality, from serious
especially with the many brands offering a black and to pure white to playful
multitude of confusing options seemingly pink.
designed only to part us with our hard-
earned cash. IT SOUNDS GOOD
So, let’s cut through the mumbo-jumbo A loud and rich soundstage places
and get down to basics – what exactly you right in the center of all the
makes a gaming headset a gaming headset? gaming action, and the built-in
Is it the eye-watering RGB lighting? The retractable mic ensures that your
futuristic yet often-times tacky “gamer team’s shotcalls are heard with
aesthetic”? The booming over-emphasised crystal-clear clarity. The sound
bass intent on popping a vein in our is perfectly balanced to provide
forehead? an immersive experience, and
your pick of either round or oval
Here’s a hint: it’s none of the above. ear cushions blocks out ambient
noises to isolate you in perfect
At Razer, we’ve spent more than a decade focus.
working with top esports athletes around
the world to defi ne just what exactly gamers IT FEELS GOOD
look for in a high-performance gaming We’ve focused our attention to
headset. the tiny boring details such as
clamping force and the density
We think we’ve nailed it with our Kraken of ear cushions to improve
Pro series of headsets. In fact, the Kraken your comfort. Made of Bauxite
Pro V2 is the headset of choice of three-time aluminum, the entire frame
League of Legends World Champion Faker, of the Razer Kraken Pro V2
who is widely regarded as the best League is lightweight, flexible and
of Legends player in the world. incredibly durable. The ear
cushions can even come layered
Here are just a few reasons why: with cooling gel, memory foam,
and heat-transfer fabric so you
IT LOOKS GOOD can withstand the rigours of long
The Razer design language and our gaming sessions.
signature triple-headed snake with
Chroma lighting is unmistakable in any IT PLAYS WELL WITH YOUR STYLE
setting, striking fear into the hearts of
The Kraken has something for
your opponents. The refi ned aesthetic everyone. Play in stereo or 7.1
tells people you’re more than just another surround, and rock it in stylish
basement dweller, and the cans comes in Razer green or Quartz pink.
*Adapters may be required for gaming consoles such as Xbox One or PlayStation 4.
RAZER ADVERTORIAL
They’re compatible with consoles*,
PCs, laptops, televisions, tablets,
mobile phones and basically any
device with a standard 3.5mm
headphone jack, letting you own
the game on every platform.
Whichever Kraken Pro you pick as
your companion, you’ll step right
into a world of immersive sound
that pairs great with any game
you care to throw at it, from games
with cinematic audio quality
such as Battlefield 1 and Witcher
3 to fi rst-person shooters like
Overwatch, PUBG, and Fortnite.
Even racing games like Forza
Motorsport 7 come alive and pull
you right into the driver’s seat!
To choose your own Kraken, visit
www.jbhifi.com.au/razer
Hefty 50mm drivers deliver crisp
detail along with thunderous
bass, while the comfortable
oval ear cups let you game on
blissfully for hours
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 45
REVIEWS COMPONENTS
SAMSUNG 970
PRO 1TB M.2 SSD
IF YOU WANT THE BEST M.2 DRIVE ON THE MARKET, HERE IT IS
amsung has long been the market leader Samsung’s top of the line you-can’t-
S  in the performance NVMe SSD market.
It seems like an eternity since the 960
series launched in 2016, and it has remained
largely unchallenged until now. The tech
world never sits still though, and competing
manufacturers are catching up. The Pro series
has always sat atop the throne, a position that
has come under some threat, which brings us
to Samsung’s latest and greatest, the 970 Pro.
We are pleased to have the 1TB model on hand AES 256 bit encryption.
for review, and when you have device with
a performance pedigree like the Pro models
have always had, our expectations are high.
NOT YOUR TYPICAL
NAND M.2 DRIVE
The Samsung 970 Pro is a physically atypical
NVMe M.2 2280 (80mm length) sized drive
connected via a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. That’s
about where the similarities end though.
While there are many high performance
drives shipping with 64-Layer NAND, most
of those use TLC memory which is cheaper to
produce and has a shorter life span. Samsung’s
64-Layer 2-bit MLC V-NAND is largely what
separates the 970 Pro from the chasing pack.
The endurance rating of the drive clearly
illustrates this, as the 1TB 970 Pro is rated for to be given their historical price
1200 terabytes written, while the 1TB 970 Evo
is half that, at 600TBW. Of course there’s a ive doesn’t disappoint. Sequential
year warranty, but with an endurance rating
like this, the drive should last a lot longer
than that.
The 970 Pro uses the company’s own
Phoenix controller. It is a ive core ARM
controller that has previously been seen in
46 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
afford-it line of enterprise Z-NAND
SSDs. It has a nickel plated heat
spreader to aid thermal dissipation.
The controller supports
all of the features
you’d expect on a high
“The 970 Pro is
end SSD, like TRIM, an excellent SSD, but upgrade though,
garbage collection, boy, does it come at
S.M.A.R.T. as well as
Samsung also claims this controller
has better thermal characteristics
and a higher heat tolerance rating.
Support for the 970 series is
included with latest version of
the Samsung Magician software.
There’s benchmark, secure erase
and monitoring tools included.
Samsung also offer a data migration
tool that can be downloaded from
their website. Interestingly, there’s an
optional Samsung NVMe driver that
includes support for Windows 7.
THIS THING IS FAST
Performance is key when evaluating
a Pro series Samsung drive. It has
premium and the 970 Pro 1TB
read and write performance is
stunning as we expect, making this
a natural choice for power users and
professionals dealing with large ile
transfers. The random performance
with low queue depths is also very
good, though surprisingly, the Intel
760p delivers amazing performance
here, likely due its SLC cache, as it
quickly falls behind in every other
test.
The Anvil Storage Utilities and
AS-SSD benchmarks put the 970
Pro at the head of the pack, easily
beating out the previous generation
960 Pro 1TB model. The In/Out
operations per second subtests
are particularly amazing. Clearly
this is the M.2 drive you want if
performance is your number one
priority.
The Samsung 970 Pro is an
excellent M.2 SSD, but boy, does it
come at a price. The Intel Optane
900p, at over twice the price per
Gigabyte, does hold a performance
lead, but its price means it’s strictly
for the most deep-pocketed
enthusiast. Users with superseded
960 series drives probably don’t have
a lot of reason to upgrade, unless
you really do want the best M.2 drive
you can get. Wanting
the best is sometimes
reason enough to
and if you do so, you
a price” will be very happy
with a 970 Pro. Don’t
forget the 970 EVO either. It delivers
most of the performance at a much
friendlier price. Keep an eye out for
our review in the next issue.
What we have is a class leading
2bit MLC NAND drive paired
with a blazing fast enterprise level
controller that offers amazing
performance, reliability and
endurance. If you want the best M.2
SSD you can get, this is it right here
but you will have to pay a steep
premium for it.
CHRIS SZEWCZYK
KEY SPECS
Samsung 970 Pro 1TB NVMe SSD, M.2 2280
Form Factor • Samsung Phoenix Controller
• Samsung 64-Layer 2-bit MLC V-NAND •
3500MB/s sustained read • 2700MB/s sus-
tained write • 500K/500K read/write IOPS,
AES-256 hardware encryption • 1200TBW
endurance • five year warranty • 1.5M hours
MTBF
$799 • www.samsung.com/au
 COMPONENTS REVIEWS

INTEL
760P
512GB SSD
NVME FOR EVERYONE

hile SATA drives remain popular,

W  and will do for some time to come,

NVMe drives are the future thanks
to their far superior performance. Their
weakness is still pricing though, something
Intel has attempted to rectify, irstly with the
600p series, and now the updated 760p series.
The competition is tough though, and 760p
series drives need to offer both value and
performance at their respective price points
to compete in an increasingly cut throat
marketplace.
The 760p brings several major
improvements over the popular 600p.
64-layer 3D TLC NAND Flash memory
replaces the older 32-Layer NAND found in
the 600p. The controller has been updated
and impressively, power consumption has
been cut in half. The key features you’d
expect on a 2018 SSD are present including
AES 256-bit encryption, TRIM, garbage
collection and S.M.A.R.T. monitoring.
Intel also deserves credit for its impressive
SSD Toolbox software and data migration
tool that can be downloaded from the Intel
website.
The 600p was always good value, but
in many cases, it was barely faster than a
SATA SSD. The 760p is in a different league
“impressively, power
consumption has been
cut in half”
though, and offers vastly superior
performance. With sequential
reads in particular, the 760p is
competitive with top tier NVMe
drives. It’s no slouch with writes
either. The random read and write
performance is also very strong,
though we did notice performance
dropping away under heavy
sustained load, likely due to cache
saturation. This is something that
not many end users need to worry
about with typical workloads
though.
The 512GB 760p is quite a decent
performing drive, but as we move
towards mid-2018, the competition
has caught up. Western Digital
and Adata both offer better value
NVMe drives while the Samsung
970 Evo is aggressively priced.
Intel will need to drop the price
of the 760p series drives in order
to regain its position as the value
king of NVMe SSDs. We expect the
prices of flash memory to drop as
we move later into the year, which
means the 760p is likely to get
cheaper too. If it does, then a 760p
series drive deserves its place on
your shortlist.
CHRIS SZEWCZYK
KEY SPECS
Intel 760p 512Gb M.2 NVMe SSD • Silicon
Motion SM2262 Controller • Intel 64-Layer
TLC NAND • 3230 MB/s sustained read •
1625MB/s sustained write • 340K/275K read/
write IOPS • AES-256 hardware encryption
• 288TBW endurance • five year warranty •
1.6M hours MTBF
$299 • www.intel.com.au

ANVIL STORAGE
CRYSTAL DISK MARK AS-SSD
UTILITIES

READ MB/S WRITE MB/S

SCORE SCORE
Seq Random 4k Seq Random 4k

Samsung 970 Pro 1TB 3560.7 65.05 2726.0 228.1 17502.97 5862

Samsung 960 Evo 1TB 3228.7 50.33 1902.5 217.3 14050.34 4291

Samsung 960 Pro 1TB 3322.4 59.47 2079.9 227.8 14786.44 4634

Intel 760p 512Gb 3181.3 71.1 1598.2 235.7 13073.17 3131

Intel 600p 256Gb 1577.5 37.2 595.8 147.8 7458.72 1423

TEST SYSTEM: CPU: Intel i7-8700K @ 4.5Ghz Motherboard: ASRock Z370 Taichi RAM: 2x8GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3200 Power Supply: Antec HCP-1200W
Storage: 1Tb Samsung 960 EVO M.2 SSD Cooling: Thermaltake Water 3.0 AIO liquid cooler Operating system: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 47

REVIEWS COMPONENTS
GIGABYTE Z370
AORUS GAMING 7
PRESENTATION IS NINE TENTHS OF THE LAW
or the new Z370 chipset, and thus new
F  line of motherboards, Gigabyte has
tweaked its tried-and-tested packaging
to create a top-end edition that might be
slightly different from what you expect.
Previously, Gigabyte split its motherboard
offerings in to Gaming and UD (for Ultra-
Durable) lines. Higher-end gaming boards got
a superior DAC, and a focus on overclocking
and multi-GPU performance. The UD boards
had more I/O options, new features like
USB3.1 Gen2, and uprated components like
capacitors.
While the UD line lives on for Z370 it stops
at a tier below this board. The Gaming 7 now
carries the premium can for Gigabyte, as the
top Z370 board in the lineup, for now.
But as a high-end gaming motherboard,
the Gaming 7 has been tweaked for a more
mainstream market. The extreme features
- mostly around manual overclocking via
LN2-mode switches and multiple hardware
OC buttons - have been dropped. There’s also
no onboard Wi-Fi.
Instead, the board is designed so almost all
its features can be used at once. There are few
PCIe pathway conflicts, although the third
PCIe slot drops to 2x if you install an M.2
drive in the spot just above it. But hey, three
M.2 drive slots!
Beyond this, an ESS SABRE 9018 DAC with
WIMA capacitors is a beeier audio subsystem
than on previous models, and its attendant
3.5mm jacks on the I/O panel are gold plated.
It’s powered by Sound BlasterX 720 irmware,
which offers a pretty meaty range of effects
and enhancements for environmental audio
and suchforth.
There’s also a second Gen2 USB 3.1 header,
which means this board can hook up cases
that have a USB Type-C port on the front
panel. The trade off is that there’s only one
header for USB 3.0.
Speaking of the I/O panel, there are two
Ethernet ports here, one with Killer software
working its magic on the E2500 controller.
There are only four USB-A ports, but these are
joined by a USB-C port and, for eSports users
who insist the Intellimouse Explorer 2.0 has
never been bettered, a super old-school PS/2
port for a mouse or keyboard.
Like all good new motherboards, the
Gaming 7 includes an onboard DisplayPort
48 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
connector next to its HDMI port,
and though using onboard graphics
with this board doesn’t make a lot of
sense, it’s great to have the option.
There are hardware buttons
for power, reset, clear CMOS and
automatic overclocking. The latter
picks what it thinks is a stable
overclock, and lights up when
active.
Other lighting includes extensive
LED strips around the PCIe slots,
the covers on the MOSFETs, and on
the plastic shroud over the audio
subsystem. It’s a lot of lighting, and
it’s hard to shake the feeling this
has been included at the expense of
some other features.
Software includes extensive audio
tweaking via Sound BlasterX, and
Gigabyte’s own RGB Fusion suit for
controlling all those lights.
Firmware includes plenty of
options for setting CPU, DRAM and
fans, as well as the usual array of
other features.
As with so many of these
packages, the interfaces for both
software and BIOS/UEFI are hugely
overdesigned, and can be confusing
and slow to navigate.
The Z370 Gaming 7 is a slightly
new approach to enthusiast
motherboards, on Gigabyte’s part.
It’s not longer a no-holds-barred
every-feature-crammed-in-there
extravaganza. Rather Gigabyte
has selected the features it feels
enthusiasts want the most, and
ensured they can all be used at once.
The cosmetic enhancements will
no doubt attract those who think
of their PCs as a showpiece, but
the plastic shrouding can made the
installation of some GPUs awkward.
Fortunately the shroud on the audio
system can be removed.
For all the esoteric features
the Gaming 7 gives up, it does
combined one-button overclocking,
a quality audio subsystem, more
USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports (if you have the
right case), and three M.2 slots.
The beneit of the LED lighting is
less objective. But if lighting is your
thing, this is deinitely cheaper and
neater than adding lights to a case
later.
ANTHONY FORDHAM
KEY SPECS
LGA1151 for 8th-gen Intel CPUs • Intel Z370
Express chipset • dual channel memory
support • 1x DisplayPort 1.2, 1 x HDMI 1.4 •
Realtek ALC1220 audio codec • 1 x Intel + 1 x
Killer networking chip • 3 x PCIe x16, 3 x PCIe
x1 • 3 x M.2
$389 • www.gigabyte.com

D-LINK COVR-C1203
SEAMLESS WI-FI
MESH SYSTEM
THE FASTEST, SIMPLEST, MOST-EFFECTIVE
WAY TO BLANKET YOUR HOME IN WI-FI
e’ve been impressed by mesh Wi-Fi
W  systems for some time. Up to now,
Google WiFi has arguably led
the way thanks to its reasonable value and
decent performance. But it’s been available
for a year already and the price has dropped.
With D-Link’s Covr system launching into a
mature market with similar specs, does it offer
enough to turn our heads?
Like rivals, the Covr system sports slick
design flourishes and comes in a fancy box to
make you feel like you’ve bought something
special. After years of testing utilitarian
wireless routers, it’s refreshing to unbox
something that apes Apple’s i-devices. It also
reminds us that setting up a mesh system
tends to be considerably easier than setting
up a regular router. D-Link’s Covr makes
things even simpler than we’ve seen before
as the three nodes come preconigured to
communicate with each other out of the box.
First, you’re asked to download the D-Link
Wi-Fi app which walks you through setup
(you can also do it via web browser). This
involves using Wi-Fi to connect directly to
the node to set-up a name and password
plus connecting it to your existing router
via Ethernet cable. Next, we positioned the
other two nodes on the irst floor and the
second floor of our townhouse, waited for an
automatic irmware update and had a new Wi-
Fi network up and running in minutes.
D-Link’s nodes look better than
some rivals: Linksys’ expensive,
blocky towers are a bit stark, while
Google’s Wi-Fi nodes are somewhat
larger (but have some cool, Cylon-
like lighting). The Covr’s rounded-
triangular shape blends in well
with lounge and bedroom furniture
and even has changeable, coloured
“the D-Link is our
choice for adding mesh
Wi-Fi to your home”
lids: blue, pink and gold (there’s one
spare set in each box). However,
prominently illuminating the name
“Covr” might be a turn-off for some
– it’s better than ‘D-Link’ but still
lacks brand cachet. Each one has a
USB-C based power socket, WPS
(one-press) connection button plus
two Ethernet ports.
Internally, each node operates
using 802.11ac MU-MIMO dual-
band (2.4GHz and 5GHz), three-
antennae Wi-Fi with a theoretical
top throughput of 1200Mb/s.
D-Link also highlights its Smart
Steering and Smart Roaming
technologies which automatically
PERIPHERALS REVIEWS
and dynamically switch to the node
with the strongest signal and to the
band with the fastest speed. So how
did it perform?
We ran Ookla’s Speedtest next to
our primary node while the kids
watched YouTube on a tablet and
did some PC gaming. We ran it
again one floor up in a bedroom
(containing the node) and inally
on the top floor near the third
node. Everything was connected to
Linksys router which handled our
Telstra cable internet connection
that runs at 115Mb/s downstream
and 5Mb/s upstream.
Up close the Covr hit maximum
speeds with a 12ms ping (as did
rivals). One floor up, however, it
only dropped to 108Mb/s (14ms)
ping whereas Google WiFi dropped
to 78Mb/s (16ms ping). On the top
floor the Covr was still able to hit
93 Mb/s (15ms ping) while Google
WiFi managed 78 Mb/s (15ms ping).
This makes the Covr the fastest
Wi-Fi system we’ve ever had in our
house. We’ve not found Google
WiFi wanting for any purpose, but
the Covr’s numbers are notably
faster and will beneit those using
multiple, large video streams.
As is usual with mesh systems,
other features are sparse. D-Link’s
Wi-Fi app offers scheduling to turn
the network on or off at certain
times during the week and this can
be tailored to individual devices.
Guest Wi-Fi is available and there’s
a WPS, one-press connect button but
that’s pretty much it. Everything can
be accessed online via a browser.
At $450 for a three-node kit, it’s
reasonable value: a bit more than
Google’s $380 older, slower kit but
still $200 cheaper than Linksys’
tri-band system. The Google nodes’
appearance may appeal more to
some but the D-Link is signiicantly
faster. As such, it’s our choice for
adding mesh Wi-Fi to your home.
NICK ROSS
KEY SPECS
AC1200 Wave II • MU-MIMO • 2.4GHz and
5GHz support • Smart Roaming • Smart
Steering • dual gigabit Ethernet • Changeable
colour facia • WPS button
$450 • www.dlink.com.au
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 49
REVIEWS PERIPHERALS
AORUS K9 OPTICAL
RGB KEYBOARD
A REMARKABLY SOLID EFFORT - IN EVERY SENSE - BUT
GIGABYTE’S LATEST DOESN’T QUITE HIT THE MARK
igabyte’s latest gaming keyboard is a
G  classic keyboard design, reassuringly
slab-like in both appearance and
apparent construction. It sits on your desk,
weighty and immobile, and the all-black,
relatively unadorned construction goes with
any PC setup.
The K9’s switches are optical, but they’re
also still mechanical, by the way. There’s still
a hardware-based switch, but the actuation
is based on an optical trigger. The beneit
is that, being light activated, key strokes
are faster. The switches are also longer
wearing. But in use, the in-game beneits feel
negligible – pro eSports types might see the
beneit of the faster debounce, but for regular
gamers the speed difference simply doesn’t
seem apparent, and the beneit of longer life
similarly seems a touch overwrought.
The K9 uses Flaretech switches in either
Red or Blue varieties, which equate to similar
D-LINK DAP-1860 AC2600
MU-MIMO WI-FI RANGE EXTENDER
AT LAST WE HAVE A WI-FI EXTENDER THAT COVERS EVERYWHERE, IS RELIABLE AND PERFORMS BRILLIANTLY
e confess to rolling our eyes when
W  the opportunity to review another
Wi-Fi Extender presented itself. This
one is easy to setup and will ill all our Wi-Fi
dead zones will it? We’ve heard that before.
But irst, we were delighted to note that
D-Link’s DAP-1860 AC2600 MU-MIMO Wi-Fi
Range Extender design makes it look like
it’s about to be set upon by a swarm of Tie
Fighters. The AC2600 refers to its (theoretical)
combined throughput, across 2.4GHz and
5GHz channels, of 2,600Mb/s using 802.11ac
Wave II technology. It’s backwards compatible
with previous Wi-Fi standards, will work with
competitors’ products and can be used as an
access point thanks to its gigabit Ethernet port.
We were impressed that the automatic
set-up actually worked: we simply pressed
the WPS switches on both our Linksys
wireless AC router and the extender. As
expected, it created a separate network called
networkname_EXT but this didn’t prove to be
50 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
Cherry switches. We received a
Red version for review, and they’re
not our favourite switch, even on
Cherry-powered keyboards, but
on the K9 they feel a little more…
watery? The lack of clickiness is the
Red’s whole schtick, but the action
seems particularly lacking in the
Flaretech switches.
The other neat feature of the K9
is that it comes with not only spare
keycaps for the WASD, cursor, and
Escape keys in orange, but it also
comes with spare switches, so you
can make those keys offer different
tactile experience. On this Red
keyboard, the spares are clicky
Blue numbers, and while they’re
not as responsive as Cherry’s, the
combination of colour and tactile
clarity is kinda neat.
an annoying issue.
We tested in a three-storey
North Sydney townhouse
that’s been using mesh Wi-Fi
for the past year. Our router
is on the bottom floor, the
extender was placed on the
irst-floor landing and we
tested using an iPad Pro 2
plus Ookla’s SpeedTest app.
We tested next to the router,
in a irst-floor bedroom plus
on the top-floor. We used
Telstra cable internet running
at 115Mb/s. We ran the tests
while one child was PC gaming
and another was watching
YouTube on a tablet.
We were seriously impressed.
When by the router, the Extender
managed 93Mb/s (12ms ping), on
the irst floor it was 90Mb/s (12ms)
And, on top of that, Gigabyte
claims that not only is the keyboard
splash-proof, but that it will also
operate under water. Oddly, no IP
(ingress protection) rating is given,
so we’ve no idea how that should
relate to solids like dust and other
particulates.
Unfortunately, the K9 is also on
the expensive side for what you’re
getting, and it doesn’t feature any
dedicated media or volume keys, or
a wrist-rest, or even a USB pass-
through, all features you’d expect
for a keyboard that retails for nearly
$200. If you can ind one for closer to
$150 then it’s more appealing.
DAVID HOLLINGWORTH
$189 • www.aorus.com
and on the top floor it managed
75Mb/s (15ms). While it can’t beat
a mesh system, it is easily enough
to beam ultra-high deinition
video throughout the home.
There really were no
blackspots. We used it reliably
for a week and never missed our
mesh system. The only downside
is that it takes up more than one
plug socket.
At $250 it’s not cheap but it
actually works as we hoped and
it’s cheaper than a mesh system.
At last we have an extender that
is genuinely worth buying.
NICK ROSS
KEY SPECS
AC2600 Wave II • MU-MIMO • 2.4GHz and
5GHz support • quad antenna • Ethernet out
$249 • www.dlink.com.au

DREAMMICRO
CRYPTOCURRENCY
MINING HPC 6X
VERY NOISY, VERY EXPENSIVE AND POOR VALUE
n 1958 Ray Harryhausen vehicle, The 7th
I Voyage of Sinbad, the evil magician, Sakura,
tells of an “accursed island inhabited by
wailing demons. Their screaming is heard
over 100 leagues. Men hearing it are driven
mad. They drive their ships onto the jagged
rocks and are devoured by sea serpents.”
This puts us in mind of the DreamMicro
CryptoCurrency Mining HPC 6X.
This is no traditional PC. The large, metal
chassis is as Spartan on the outside as the
inside. It is rack-mountable and houses three,
server-grade fans which consistently run
at over 3,500rpm. At full power they hit 83
decibels which only drops to 73 decibels
with software and BIOS tweaks. It still hit 63
decibels when we unplugged two of them.
The brute-force air cooling counters heat
from six overclocked graphics cards. There’s
not much else inside: a bespoke, minimally-
featured motherboard with built-in, quad-core
CPU, 4GB of laptop RAM and a 64GB M.2
drive. You’ll need an old D-Sub monitor to set
everything up – we hadn’t seen one in years,
so beware of this being an additional expense.
“Paying off the $5,899
purchase price would
The PSU only has four-pin power
connectors so you won’t be able to
stick any old cards inside. A top-
mounted bar with rubber buffers
helps keep the cards secure and
minimizes vibrations. If it crashes
it will reboot and start mining
again automatically. Ultimately, it
can’t really do anything but mine
cryptocurrency.
The system is highly conigurable.
Via the Pioneer site there’s a choice
of seven 7th-gen Intel CPUs,
memory can be 8/16 or 32GB
and there are a dozen storage
options. All standard fare for a
regular desktop PC, yet mostly not
applicable to a mining rig which
only wants a basic CPU, memory
and storage set up. It appears
Pioneer has simply used its desktop
PC online ordering template for
this product. Narrowing down the
irrelevant options and displaying
just what matters for the customer
to choose would give us more
conidence that Pioneer is serious
about selling mining rigs.
To the specs that DO matter, it
can be conigured with six or eight
AMD RX470/570 graphics cards.
Our review unit shipped with six,
adding another two increases the
LAPTOPS & PCS REVIEWS
take six years”
cost by $1,444. Of course you can
add your own cards if you like.
How does it fare? Mining
Ethereum with six RX470 GPUs hits
156Mh/s using 1050kW giving you
(at current dificulty) about 0.34ETH
p/m at a rough cost of $200-$250
electricity. That’s a monthly proit
of about $80 at the time of writing.
Paying off the $5,899 purchase price
would take six years - over which
time the mining landscape would
change unrecogniseably and the
system would be obsolete.
If crypto prices skyrocket,
the value proposition changes.
However, there’s far better value
to be had by investing in virtual
mining services like Krambu or
buying two ASIC Bitcoin miners
which are equally noisy but
signiicantly-more proitable. As
such it’s horrible to use, extremely-
poor value and has nothing positive
going for it at all.
NICK ROSS
KEY SPECS
Quad-core 1.5GHz CPU • 4GB SODIMM •
64GB SSD • 2 x USB 3 • 4 x USB2 • 2 x giga-
bit Ethernet • 6x RX470 or RX570 graphics
cards • D-Sub video out
$5,899 • www.pioneercomputers.com.au
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 51
REVIEWS PERIPHERALS
ASUS
PROART
PA32UC
A VERSATILE MONITOR THAT OFFERS STRONG
– IF IMPERFECT – COLOUR ACCURACY ALL
THE WAY ACROSS ITS 32IN PANEL
sus may be best known for sleek
A  laptops and enthusiast motherboards,
but over the past few years its ProArt
monitors have carved out a designer niche.
The name says it all: these colour-accurate
displays are aimed at people who need
realistic colours to make their living.
The PA32U is Asus’ largest such monitor
yet – and it’s stunning. Not only is the two-
tone silver and black inish stylish, it’s the
best-made monitor I’ve used. That dainty-
looking pillar supports the hefty frame with
ease and is incredibly flexible: you can pivot
the screen in either direction, and it rotates
slickly from side to side by up to 60°.
The ProArt PA32U comes pre-tuned for
sRGB and Adobe RGB proiles, with two A4
print-outs in the box that show how your
display performed in the calibration tests.
Asus won’t release a ProArt monitor unless
it has suitably strong colour accuracy and
uniformity: below 2 Delta E for accuracy,
and below 4 for uniformity. You can also
calibrate it yourself, and Asus includes an
X-Rite i1 Display Pro in the box, along with
a CD to load its Asus ProArt Calibration
software. However, Eizo’s 27in ColorEdge
CG277 goes one better by having a
colorimeter built into the bezel, which
automatically calibrates the screen.
It’s no surprise that the ProArt performed
strongly when we put it through our range of
colour accuracy tests. It averaged 1.04 Delta E
for colour accuracy in sRGB mode, although
this rose to 1.87 in Adobe RGB. I also checked
for variations in brightness and contrast
across the screen, and in the main
its results were encouraging: using a 5x5 grid,
it proved incredibly consistent in the central
3x3 squares; the only cause for concern was
a brightness variance of around 8% in the
corners.
Its other vital stats are equally impressive.
According to our own X-Rite colorimeter,
it covers 99.7% of the sRGB colour gamut,
97.5% of Adobe RGB and 94.3% of DCI-P3. Its
gamma tracking proved strong too. Whether
you’re matching to print or intending to
output video, you can have conidence.
52 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
In sRGB mode, it isn’t the
brightest screen around at
290cd/m2, but I found it
most comfortable at
around 150cd/m2 in
an ofice. Asus provides a number
of presets with the monitor, but
you may decide to create your own.
There are two user modes to choose
from, or you can flick to sRGB,
Adobe RGB, Rec.2020, DCI-P3 and
HDR mode using the OSD.
Note that you won’t want to
iddle with these controls much.
They’re all selected via a mini
joystick on the rear of the screen,
on the right-hand side. Using this
to scroll through the options this is
ine: the problem is selecting which
of the settings you want to control,
because each are activated by a
button that’s also positioned on the
rear of the screen.
This minor aggravation aside,
the four different blue light settings
will be a welcome inclusion for
anyone who gazes at screens all
day, while an alignment grid
(complete with presets for A4 and
B5, plus a ruler overlay) could come
in handy for print designers.
Frankly, though, this screen is
overkill for print due to its sheer
size. With a 3,840 x 2,160 resolution
across that 32in diagonal, it delivers
a level of detail that’s better suited
to photographers and video
editors. With Ultra HD Premium
certiication, it’s ideal for anyone
who wants to create HDR images
and videos. That’s in part due to
384 LED zones, which allow it to
hit over 1,000cd/m2 brightness in
certain situations.
Asus also covers every major
connection, with two
Thunderbolt 3
ports that can
deliver up to 60W
of power to connected
devices. Add a DisplayPort, four
HDMI inputs and a USB hub, plus
a respectable pair of 3W speakers,
and this monitor wants for nothing.
There’s even Picture-in-Picture
support, via Asus’ bundled
software.
Against it? First, I can’t ignore the
27in Eizo ColorEdge CG277 with
its built-in colorimeter for around
$3,500. Second, its performance
in colour-accuracy tests aren’t as
strong as the best Eizo and NEC
screens, with the CG277 once again
taking top honours. But then again,
if you want a 32in Eizo you’ll need
to buy the superb 32in Eizo CG318-
4K – a snip at $6,800.
In that context, the Asus starts
to look like a bargain. The three-
year warranty helps too: if there’s
a bright dot within that time, it
will swap out the monitor. And
thanks to its Ultra HD certiication
for editing 4K, HDR material, the
ProArt is the most affordable option
going.
TIM DANTON
KEY SPECS
32in 3,840 x 2,160 IPS panel • 120Hz • 5ms
response time • DisplayPort 1.2 • 4 x HDMI
2 • 2 x Thunderbolt 3 USB-C; USB hub (2 x
USB 3, USB-C) • hardware calibration • PiP/
PbP • 2 x 3W speakers • -5° to 23° tilt • pivot
• 130mm height adjustment • 727 x 229 x
470-600mm (WDH) • 11.4kg • 3yr swap-out
warranty
$3,499 • www.asus.com/au

DELL XPS 13
SCORCHING SPEED, SUPERB BATTERY
LIFE AND AN EXCELLENT DISPLAY
he laptop pictured above is also
T  available from Dell running Ubuntu,
but for this review we’re looking at the
Windows model.
Battery life is excellent. A time of 10hrs
58mins is right up there with the best
ultraportables I’ve tested, even if it doesn’t
match Dell’s claims of 17hrs. To be fair, Dell’s
results are based on low-level tasks, whereas
ours involve playing a full-screen video until
the battery gives up. That’s with Flight Mode
switched on and the screen set to 170cd/m2
(about the 50% mark), but such excellent scores
mean you can safely leave the tiny power
supply at home if you’re heading out for a
day’s work.
This is a mean little machine when it gets
going too. Each of the four cores inside Intel’s
Core i7-8550U processor can boost from their
stated 1.8GHz to 4GHz when necessary, but
this Turbo Boost rating will only be for the
briefest of spurts. You’re reliant on a laptop’s
thermal design to keep the processor cool,
which is why many machines’ performance
drops off after a few seconds of hard effort.
Or the fan comes on at full force. Here, Dell’s
engineers are clever enough to keep it racing
at a steady 2.8GHz for the 20-minute duration
of our benchmarks; while the fan inevitably
kicks in, it’s to Dell’s credit that this is the
Battery life
Video playback
10hrs 58mins
Benchmarks
OVERALL 104
0 25 50 75 100 125
BREAKDOWN IMAGE EDITING VIDEO EDITING MULTI TASKING
SCORES 118 98
only time during my time with the
XPS 13 when such active cooling
was necessary. Together with 8GB
of RAM and a fast 512GB PCIe SSD,
it managed an excellent 104 overall
score in our benchmarks.
Although I’ve seen the rose gold
Dell XPS 13 on trade show floors,
this is the irst time I’ve lived with it.
Safe to say I won’t be buying such a
inish myself.
Naturally, colours are subjective,
and the graphite grey I’ve come
to associate with the XPS 13 range
won’t be to everyone’s taste. But
rose gold is starting to look old-
fashioned: the Lilac Purple inish of
Samsung’s S9 phones show where
the future is heading.
Nor am I convinced by the XPS
13’s white interior. The palm rest
is inished in a textured white
“glass ibre” that reminds me of
the artex ceilings I need to get rid
of in my house, and doesn’t quite
complement the pure white bezel
surround. Perhaps I’m being picky –
and as I say, taste is subjective – but I
would buy the silver-grey version.
150
104
LAPTOPS & PCS REVIEWS
One thing that doesn’t
change is the stunning
“IninityEdge” display,
protected by Gorilla Glass 4.
The bezel now measures 4mm,
which means Dell can also shrink
the XPS a fraction compared to last
year’s model. It isn’t
the slimmest laptop
– two ridges on the bottom
mean its height is technically 15mm
– but it weighs 1.21kg and slips
easily into a bag.
The panel is superb quality, too.
Our colorimeter measured it as
covering 90.2% of the sRGB gamut
with an average Delta E of 0.97.
So while it won’t reproduce every
single colour on the sRGB spectrum,
you can trust that what it does show
is accurate. Contrast ratio is also
excellent at 1,593:1, while a peak
brightness of 480cd/m2 is right up
there with the best laptops.
Dell opts for side-mounted
speakers, and considering their
grilles are 2mm tall this laptop
packs a whopping amount of audio
power. I’d be very happy to watch
ilms on the XPS 13, in part thanks
to a screen that can show what’s
happening in the shadows.
As always with Dell, you can
choose from a wide range of specs.
These start at $1,784 for a Core i5-
8250U, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB
SSD, while my tested machine
costs $2,294. And those are only
the home-user versions: Dell offers
business-flavoured versions with
Windows 10 Pro and upgraded
warranties, although it’s worth
noting that you get a year of on-site
cover even with domestic offerings.
It adds up to a brilliant laptop,
and only cements the Dell XPS 13
range’s place on our A List.
TIM DANTON
KEY SPECS
Quad-core 1.8GHz Intel Core i7-8550U
processor v Intel UHD Graphics 620 •
1,920 x 1,080 display • 512GB PCIe SSD
• 16GB 2,133MHz LPDDR3 RAM • 2x2
MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi • Bluetooth 4.1 • 2 x
Thunderbolt 3 • USB-C 3.1 • microSDXC slot
• Windows 10 Home • 302 x 199 x 15mm
(WDH) • 1.21kg • 1yr on-site warranty
$1,784 • www. dell.com/en-au
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 53
REVIEWS LAPTOPS & PCS
GIGABYTE AORUS X5 V8
CHUNKY AND EXPENSIVE, BUT WELL-FEATURED AND VERY FAST
igabyte’s Aorus X5 fully-featured,
G  gaming laptop has been around for
a while now. This latest v8 refresh
comes with Intel’s 8th generation, Core i7
Coffee Lake processor and promises to fly like
never before.
Our review unit came with the high-end,
2.6GHz Core i7-8850H CPU. All six cores
Turbo Boost to 4GHz while one pushes to
4.3GHz. It’s flanked by 16GB RAM, a big-
and-fast 500GB NVMe SSD plus there’s a 1TB
mechanical drive for storage. Graphics come
via Nvidia’s GTX 1070 GPU.
Something to note about beefy machines
like this is that performance will depend
on temperature and cooling. When warm
the fans ramp up noisily regardless of the
task you’re preforming but especially so if
gaming or, say, crypto-mining. This was an
issue when using Gigabyte’s overclocking
tool – when we maximised all settings, one
of our benchmarks actually ran slower due
to thermal throttling. But this all becomes a
moot point as there are few tasks it can’t blitz
through.
Nonetheless, in Fire Strike, maximum GPU
overclocking saw a paltry 0.2 per cent speed
boost which increased to almost-0.5 per cent
GAME BENCHMARKKS Min Avg
Rise of the Tomb Raider 48 88
Total War Warhammer 2 57 65
Ghost Recon Wildlands 43 51
54 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
in Fire Strike Extreme. Hmmm.
Battery life is hard to gauge.
Despite forcing all power options
to maximum, performance
automatically winds down when
on batteries. So while it ran flat out
in PCMark for almost three hours,
it did so achieving a score that was
thirty per cent slower than when
plugged in. It did play a Full HD
movie for three-and-three-quarter
hours though.
For a 15.6-inch notebook, it’s on
the rather-chunky side. There’s a
thick bezel around the screen, the
chassis signiicantly extends behind
the lid (it’s got a big bum) and
there are still gaps to the side of the
full-complement keyboard which
includes a number pad, arrow keys
and even gaming macro keys. It’s no
massive, gaming beast of yore, but at
2.6KG it’s not particularly-portable
either and you’ll have to carry the
sizeable power brick around with
you too.
The Full HD screen is excellent
though. It’s uniformly lit, Pantone-
certiied for colour accuracy, has
Max a matte, anti-glare inish and is
106 144Hz for smooth gaming. There’s
also a full complement of ports
73
including two of both USB-C and
106
USB-A sockets, which are USB
“It’s no massive,
gaming beast
of yore”
3.1 compatible. There’s also mini
DisplayPort, separate headphone
and mic jacks, a high-speed SD-card
slot and full-size HDMI. At the rear
are another two USB-A ports, plus
Gigabit Ethernet.
The speakers get loud but have
very little bass or punch. Our main
gripe is with the (RGB-lit) keyboard,
though, which too-frequently
double-registers key presses and
is off center to the point where
extended typing hurts your back.
It’s a good layout for gamers using
a mouse, though. The trackpad is
okay but not the most responsive
we’ve used.
At $3,699 it’s very expensive and
starting to feel a bit chunky and
unreined in the current market:
MSI’s Raider is much cheaper with
similar specs, for instance. But it’s
a fully-featured beast of a machine
and that will still appeal to many.
NICK ROSS
KEY SPECS
8th-gen Intel i7-8850H 2.6 – 4.3GHz • Nvidia
GTX 1070 8GB GPU • 15.6in 1920x1080 IPS
144Hz G-Sync screen • DDR4 2666Hz up to
32GB • Thunderbolt 3 • ESS Sabre audio DAC
• M.2 PCIe Gen3x4 SSD • USB 3.1 Type C,
mDP 1.4, HDMI 2.0
$3,699 • www.gigabyte.com.au

ASUS ROG
ZEPHYRUS
M GM501GS
THE ZEPHYRUS CLAIMS TO BE THE KING OF
PERFORMANCE NOTEBOOKS. BUT IS IT?
sus’ ROG Zephyrus was one of the
A  irst notebooks that was designed to
be svelte in size but a beast when it
came to gaming. This black beauty, with its
sharp lines and glowing details sure looks
great, although having ‘Republic of Gamers’
branding all over it will make boardroom
brethren suspicious.
Opening the Zephyrus’ lid famously
simultaneously opens up an exhaust port
at the rear of the base for enhanced cooling.
While this sounds cool, in reality a plastic
flap opens to reveal a heatsink. If it doesn’t sit
on flat surfaces it bends and distorts.
But is this a gaming beast? The latest
version comes with a Coffee Lake hexa-core,
Core i7-8750H which offers a 2.2GHz stock
speed, 3.9GHz Turbo Boost (which can push
to 4.1GHz on a single core). There’s a 512GB
NVMe SSD, 16GB RAM and a 1TB hybrid
hard disk for storage. Nvidia’s GTX 1070 GPU
provides gaming grunt. This should amount
to top-tier performance, but, compared to
GAME BENCHMARKKS Min Avg
Rise of the Tomb Raider 42 80
Total War Warhammer 2 49 58
Ghost Recon Wildlands 36 45
similarly-speciied rivals, we were
disappointed.
Firstly, you need to ensure the
fans operate in ‘Overboost’ mode
to achieve the best performance.
However, even then the temperature
can ramp up – especially the CPU.
We torture-tested it with crypto-
mining and both CPU and GPU hit
78oC, which isn’t terrible, but the
“The keyboard is well-laid
out, plus travel and stiffness
approach perfection”
CPU shouldn’t get so hot when it’s
hardly being used.
In 2D benchmarks it was 11 per
cent slower than MSI’s Raider,
which has a similar spec. This
translated into games, too, where it
was 5fps slower than MSI in Ghost
Recon and several fps slower in
Warhammer 2. It’s certainly quieter
than the Raider but at full pelt the
Zephyrus still emits a very-audible
whoosh with a hint of high-pitched
whine. The ROG Gaming Center
monitors everything but noticeably
offers no GPU overclocking ability
– not surprising when it struggles
to consistently hit stock speeds due
to thermal throttling.
In terms of general usage, we’re
big fans though. The keyboard
is well-laid out, plus travel and
Max stiffness approach perfection.
There’s a number pad and
105
everything has RGB backlighting;
67
the trackpad feels good and
51
responsive.
LAPTOPS & PCS REVIEWS
The speakers are superb;
delivering well-rounded audio and
punchiness to treble and bass-rich
music alike. The speakers also
point upwards, which counteracts
muffling.
Connectivity is a mixed bag,
though. There are four USB-A
ports, one USB-C plus a 3.5mm
audio jack. There is an HDMI port
but neither a DisplayPort nor (and
this is an issue for gamers) wired
Ethernet.
The 15.6-inch screen is very crisp,
uniformly lit and displays accurate
colours. It’s also 144Hz for smooth
gaming.
In terms of portability, we
struggled to get it lasting more
than 100 minutes under any task,
which was disappointingly low. At
least the 2.2KG weight is keeps it
portable.
This ROG Zephyrus is almost
a great notebook, but its thermal
throttling performance issues are
real no matter how impressive that
exhaust looks. If you’re going to pay
close to four grand for a notebook
there shouldn’t be any limits but
limiting is what this notebook’s
performance is mostly about.
NICK ROSS
KEY SPECS
Intel Core i7-8750H (up to 3.9GHz) • 144Hz
IPS G-Sync screen • GTX 1070 8GB GPU •
256GB PCIe SSD + 1TB SSHD • 16GB DDR4
2666MHz • 1x HDMI, 1x Thunderbolt 4x USB
Type-A 3.1 (Gen2), 1x USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen2)
$3,599 • www.asus.com/au
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 55
REVIEWS LAPTOPS & PCS
RAZER
BLADE
STEALTH
IS THIS DROOL-WORTHY ULTRAPORTABLE
THE ULTIMATE WORK AND PLAY MACHINE?
here are solid notebooks and then there
T  are Razer notebooks. The Blade Stealth
is another solid-chassis stunner from
Razer, only this one is an ultraportable that
weighs less-than 1.4KG. The matte-black
inish looks incredibly classy (despite being a
ingerprint magnet) while the hard-to-flex lid
displays a sense of sophistication thanks to
the Razer logo and cultured contouring.
Despite being an 13.3-inch notebook, it’s
available with a whopping 3,200 x 1,800
resolution, which you’ll need to magnify with
Windows unless you have the eyes of a hawk.
It’s very glossy but it’s also a touchscreen. It
gets impressively bright and colours pop.
Under the hood, is Intel’s new Coffee
Lake processor, the 1.8GHz quad-core, Core
i7-8550U CPU. This is flanked by 16GB
RAM and a speedy 256GB Samsung NvME
SSD that conspire to make this one of the
fastest ultraportables around. The only issue
for gamers is the lack of discrete gaming
graphics but Razer offers a solution via the
Core v2. It’s not cheap at $600, and you can
read the full review on page 84. Nonetheless,
we ran our usual gaming benchmarks with
GAME BENCHMARKKS Min Avg
Rise of the Tomb Raider 20 38
Total War Warhammer 2 22 29
Ghost Recon Wildlands 17 25
NOTE – all scores generated using Razer Core v2 with GTX 1060
56 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
“it’s a seriously-impressive
all-round ultraportable that
excels at everything”
it and a desktop Nvidia GTX 1060
card to give you an idea of what
to expect if you choose to use the
Blade Stealth as an ultraportable
during the day before transforming
it into a behemoth gaming rig
when you take it home at night. But
performance will naturally depend
on whatever card you install in it.
Battery life is getting
increasingly-hard to test with
modern, powerful notebooks
dialing down performance when
running on batteries. Nonetheless,
there was relatively-little slowdown
on the Stealth as it ran powerful
tests for an impressive three-and-
a-half hours. It also played our Full
HD movie for six-and-a-quarter
hours before expiring, which is
very impressive. You’ll be able to
get through most of a working day
without charging it.
The comfortable-to-use, scrabble-
tile keyboard is full-sized, well-
spaced and has low travel. It also
glows in a variety of ways thanks to
the Razer Synapse software, which
lets you customise RGB patterns.
The Synapse app will also log
Max numbers of keystrokes, and provide
62 heatmaps for different apps and
games (if this is useful for you).
36
Meanwhile the trackpad is large
28
and responsive.
It generally runs very quietly
and only gets slightly warm when
under heavy use. The speakers get
impressively loud and punchy and
reproduce treble and bass with
aplomb.
Charging is by the USB-C port.
There are two other Type-A ports,
a 3.5mm audio jack and a full-
size HDMI port too. We’re even
impressed by the power cord which
is long, wrapped in cord, and has
only a very-small power brick.
At $2,400 it’s not cheap, but
it’s a seriously-impressive all-
round ultraportable that excels at
everything it does out of the box.
Except gaming: you’ll need to spend
a great deal more on an enclosure
and graphics card to make that
work. Nonetheless, there’s no
denying that having a Stealth and
Core v2 working in tandem is a
dream computing set-up for any
gamer.
NICK ROSS
KEY SPECS
8th-Gen Intel i7-8550U 1.8-4GHz or 7th
Gen Core i7-7500U 2.7-3.5GHz • 213.3in
3200x1800 screen • 56GB / 512GB / 1TB SSD
(PCIe M.2) • 16GB RAM Dual-channel on-
board memory LPDDR3-2133MHz (1866MHz
for i7-7500U model) • Intel UHD Graphics 620
• Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C), USB 3.0 port x2
$2,400 • www.razer.com

RAZER CORE V2
CAN RAZER’S GRAPHICS CARD ENCLOSURE REALLY TURN
LOWLY LAPTOPS INTO MINING OR GAMING RIGS?
ant to turn an ultraportable laptop
W  into a full-powered mining or
gaming rig? Then check out Razer’s
Core v2. This graphics-card-enclosure-cum-
docking station is super solid, consisting of
two, well-ventilated slabs of metal which
slide apart to allow for the easy insertion
of a full-sized, desktop graphics card. Even
the longer, wider varieties like the Nvidia
GTX 1080 Ti are compatible. The interior
compartment, which holds the electronics, is
unlocked with a gratuitously-large lever that
gives everything a sense of blacksmith-hewn
solidity. All connections are tool-
less and plugging in a
It is not a much sexier black old-school iMac, it just looks that way
card is intuitive and takes seconds.
A kettle lead provides power
to a built-in 500W PSU but almost
everything else passes through
the ThunderBolt 3 cable (note that
the bundled one is very short). It
will work with any device that is
ThunderBolt 3 compatible AND
supports the associated external
graphics standard, plus has had
all relevant irmware and BIOSes
updated. The graphics drivers come
with existing AMD-and-Nvidia
packages, while plugging it in will
activate a laptop’s Thunderbolt-
recognition system, which you only
need to enable once. We tested with
Razer’s own laptops and everything
just worked when we plugged the
cable in. Impressive. The connection
also transmits up to 65W of power,
so it can simultaneously charge your
laptop.
But what of performance? Razer
recommends using an external
monitor for optimal performance as
looping back to your laptop’s own
screen generates lag. The results
are interesting. A Razer Blade
Pro laptop with integrated GTX
COMPONENTS REVIEWS
1060 graphics scored 5,124 (24fps)
in a Full HD Fire Strike Extreme
3DMark test. The same test using a
Razer Blade Stealth Ultraportable
plus Core v2 (with a desktop GTX
1060 card) on an external monitor
was just one per cent slower. In a
straight Fire Strike test, the Blade
Pro laptop scored 9,656 (50fps). This
“The connection can
simultaneously charge
your laptop”
dropped to 45fps using the Core v2
and Stealth on an external monitor
and 43fps when using the Stealth’s
own display. Ultimately, while there
can sometimes be slight drop in
framerate, gaining the ability to play
the latest games on an ultraportable
is transformative. (sadly, you can’t
create an SLI connection using
Thunderbolt 3 – PCIe only).
We also mined cryptocurrency,
which punishes GPUs and makes
gaming laptops (plus, in some cases,
desktops) overheat and slow down.
Here the open housing of the Core
v2 meant that mining performance
was maximised thanks to the well-
ventilated sides! However, the many
air-vents mean that dust is an issue
and there’s no muffling of your
graphics card’s fan – which can get
noisy.
Other features include a four-port
USB 3 hub and Gigabit Ethernet –
so it can act as a straight docking
station. It is lit up with Razer’s RGB
system which can be controlled
and customised with its Synapse
software.
Weighing 5.5KG, the Core v2
isn’t particularly-portable and you
should cover it up when not in use
to avoid dust. Nonetheless, we loved
how it transformed an ultraportable
into a gaming rig so if you can
afford the whopping $600 price tag
it’s a great buy.
NICK ROSS
KEY SPECS
Fits single double-wide, full-length, PCI-Ex-
press x16 graphics card • GPU max power
support: 375 watts (internal PSU 500 Watts)
• USB 3.0 X 4, Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000,
Thunderbolt 3 (for connection to PC)
$600 • www.razer.com
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 57
REVIEWS HANDHELDS
APPLE IPAD (2018)
THE LEAST EXCITING IPAD UPDATE YET, ALTHOUGH
STYLUS SUPPORT ADDS A SOUPÇON OF EXCITEMENT
e’re used to Apple launching
W  products in darkened halls, with
the hush of an expectant crowd
only broken by the generous distribution
of adjectives. “Magical.” “Wonderful.”
“Amazing.” “Cool.” By contrast, Apple’s
keynote unveiling of the new iPad felt
positively downbeat. The keynote wasn’t even
in a glamorous location: Apple chose Lane
Tech College Prep High School in Chicago.
This signals a gear change for the iPad.
Apple is clearly aware that it’s already
reached the vast majority of home users and
professionals who are going to buy tablets,
and it’s switching its gaze to potentially
the biggest market of all: schools. This is
the irst iPad to be aimed at students, and
that’s reflected in a lower price plus further
discounts for educational establishments.
It’s a welcome development, but Apple
needs something else if it’s going to schools –
and all other potential buyers – interested.
POINT OF DIFFERENCE
There is, if you’ll excuse the pun, one key
point of difference: this is the irst non-iPad
Pro device to support the Apple Pencil. Nor
has Apple scrimped by removing the excellent
tilt and pressure-sensitive features that made
the $145 Pencil such an excellent adjunct to the
iPad Pro.
If you don’t fancy spending a third of the
price of the iPad on a stylus, Apple has opened
58 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
up its technology to third-party
manufacturers. The irst of these
will be the Logitech Crayon, which
was announced alongside the new
iPad; it sells for $49 in the US, but
we haven’t yet heard what the
Australian price will be.
Whether you choose the Apple
Pencil or a cheaper alternative, it’s
education-focused apps where such
a stylus comes into its own. I’ve used
the Pencil to draw pictures and take
notes in meetings in the past, but
the new Smart Annotation feature
on Pages feels almost revelatory:
you quickly forget you’re annotating
a digital ile on a touchscreen. Of
course, you don’t get the same
Apple intends to woo teachers with a comprehensive
set of tools
“This is the first iPad
to be aimed squarely
at students, and that’s
reflected in a lower price
plus further discounts to
schools”
feedback as a pen on paper, but it’s
very close.
SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
Elsewhere, the new iPad is much
less exciting. It’s identical to the
previous iPad in terms of looks
and physical attributes, right down
to the dimensions and weight.
Unsurprisingly, it feels the same
in the hand too, with an excellent
display and a highly responsive
touchscreen. The screen is vibrant
and colour-accurate, while the
contrast ratio is slightly better
than the previous model at 1,023:1.
Brightness reaches a peak of 507cd/
m2.
It must be said, though, that the
iPad’s 9.7in, 2,048 x 1,536 display
looks dated alongside the edge-to-
edge displays we’ve seen on many
recent phones, tablets and laptops.
The bezel is huge in comparison
to rival tablets. This unchanging
design does bring advantages,
in that existing accessories will
continue to work, but history may
well suggest that this was the year
Apple should have either reduced
the size of the iPad or boosted the
size of the screen.
The cameras are similarly
old-school. On the rear you get
an 8-megapixel f/2.4 camera
accompanied by an f/2.2
1.2-megapixel “HD FaceTime”
camera at the front - the exact same
offerings as last year. As before, the
front camera is only good enough
for FaceTime, but the rear camera
remains a strong inclusion for a
tablet – although, with no flash and
mediocre low-light performance, it’s
for use in good conditions only.
There’s still a Touch ID button
below the screen (phew) but no
Smart Connector for hooking up
an external keyboard. Considering
students do a fair amount of
typing that’s a baffling omission.
That doesn’t mean you can’t use
a keyboard at all. For schools
 HANDHELDS REVIEWS

Welcome to the family: the iPad range extends

speciically, Apple is relying on Logitech to from the iPad mini (left) to the two iPad Pros
provide rugged keyboards and cases that can
be dropped from a height of 4ft and shared
among students.

UPGRADED SPECS
Although there are internal upgrades, there’s
nothing to get particularly excited about
inside the new iPad.
An Apple A10 Fusion processor runs
the show, backed by 32GB or 128GB of
storage and a choice of either Wi-Fi only or
a pricier 4G version. The A10 Fusion chip is
a signiicant upgrade on the 2017 model, but
falls signiicantly short of the A10X seen in get 200GB of free iCloud storage MUST TRY HARDER?
the iPad Pro. This isn’t so much a criticism as rather than the measly 5GB they got I don’t want to be too hard on
an FYI– the different iPads do vary wildly in before. Apple’s new iPad. It’s the cheapest
price after all. The charts on p59 illustrate the Firstly, there are new versions of 9.7in iPad ever, it works with the
difference in performance. the Pages, Numbers and Keynote Apple Pencil and, with a more
Battery life, unfortunately, isn’t as long as apps, complete with extensive education-focused software
previous iPads. In our standard battery life support for the Apple Pencil. In offering, it will have greater appeal
tests, the 2018 iPad lasted 8hrs 43mins, which addition, there are a whole host of to teachers, schools and students
compares unfavourably with pretty much education-focused apps, teacher than ever before – especially with
every recent iPad. Even modern Windows 10 aids for use in the classroom and that generous iCloud offering.
laptops, such as the Dell XPS 13 on p53, have an IT management suite, and Apple But what about everyone else?
overtaken it. Although Apple will point out Pencil-focused updates for apps At $469 for the 32GB, Wi-Fi-only
that nigh-on nine hours of life is more than such as GarageBand. variant, the new iPad is Apple’s
enough to last a school day without charging, Pages, in particular, could easily cheapest tablet, undercutting the
in this respect the school report reads “could become my go-to notes program iPad mini 4 – which is only available
have done better”. now that I can use it with the Apple with 128GB of storage – by $110.
Pencil, and the Smart Annotation The stiffest competition from an
UPGRADED APPS features are such an obvious, Android tablet (still) comes from
While Apple has stuck to its hardware guns, welcome addition, it’s a surprise the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, which,
it has overhauled the core iOS apps. What’s they haven’t been introduced although a little old, costs $446,
more, students buying the new iPad now before. Building on the existing is gloriously slim and slight, and
markup and annotation features, includes a fantastic AMOLED
Smart Annotation lets you select display.
SECOND OPINION: NEW whole chunks of text, mark them However, Google still can’t rival
IPAD OR IPAD PRO? up and move them around the
page. This is handy if you’ve
Apple for the ecosystem of apps
and add-on hardware available for
The week after Apple announced the new iPad, I spent the
thick end of $979 more on the iPad Pro. Why? Two big factors edited a chunk of text and then the iPad. Yes, it’s disappointing that
swung it for me. want to move it further down the the sole hardware improvement is
Firstly, the screen. The extra 20% of space afforded by document, for example. Tapping a slightly faster processor, while the
increasing the screen size from 9.7in to 10.5in is significant, the document with the Apple Pencil added stylus support is only useful
especially with my failing eyesight and my desire to edit brings up the controls along the if you hand Apple yet more of your
photos on this thing. (The 12.5in felt like a jump too far, like bottom of the screen and they’re cash, but you’ll be hard pushed to
smuggling a monitor into your laptop bag.)
amazingly straightforward to ind a better tablet anywhere for this
The iPad Pro also benefits from the 120Hz refresh rate. The
recognise and use. price. It fully deserves its place on
claim that this makes reading from the screen comparable
to reading from paper is top heavy on the hyperbole, but it’s With the addition of Apple the A List.
definitely a step up from the regular iPad screen. The Wide School Manager and the new VICKY WOOLLASTON
Colour Display will also help me with proofing colours for my Schoolwork app, which lets teachers
photography – I used my old iPad Air for this job, as the Apple assign homework and track KEY SPECS
displays are the most affordable, colour-accurate displays I’ve progress, the new iPad is better Quad-core 2.34GHz Apple A10 Fusion pro-
come across. suited for use in schools than ever cessor • PowerVR Series7XT Plus graphics •
The second big factor was one that I hadn’t even 2GB RAM • 9.7in IPS display, 2,048 x 1,536
before. Only teachers will be able to resolution • 32GB storage • 8MP/1.2MP rear/
considered until I tried it out in real life – the iPad Pro’s Smart truly test the effectiveness of such front camera • 802.11ac Wi-Fi • Bluetooth
Keyboard. After ten minutes of tapping on one in the Apple
apps, but common sense suggests 4.2 • Lightning connector • iOS 11 • 32.4Wh
Store, I knew I was suckered. I don’t regret it. Now I’ve got battery • 240 x 7.5 x 170mm (WDH) • 469g •
they will streamline complex
a lightweight, sub-laptop that I can work from when I’m 1yr warranty
travelling or just can’t be bothered to lug my work laptop. processes such as managing more
32GB Wi-Fi, $469 • www.apple.com/au
BARRY COLLINS than 30 students and their varying
abilities and progress.

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 59

AORUS + OPTANE =
MAXIMUM GAMING
PERFORMANCE
SUPERCHARGE YOUR GAMING WITH THE UNBEATABLE
COMBINATION OF AORUS AND OPTANE
W 
ith Intel’s latest performance
computing technologies
hitting the market, you’re
going to need the best possible platform
to make use of them. That means using
a motherboard from Gigabyte’s top-end
performance and gaming brand, Aorus,
which now includes built-in Intel Optane
performance technologies and Core i7+ and
Corei5+ platform compatibility.
Aorus motherboards are made by gamers
for gamers and are as fast and reliable
as you could hope for. By making use of
Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable Technology, you
can rest assured that your motherboard has
been through extensive torture testing at
component and environmental levels. These
tests include electricity surge protection, high
temperature testing in an oven, exposure to
extreme humidity plus vibration and shaking
tests to ensure they can withstand extreme
punishment from the most-demanding
gamers.
Meanwhile the combination of heatsinks,
heatpipes and Gigabyte Armor technology
(coupled with Smart Fan 5 cooling
technology) ensure that everything doesn’t
just look extremely cool but runs as cool
as possible too. With Intel’s Z370 platform
running faster when temperatures are low,
keeping cool has never been more important.
PLUS POINTS FOR GAMERS: CORE I7+ PLUS
CORE I5+ PLUS INTEL OPTANE
Intel’s latest performance platforms are
called Core i7+ and Core i5+ and are based
on the Coffee Lake CPU architecture. This
means that in addition to six cores and
high clockspeeds, the processors work
automatically with Intel’s performance-
boosting Optane Rapid Storage Technology.
On the latest Intel Z370-based Aorus
motherboards, you’ll ind the latest
generation of Intel’s Optane technology
already built into the motherboards when
you buy them! That means you can stop
worrying about your speedy SSDs illing
up with the ever-inflating game iles and
60 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
rest-assured that your larger,
storage-focussed hard drives
work at maximum speed.
HOW DOES INTEL
OPTANE WORK?
Intel Optane is a super-
fast, intelligent type of
hybrid memory that makes
accessing data on your
hard drive much faster.
Over time, it learns which
applications and games you use
most frequently and stores all of
that data in its speedy, solid-
state, cache-like memory. So if
you’re worried about level load
times in one of your favourite
games (which is stored on a
standard mechanical hard
disk), Intel Optane will access
everything much quicker. That
means loading your favourite
apps becomes quicker, loading
game levels is much quicker
and, in some cases, even
your computer’s boot loads almost ive
time becomes much seconds quicker and so
quicker. does Player Unknown:
Battlegrounds. World
HOW FAST IS AORUS of Warcraft loaded
WITH INTEL OPTANE? in just nine seconds
One of the worst things using an Aorus-Optane
that can happen to any gamer combination! That’s not just
is to load into a level late. In fact, faster than an SSD – it’s 36 seconds
any delay in loading time can quicker than a regular hard drive!
seem like a tortuous and stressful League of Legends launched six
waste of time. Well, Aorus’ Z370 seconds faster!
motherboards in conjunction with And those are just the gaming
Core i7+ and Core i5+ have got your performance enhancements. The
back. benchmark boosts are enormous...
Tests show that in Far Cry 5 According to CrystalBench, our
the game launched 13 seconds SATA SSD saw a read speed of
faster when using a 7,200rpm 547.3 MB/s while our Aorus-plus-
hard drive together with Optane Optane-based system, with an 8TB
using an Aorus GA-Z370 XP SLI hard drive, clocked in at 1391.8
motherboard. In fact, it was even MB/s - that’s 4.8 times quicker.
faster than a SATA SSD! Fortnite In the same test, write speed

conigured to boost the speed
of your secondary drive. It’s
common to have a large
mechanical hard drive for
data storage and Optane
can really accelerate its
performance.
AORUS MAKES
OPTANE EASY
Few people want the
hassle of installing new
hardware – especially as an
afterthought when new additions
require extracting and reinserting
existing components just to it them
in. Aorus makes things easy by
pre-installing 32GB Intel Optane
modules on its top-end Z370 Aorus
Gaming 7-OP and Z370 Aorus Ultra
Gaming WiFi-OP motherboards
so you won’t have to worry about
iddly installations. To maximise
performance and reliability
Aorus puts the special Aorus M.2
Thermal Guard on top of its Optane
modules. This doesn’t just make
the Optane module look better,
improved by a whopping 60MB/s! its thermal design dissipates heat
Meanwhile, in PC Mark 8’s storage test, making it run cooler too.
Aorus and Optane combine to make our 8TB On the software side – which is
hard drive move from a 33.3% lower score usually where coniguring Optane
than an SSD-based system to being two per gets tricky – Aorus has simpliied
cent faster than SSD. When unzipping 10GB it to its most beautifully basic level
of photos, Aorus and Optane performed the with a “one click installation”.
task 30 per cent faster. As Intel adds more capabilities
In the real world, Optane can be to Optane in the months ahead
Load your games and enter game levels far quicker using Optane on a compatible Aorus motherboard
AORUS ADVERTORIAL
you can rely on Aorus to make
those features available via simple
updates.
EVEN MORE REASONS
TO CHOOSE AORUS
Of course, Aorus doesn’t just
support the latest Intel technologies
and innovations, there are many
more features to entice gamers
and performance enthusiasts.
Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.1
connectivity is present for ultra-
fast ile transfers. There’s even
a USB 3.1 Type 2 header on the
motherboard which you can
connect to compatible cases. There’s
Killer 2500 Gaming Network
Gigabit Ethernet to remove as much
lag as possible from online play.
Aorus’ Amp-up audio is based
around an onboard ESS Sabre 9018
Digital-Audio-Converter (DAC)
with audiophile-grade capacitors
plus an isolated, independent
analog power supply chip (for clean
audio) and gold-plated audio jacks.
As such, whether you’re listening
to the most graceful classical music
or an explosion-heavy war-torn
battleield, you’ll hear everything in
the highest idelity.
Aorus’ overclocking settings
allow beginners automatically
overclock processors in a single
click, while hardened overclockers
can make use of tools such as Turbo
B-Clock to ine-tune performance
tweaks. You can even operate up
to three NVMe drives in RAID0
to remove every hardware-based
bottleneck imaginable.
To top things off, Aorus
RGB Fusion technology allows
for extensive illumination
implementations, so you can light
up your motherboard with the
existing lights or by adding more.
It won’t just perform amazingly it
will look amazing.
So whether you’re a n00b or a
high-performance tweaker, Aorus’
Z370 motherboards have got you
covered; they look great, perform
great and offer the reliability and
value that you deserve.
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 61
REVIEWS HANDHELDS
HUAWEI P20 PRO
IF A GREAT CAMERA IS YOUR PRIORITY THEN MAKE
NO MISTAKE: THIS IS THE PHONE YOU SHOULD BUY
he P20 Pro has no room for expandable
T  storage, no wireless charging and no
3.5mm headphone jack. In the Pro’s
defence, it comes with a hefty 128GB of
internal storage and beneits from full IP67
dust and waterprooing.
In terms of design, everything else is
positive: this is one of the most beautiful
phones I’ve seen. The plain black and blue
options are nice enough, but the multi-
colour shimmering Twilight inish is
simply gorgeous.
Whichever colour you opt for, the P20 Pro
is slim and stylish, with next to no bezel at all.
While it does have an iPhone X-style notch,
it’s substantially smaller than Apple’s and
can be switched off in the settings, blacking
out to become part of the bezel. When you do
this, you can still use it to display battery life
and notiications.
Thanks to the now popular 18.7:9 aspect
ratio, phones are increasingly tall rather than
wide. So while a 6.1in screen may make the
P20 Pro sound like a phablet, it doesn’t feel
like one. The only problem is housing it in
shallow pockets.
The P20 Pro has an 1,080 x 2,240 resolution,
but don’t worry about it appearing less sharp:
with a pixel density of 408ppi, this isn’t
something you’ll notice without a microscope.
It’s an OLED display. That means you’re
looking at inky blacks and perfect contrast,
with the bonus that it’s generally kinder to
battery life. Image quality is brilliant, too.
The triple camera on the back means you can
capture superb mono and zoom photos
62 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
It covers 99.9% of the sRGB colour
gamut when set to “normal” display
mode (the default is the more garish
“vibrant” setting), and its Delta E
score is 1.11, meaning superb colour
reproduction across the spectrum.
The Huawei P20 Pro has a
HiSilicon Kirin 970 CPU clocked
at 2.4GHz and 128GB of built-in
storage to make up for the missing
microSD card option.
What the P20 Pro does offer
is excellent battery life. Huawei
squeezes in 4,000mAh. In our
standard battery test with a video
playing on loop and brightness
locked to a brightness of 170cd/m2,
the P20 Pro lasted 14hrs 35mins.
We were disappointed by the
P20’s camera, perhaps because of
the high expectations set by its
second-place ranking in DxOMark’s
photography chart: a score of 102
is four more than the Google Pixel
2. The Huawei P20 Pro scored 109
points in the same tests, but this
time around the plaudits are fully
deserved. For static images, the P20
Pro is the best smartphone camera
around.
Image quality is exceptional.
Regardless of the lighting
conditions, the Pro’s camera array
captured everything from wispy
layers of clouds to far-off brickwork
and reflections in puddles.
It’s not perfect, though. In a bid
to reduce noise it has a tendency to
overprocess images, leading to a
loss of detail. The automatic camera
tools are a mixed bag, too: while
it’s nice that the P20 Pro software
can near-instantly identify whether
you’re looking at food or, let’s say, a
cat, and adapt settings accordingly,
its choices aren’t always ideal and it
can sometimes underexpose images
as a result. Fortunately, the phone’s
manual options are versatile enough
that you can easily get spot-on
photos with a bit of patience.
Where it falls behind the Galaxy
S9 is video shooting. For example,
while the P20 Pro can shoot super
slow-motion video at 960fps and
720p, it doesn’t have an automatic
motion sensor like the Galaxy’s
– this makes it more dificult to
capture interesting shots. But, as
with the P20, the real issues are with
regular video capture. On paper,
the features sound good: the P20
Pro is capable of shooting 4K, 60fps
and stabilised video. Unfortunately,
it can’t do all of these things at the
same time.
It’s a shame to end this review of
the Huawei P20 Pro on a misstep
because the phone makes so few
of them. Video capture aside, the
only serious quibbles I have are the
lack of 3.5mm headphone jack and
microSD card slot.
Elsewhere, the Huawei P20
Pro oozes quality in every way. It
looks great, the screen is terriic,
the camera is superb and it’s nippy
enough not to let you down over
a standard 24-month contract. At
$1,099, it’s certainly expensive, but if
past form is anything to go by then
the Huawei P20 Pro will soon be
not only one of the best phones you
can buy, but also one of the biggest
bargains available on contract.
ALAN MARTIN
KEY SPECS
Octa-core 2.4GHz/1.8GHz Hisilicon Kirin
970 processor • 6GB RAM • Mali-G72
MP12 graphics • 6.1in OLED screen, 1,080
x 2,244 resolution • 128GB storage • triple
40MP/20MP/8MP colour/mono/zoom rear
camera • 24MP front camera • 802.11ac Wi-
Fi • Bluetooth 4.2 • NFC • USB-C connector •
4,000mAh battery • Android 8.1 • 73.9 x 7.8 x
155mm (WDH) • 180g • 2yr warranty
$1,099 • www.huawei.com/au

SONY XPERIA
XZ2 COMPACT
NOT GREAT FOR VIDEO CAPTURE, BUT IF YOU
WANT A SUPERFAST, SUPER-COMPACT PHONE
THEN THIS IS A FINE CHOICE
emember when a 5in handset was
R  considered large? Now a 5in handset
is considered so small it deserves the
word “Compact” at the end of its name, but
that’s an apt adjective. Like its bigger brother,
the XZ2, it’s all smooth corners and sides,
with a slightly curved back. It’s a nice looking
phone, even if Sony has replaced the reflective
glass on the XZ2’s backplate with an anti-
scratch, polycarbonate coating.
It feels comfortable in the palm, but
one slight drawback is the location of the
ingerprint reader. Older Sony phones used
to have this as part of the power button on
the side of the handset, but now it’s harder to
reach on the back plate. A bigger casualty is
Sony’s removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Et tu, Sony?
Surprisingly, the Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact
comes with an 18:9 screen. This change of
aspect ratio is not only a irst for Sony, but
a irst for a smaller handset. My early fears
this wouldn’t work were quickly allayed: it
performs brilliantly. The 2,160 x 1,080 IPS
panel offers more than enough detail, and
viewing angles, to satisfy the most discerning
eye.
Those anecdotal feelings were conirmed
by hardware analysis. Using the phone’s
“professional” display settings, the XZ2
Compact’s screen covered 87.9% of the sRGB
colour gamut. Accuracy is even better, with
a Delta E of 1.27, while a peak brightness of
600cd/m2 means you won’t struggle to read it
in bright conditions.
Nor does this phone struggle for speed.
Sony includes the top of the range Qualcomm
Snapdragon 845 processor, backed by 4GB
RAM and 64GB storage. You can add an extra
400GB with a suitably vast microSD card, but
only if you choose the dual-SIM model.
With the fastest mobile processor on the
planet powering things, differences between
this and other 2018 flagships are always
going to be marginal – and the benchmarks
prove that. Overall, Geekbench 4’s single-core
score of 2,379 and multicore total of 8,559
means you’re looking at a 24% jump
in performance over last year’s XZ1
Compact.
It offers even better results in
GFXBench’s off-screen and onscreen
Manhattan 3 tests, where it
outscored the Samsung Galaxy S9 –
although the differences would be
negligible in real-world conditions.
You may worry that with less
physical space for a battery, the
Xperia XZ2’s stamina would suffer.
However, I’m happy with a time of
14hrs 10mins in our 720p video loop
test at 170cd/m2 brightness. That
puts it 39 minutes behind last year’s
model, and only 13 minutes behind
the Samsung Galaxy S9.
Video capture has received a big
update since Sony’s last flagship
outing. Not only has the XZ1
Compact’s party trick of 960fps
super slow motion video capture
been upgraded to Full HD, but
both XZ2 models come with a
19-megapixel rear camera that can
record 4K video with 10-bit HDR
processing. That means you’re
looking at oodles of tonal detail, and
the electronic image stabilisation
(EIS) keeps the footage smooth and
free of jarring shakes.
There’s a big but, though: 4K HDR
Note the
location of
the fingerprint
reader – we
preferred it on
the front
HANDHELDS REVIEWS
footage suffers from uneven
frame rates. Pan across
a scene with SteadyShot
switched off and the jerkiness
becomes immediately
obvious. Switch it on, and
things get much worse. That’s
a shame, because 4K video
captured with HDR enabled
looks hugely impressive, with
strong colours and a rich,
balanced overall exposure
rarely seen in smartphone
footage. But the framerate
issue means you wouldn’t
want to rely on it – unless
Sony can improve things
with a software update.
If you’re only interested in stills,
this is a ine choice of phone. On
paper, the camera’s speciications
look middling: a 19-megapixel rear
camera with a sensor size of 1/2.3in,
f/2 aperture and hybrid phase
detect/laser autofocus. In practice,
the results are pretty good: even
in low light, shots taken with the
phone’s Intelligent Auto shooting
mode look excellent, especially
with HDR enabled. There’s a little
more grain and noise than you get
with the best smartphone cameras
around, and it’s no match for the
Huawei P20 Pro, but this is yet
another strong effort from Sony.
Despite my concerns over video
capture, the XZ1 Compact deserves
serious consideration. It has speed to
match the most powerful phone out
there – the $969 Samsung Galaxy S9
- but costs more than $200 less. Yes,
the screen is smaller and the camera
some way behind, but if speed is
your main priority then the XZ2
Compact is an excellent alternative
that slips easily into the pocket.
ALAN MARTIN
KEY SPECS
Octa-core 2.7GHz/1.7GHz Qualcomm Snap-
dragon 845 processor • 4GB RAM • Adreno
630 graphics • 5in IPS screen, 1,080 x 2,160
resolution • 64GB storage • microSDXC slot
(up to 400GB) • 19MP rear camera • 5MP
front camera • 802.11ac Wi-Fi • Bluetooth 5 •
NFC • USB-C connector • 2,870mAh battery
• Android 8 • 65 x 12.1 x 135mm (WDH) •
168g • 1yr warranty
$740 • www.sonymobile.com/au
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 63
 SMART SPEAKERS GROUP TEST

SMART
SPEAKERS
FO R TH E S MARTEST O F H O M ES
WE PUT 16 SPEAKERS THROUGH THEIR PACES TO
HELP YOU FIND THE PERFECT COMPANION FOR MUSIC,
INFORMATION AND HOME AUTOMATION

voice-operated, digital home assistant

CONTENTS
A  is no longer the stuff of science-fiction
– and it’s no fad. The Amazon Echo and
Google Home devices are popular, practical
Amazon Echo
Amazon Echo Dot
70
71
and affordable additions to the switched-on Amazon Echo Plus 71
home, and they’ve recently been joined by Apple HomePod 72
Apple’s extraordinary HomePod. Google Home 74
While these devices work brilliantly as Google Home Mini 74
on-demand music players, they can do much
Amazon Echo Show 76
more than that: you can make hands-free
Amazon Echo Spot 76
calls to friends and family, control your
JBL Link 20 77
lights, appliances and other smart home
devices – or just ask for information about KitSound Voice One 77
anything from tomorrow’s weather to the Libratone Zipp 78
bass player in The Strokes. Libratone Zipp Mini 78
There are a lot of options to choose from, Sonos One 78
though. First of all, there’s the question of Ultimate Ears Blast 80
whether Amazon’s Alexa is the right assistant Ultimate Ears Megablast 80
for you, or whether you might get on better Zolo Halo 80
with Siri or the Google Assistant. Then Buyer’s guide 66
there’s a range of hardware, with different
How we test 67
models offering distinctive features and
Feature table 78
physical designs to suit different needs and
Top skills for Alexa 73
settings.
This month we’ve fully tested and View from the Labs 81
interrogated no fewer than 16 speakers, from Test results 81
nine different manufacturers to help you
choose the perfect companion. Read on and
get smart.
CONTRIBUTOR: Darien Graham-Smith

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 65

SMART SPEAKERS:
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
THE KEY FEATURES TO LOOK OUT FOR – AND COMMON PROBLEMS
TO AVOID – WHEN BUYING A SMART SPEAKER FOR YOUR HOME
The Amazon Echo family ranges from the puck-
like Dot to the 7in touchscreen of the Echo Show
1 DOES IT MATTER IF I
CHOOSE ALEXA OR GOOGLE?
Right now there are two established smart
speaker platforms – the Amazon Echo, with its
virtual assistant Alexa, and the Google Home,
which uses the Google Assistant. There’s also
a third option in the recently released Apple
HomePod, which uses Siri.
All of these platforms work in the same way.
You address them by saying “Alexa”, “Okay
Google” or “Hey Siri”, then state what you
want them to do. For example, “play me music
by Imagine Dragons”, or “turn off the living
room lights”. To an extent, therefore, it doesn’t
matter which you choose.
If you’re buying your irst smart speaker,
though, there are issues to consider. The irst is
compatibility: you need a smartphone to set up
your smart speaker, and while Amazon Echo
and Google Home devices will work with Assistant, but it lacks the voice
Android or iOS, Apple’s HomePod is more calling and software EQ features of enabling you to play and pause
restrictive and will only work with an iPhone the oficial Google hardware. tracks with the touch of a button
or iPad. On the Amazon side, voice-calling rather than having to holler at your
There are also some differences between the features are typically missing from speaker. Weigh up the features and
capabilities of the various platforms. Amazon third-party speakers, and you may make your choice.
Echo devices work with the widest range not have access to the full range of
of third-party services and devices. Google
Home is a bit more limited, but you can use
it to make phone calls, and to play media on
music streaming services. Non-
Amazon hardware also doesn’t work
with “Echo Spatial Perception” (ESP)
3 CAN I USE MULTIPLE
SPEAKERS TO FILL MY
HOME WITH MUSIC?
Chromecast-compatible devices. – the system that ensures that, if you In most cases, yes. Both Alexa and
Finally, it’s worth thinking about the have more than one Echo device, Google Home allow you to combine
different hardware designs on offer. The Echo only the one nearest to you will speakers into groups so, for example,
family is quite broad, stretching from the respond to your voice. If you have you can say “Alexa, play The Fratellis
small, simple Echo Dot to the advanced Echo two speakers within earshot, you can upstairs”. But, on the Amazon side,
Show with its 7in touchscreen, so there’s likely end up with them both responding each Echo device can currently only
to be something to suit every room. Google at once, which can be confusing to be in a single group. This is quite
only has two devices – the Google Home and deal with. annoying, as it means you can’t
the compact Google Home Mini – while Apple As long as you’re aware of the have an “everywhere” group – or, at
offers only the HomePod. If you think you limitations, though, there’s no need least, if you do, you can’t also have a
might want to expand your system with extra to steer clear of third-party smart “downstairs” group.
speakers in the future, it’s a sensible idea to speakers. They support all the key Note that third-party speakers
check that you’re buying into a family that will features – playing music, answering might not work with the Echo’s
meet your needs. questions and controlling smart group feature, so if you’ve invested
home devices. in, say, a Zolo Halo for your kitchen,

2 IS THERE A CATCH WITH

THIRD-PARTY SPEAKERS?
Half of the speakers in this month’s Labs are
made by third parties who have licensed the
Alexa or Google Assistant technology – and
these models don’t support quite as many
features as the oficial hardware. For example,
the JBL Link 20 works with the Google
What’s more, many of them
offer features that aren’t currently
available on irst-party hardware.
For example, several of this month’s
speakers feature internal batteries, so
you can take them with you on a day
out. Some are waterproof too, and
one comes with a remote control,
you’ll have to control it separately.
This is more irritating than it sounds
because Amazon Music and Spotify
won’t let you run two separate
streams at once – so you can send the
same thing to a group of speakers,
but you can’t simultaneously use
the same service to play music from

66 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU

speakers outside of that group.
Some speakers also come with the
ability to link to another identical
speaker for stereo output. Right now
this isn’t natively supported within
either the Amazon Echo or Google
Home product families, but several
other manufacturers – namely
KitSound, Sonos and Zolo from this
month’s lineup – have implemented
it on their devices. Once it’s set up,
the pair works as a single speaker,
giving you a fuller, more expansive
sound – although you might choose
to spread your speakers throughout
your home, rather than tying them
together.
4 SHOULD I BE WORRIED
ABOUT PRIVACY?
The always-listening nature of
smart speakers has understandably
prompted privacy concerns. Both
Amazon and Google have promised
that, when their devices are sitting
idle, all they’re doing is listening for
the “wake word” and that nothing is
recorded until they hear it.
Once that happens, your
command is captured and sent back
to HQ over the internet, where it’s
analysed and interpreted. If you’re
concerned about what’s being stored,
you can check your usage history
– on Amazon, it’s inside the Alexa
app, while Google makes it available
online at history.google.com – and
wipe it if you wish. You can also
ensure that the device doesn’t get
triggered by accident by using the
“microphone mute” button, which
tells the device to stop listening
altogether – but you will have to
HOW WE TEST
Each of the smart speakers on test this
month is awarded a star rating out of five. To
calculate this score, we consider a range of
factors, including the general capabilities of
the voice assistant, the specific design features
of the individual unit, and how convenient and
ergonomic any physical controls are.
Sound quality is also an important factor.
We assess this by listening carefully to a
variety of standard tracks on each unit – in
both mono and stereo where supported –
paying attention to the depth, balance and
overall tone of the sound, at both moderate
listening volume and maximum volume.
We also measure the maximum sound
output of each speaker while playing a
Both Alexa and Google Home let you
combine speakers into groups so you can
use multiple devices across your home
manually disengage it again when
you want to issue an instruction.
That’s the oficial story. Most of
us just have to take it on trust that
these devices really are doing what
they say. So far no-one’s found any
evidence of data being secretly
shared with the manufacturers,
outside of what’s needed to process
your instructions. However, these
always-connected devices can
update themselves automatically
with new irmware and features, so
in theory something could change
in future. We’d suggest you don’t
worry too much about privacy issues
but still keep half an eye on the news
and update notes, just in case.
5 IS THERE A FEE
FOR USING VOICE
SERVICES?
A smart speaker is a one-off
purchase: once you’ve bought it, you
can use it forever without paying a
penny.
However, to get the best from your
speaker, you’ll need a subscription
to a supported music streaming
service, as this enables you to play
tracks and albums on demand. If
you’ve chosen an Amazon device,
you may already have an Amazon
Prime membership, which includes
music streaming from Amazon
Music, plus voice purchasing and
video services for the Echo Show and
Echo Spot. Google Home devices
don’t work with Amazon Prime, but
a Google Play Music subscription
standard passage of music, using a calibrated
sound meter app running on an iPad a metre
from the front of the speaker. You’ll find the
results on p81. While this gives you a guide
to the relative volumes of different speaker
models, be aware that tonal balance plays
a big part, too: a device with a deep bass
response can create a much bigger, more
immersive sound than a little tinny speaker,
even if both are pumping out the same
nominal sound pressure.
On that page you’ll also find subjective
ratings of sound quality, representing multiple
listeners’ impressions of how each speaker
copes with both intricate classical music and
more driving modern tracks.
SMART SPEAKERS GROUP TEST
will let you stream to your heart’s content –
or, both platforms will work with a Spotify
Premium account. If you’ve picked an Apple
HomePod, you’ll need to sign up with Apple
Music to unlock its full streaming potential.
There’s no guarantee that the manufacturers
won’t start charging for the back-end voice
services in the future – but, at present, these
devices are doing a great job of enmeshing
consumers into their manufacturer’s respective
ecosystems, so we suspect that they’ll remain
free for the foreseeable future.
6 WHAT ARE “SKILLS”?
One of the reasons why the Amazon
Echo has been such a success is its support for
“skills”. Simply put, a skill is a bit of software
that enables Alexa to interact with a third-
party service or device. Anyone can write and
publish a skill so if, for example, you come
up with a new messaging service, you can
create an Alexa skill for it, publish it for free on
Amazon’s Skill Store and let users around the
world use their Echo devices to check and send
messages.
There are skills for all sorts of things, from
quiz games to advanced smart home devices
– but, truth be told, the open nature of the
platform means that not all of them are very
useful or of high quality. And Google Home
and the Apple HomePod aren’t shut out from
such abilities by any means: anything that
interfaces with the Google Assistant can be
controlled from a Google Home device, and
the HomePod can talk directly to Internet of
Things (IoT) devices via Apple’s HomeKit API.
Finally, all three platforms also work with
the popular web-based automation service
IFTTT – so even if there’s no oficial connection
between your voice assistant and a particular
online service or smart gadget, you can often
create one by simply enabling one of the
thousands of pre-rolled applets. In short, while
Alexa has the biggest library of skills, all three
smart speaker platforms can do a lot more
than just play music and relay information
from the web.
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 67
GROUP TEST SMART SPEAKERS

LABS WINNER RECOMMENDED RECOMMENDED

AMAZON ECHO AMAZON ECHO AMAZON ECHO AMAZON ECHO AMAZON ECHO APPLE HOMEPOD GOOGLE HOME GOOGLE HOME
DOT PLUS SHOW SPOT MINI

OVERALL RATING

INFORMATION
PRICE $119 $58 $159 $320 $180 $499 $579 $64
DIMENSIONS (WDH) 88 x 88 x 148mm 84 x 84 x 32mm 84 x 84 x 235mm 187 x 90 x 187mm 104 x 91 x 91mm 142 x 142 x 172mm 96 x 96 x 143mm 98 x 98 x 42mm
WEIGHT 821g 163g 964g 1.2kg 420g 2.5kg 477g 173g
WARRANTY 1yr RTB 1yr RTB 1yr RTB 1yr RTB 1yr RTB 1yr RTB 2yr RTB 2yr RTB
Charcoal fabric,
Heather Grey
White with slate Chalk, Charcoal,
COLOURS fabric, Oak finish, Black, white Black, white, silver Black, white Black, white Space grey, white
fabric base Coral
Sandstone fabric,
Walnut finish

Bordeaux leather,
Coral fabric,
OPTIONAL CASES As above, plus Indigo fabric,
None None None None carbon metal, None
(FIRST-PARTY) silver Midnight leather,
copper metal
Saddle tan leather

AUDIO AND VIDEO

MICROPHONES 7 7 7 8 4 6 2 2
TWEETER
15mm N/A 20mm N/A N/A Not stated N/A N/A
DIAMETER
BASS DRIVER
64mm 15mm 64mm 2 x 50mm 35mm 100mm 2 x 50mm 40mm
DIAMETER
“Alexa”, “Amazon”, “Alexa”, “Amazon”, “Alexa”, “Amazon”, “Alexa”, “Amazon”, “Alexa”, “Amazon”,
“Hey Google”, “OK “Hey Google”, “OK
WAKE WORDS “Computer”, “Computer”, “Computer”, “Computer”, “Computer”, “Hey Siri”
Google” Google”
“Echo” “Echo” “Echo” “Echo” “Echo”
EQ
MULTIROOM
MUSIC
STEREO MODE
7in 1,024 x 600 2.5in 480 x 480
SCREEN
LCD touchscreen LCD touchscreen
CAMERA
NETWORK SERVICES
VOICE ASSISTANT Alexa Alexa Alexa Alexa Alexa Siri Google Assistant Google Assistant

Android 5 or Android 5 or Android 5 or Android 5 or Android 5 or Android 4.4 or Android 4.4 or

iOS 11.2.5 or
REQUIRES higher, iOS 9 or higher, iOS 9 or higher, iOS 9 or higher, iOS 9 or higher, iOS 9 or higher, iOS 9.1 or higher, iOS 9.1 or
higher
higher higher higher higher higher higher higher

STREAM AUDIO
FROM
BLUETOOTH
DEVICE
STREAM AUDIO
TO BLUETOOTH
DEVICE

Dual-band Dual-band Dual-band

WI-FI Dual-band 802.11n Dual-band 802.11n Dual-band 802.11n Dual-band 802.11n Dual-band 802.11n
802.11ac 802.11ac 802.11ac

MAJOR MUSIC Amazon Music, Amazon Music, Amazon Music, Amazon Music, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Google Play Music, Google Play Music,
SERVICES Spotify, TuneIn Spotify, TuneIn Spotify, TuneIn Spotify, TuneIn Spotify, TuneIn iTunes, Beats 1 Spotify, TuneIn Spotify, TuneIn

Video calls, Video calls,

OTHER None None Built-in ZigBee hub AirPlay Chromecast Chromecast
Amazon Video Amazon Video
PHYSICAL CONTROLS & CONNECTIONS
VOLUME Touch-sensitive Touch-sensitive Touch-sensitive
Physical buttons Physical buttons Twist-top Physical buttons Physical buttons
CONTROL buttons surface buttons

MUTE BUTTON

WAKE BUTTON Touch and hold Touch and hold

3.5MM AUX OUT

OTHER INPUT/
None None None None None None None None
OUTPUTS

Internal with
Micro-USB (5.2V, Micro-USB (5.2V,
POWER SUPPLY Coaxial (15V, 1.4A) Coaxial (15V, 1.4A) Coaxial (15V, 1.4A) Coaxial (15V, 1.4A) quasi-captive Coaxial (16V, 2A)
2.1A) 1.8A)
cable
MAX BATTERY
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
LIFE (CLAIMED)
BATTERY
CHARGE TIME N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
(CLAIMED)
WATER
N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
RESISTANCE

68 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
 SMART SPEAKERS GROUP TEST

RECOMMENDED RECOMMENDED

JBL LINK 20 KITSOUND VOICE LIBRATONE ZIPP LIBRATONE ZIPP SONOS ONE ULTIMATE EARS ULTIMATE EARS
ONE MINI BLAST MEGABLAST ZOLO HALO

$249 $87 $599 $469 $458 $278 $378 $135

93 x 93 x 218mm 130 x 139 x 278mm 122 x 122 x 261mm 100 x 100 x 224mm 120 x 120 x 161mm 68 x 68 x 188mm 88 x 88 x 237mm 70 x 70 x 93mm
950g 1.75kg 1.5kg 1.1kg 1.85kg 640g 1.2kg 245g
2yr RTB 1yr RTB 2yr RTB 2yr RTB 1yr RTB 2yr RTB 2yr RTB 18mth RTB

Cloudy Grey, Deep Cloudy Grey, Deep Blizzard, Blue Blizzard, Blue
Lagoon, Graphite, Lagoon, Graphite, Steel, Graphite, Steel, Graphite,
Black, white Grey Black, White Black
Nordic Black, Nordic Black, Lemonade, Merlot, Lemonade, Merlot,
Victory Red Victory Red Mojito Mojito

As above plus As above plus

Atlantic Deep, Atlantic Deep,
None None Nude, Pastel Blue, Nude, Pastel Blue, None None None None
Sangria, Signal Sangria, Signal
Yellow Yellow

2 2 N/A N/A 6 3 3 2

N/A N/A 2 x 25mm 25mm Not stated 25mm 25mm N/A

2 x 50mm 2 x 50mm 2 x 100mm 75mm Not stated 2 x 35mm 2 x 55mm 45mm

“Hey Google”, “OK

“Alexa” N/A N/A “Alexa” “Alexa” “Alexa” “Alexa”
Google”

Via own app Via own app Via own app

Google Assistant Alexa Alexa Alexa Alexa Alexa Alexa Alexa

Android 4.4 or Android (any Android 4.4 or Android 4.4 or Android (any Android 5 or Android 5 or Android 4.3 or
higher, iOS 9.1 or version), iOS (any higher, iOS 9 or higher, iOS 9 or version), iOS 9 or higher, iOS 10.2 or higher, iOS 10.2 or higher, iOS 8 or
higher version) higher higher higher higher higher higher

2.4GHz 802.11g
Dual-band
2.4GHz 802.11n Dual-band 802.11n Dual-band 802.11n (plus 100Mbits/sec Dual-band 802.11n Dual-band 802.11n 2.4GHz 802.11n
802.11ac
Ethernet)
Amazon Music,
Spotify, TuneIn;
Amazon Music, Amazon Music,
Google Play Music, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Apple Music, Apple Music, Amazon Music,
Deezer, TuneIn, Deezer, TuneIn,
Spotify, TuneIn Spotify, TuneIn Spotify Spotify Google Play and Spotify, TuneIn
Spotify Spotify
SoundCloud via
Sonos app only

Chromecast None AirPlay, DLNA AirPlay, DLNA Sonos Multi-room None None None

Touch-sensitive Touch-sensitive Touch-sensitive

Physical buttons Dial Physical buttons Physical buttons Physical buttons
surface surface buttons
Physical button Physical button
combination combination

3.5mm aux in, USB 3.5mm aux in, USB

None USB charge out audio in, USB audio in, USB None None None
charge out charge out

Micro-USB (5.1V, Internal with C7 Internal with C7 Micro-USB (5.1V, Micro-USB (5.1V,
Coaxial (19V, 1.8A) Coaxial (19V, 1.8A) Coaxial (9V, 1.5A)
2.3A) cable cable 2A) 2A)

10 hours N/A 10 hours 10 hours N/A 12 hours 16 hours N/A

4.5 hours N/A 3 hours 3 hours N/A 3 hours 3 hours N/A

1m N/A N/A N/A N/A 1m 1m N/A

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 69

AMAZON
ECHO
THE ORIGINAL SMART SPEAKER MAY NOT
BLOW AUDIOPHILES AWAY, BUT ITS EVER-
GROWING CAPABILITIES MAKE IT A WINNER

f you’re reading this, you already know the

I  Amazon Echo: it’s the king of the smart

speaker market. In the US, it’s estimated that
more than 70% of smart speakers sold to date
have been Alexa devices.
That’s part of what makes the Echo such
a compelling choice. When a third party
wants to add voice control to a smart gadget,
the sheer weight of numbers behind Alexa
means the Echo is generally the irst platform
they turn to. There’s now a huge range of
household devices that connect to Alexa, from
routers to cameras, phones and thermostats,
allowing you to control them by barking
commands from the comfort of your sofa. As
you’d expect, Alexa also works with Amazon’s
Fire TV devices.
And that’s on top of the Echo’s standalone
capabilities, which have largely come to
deine what we expect from a smart speaker.
You can ask Alexa for news headlines, local
weather reports and trafic warnings. You can
check your calendar and set reminders. You
can make two-way, hands-free voice calls to
friends’ Echo devices, or to other units in your
own home. You can stream playlists, radio
stations and audiobooks over the internet, and
even order items from Amazon with a single
command (although you’ll need to conirm
the purchase on your phone). And you can
use Alexa to interact with a variety of online
services, from Fitbit to Uber, using either
installable skills or freely available IFTTT
applets.
All this clever software stuff works
startlingly well. That’s a relief, because the
hardware isn’t all that exceptional. The
original Echo, launched back in 2016, was a
decent music player, but the sound quality on
this smaller second-generation model is more
akin to a portable radio than a hi-i system.
There’s a decent amount of bass, and it’s pretty
well controlled considering the Echo’s size.
It goes surprisingly loud too, hitting 78dBA
at maximum volume. There’s no snap or
sparkle to the higher frequencies, though, and
when you factor in the necessarily monaural
presentation, it has a slightly flat, boxy feel.
It certainly doesn’t have the clarity and
headroom to bring stirring classical music or
pumping dance tracks to life like the Apple
HomePod does.
The Echo’s sound may not be top-
class, but its software is exceptional
Still, you’re not necessarily stuck
with the built-in sound. A 3.5mm
audio output socket allows you to
hook the Echo up to the aux input
of a standalone stereo – or you can
pair it wirelessly with any Bluetooth
speaker and play your music
through that.
And if the Echo’s audio output is
only so-so, its input capabilities are
much more impressive. The seven
directional microphones dotted
around its body do an astonishingly
good job of picking up commands
issued from near and far – indeed,
if you have two Echo devices in
adjacent rooms, they’ll occasionally
both hear you, but only the nearer
one will respond. Even when the
Echo’s blasting out the latest hits, it
still picks up instructions at normal
speaking volume.
On the subject of music, Amazon
Prime Music and Spotify Premium
are both natively supported as
streaming sources, so there’s a
good chance you already have a
subscription that lets you stream
music on demand through Alexa.
Note, however, that if you have
multiple Echo devices, they can
only play one song at once from a
given source: Spotify won’t let you
listen to Rosanna in the kitchen
while Hold The Line is streaming
in the bedroom. Simple multiroom
controls group devices together
and have them all play the same
playlist in perfect synchrony, but
the catch is that each unit can only
be in one group – so if you put
your kitchen Echo in a group called
“Downstairs”, you can’t also have it
in your “Everywhere” group.
While the Echo is designed
primarily to be controlled by voice,
there are a few physical controls on
the top – volume and power buttons,
plus a mute button that shuts off
the microphone until you press it
again. The volume controls aren’t
exactly tactile – we prefer the twisty
top of the Echo Plus – but they’re
still perfectly usable. And we like
the way that, when you tap the mute
button, the whole LED ring shines
red, so you can see at a glance that
the device is muted.
For more in-depth controls,
you can turn to the Alexa app for
Android and iOS, but frankly this
isn’t a great experience. It offers
a good range of settings: you can

70 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
 SMART SPEAKERS GROUP TEST

change the wake word from “Alexa”

AMAZON ECHO DOT

to one of the other supported
options (“Amazon”, “Computer” or
“Echo”), create Routines – sequences
of actions such as reading the news
and turning the lights off – browse
enabled skills, check your usage
history and so on. But it’s slow and
clunky, often taking several seconds
to open and move between pages,
and it’s dauntingly overloaded with
lists and buttons. Still, you rarely
need to use it.
In a few areas, the Echo isn’t
as capable as the Google Home.
Alexa is smart, but the Google
Assistant is more deeply plumbed
into Google, and can do a better
job of, for example, telling you
travel times between two arbitrary
points. Google Home can also
distinguish between multiple
registered voices: if you ask for your
next appointment, it will fetch the
information from your calendar,
whereas if your wife, say, asks the
same question, it’s smart enough to
check hers.
THE SMALLEST, CHEAPEST MEMBER OF THE ECHO FAMILY
DOES A LOT, BUT AUDIO QUALITY IS DECIDEDLY LACKING
he baby of the Echo family, the
T  diminutive Dot squeezes a fully
functional Alexa “brain” into a little
hockey puck that can be discreetly tucked
away on a shelf or desk. As beits such a
low-proile role, it comes only in plain black
or white . However, if you want to show it
off there’s a selection of coloured fabric and
leather cases.
Despite its size, the Dot features the same
seven-microphone array as the regular Echo,
meaning voice recognition is impressively
sharp and accurate. Its controls and
capabilities are entirely identical to those of
its bigger brother – you can ask questions,
control your lights, play music and so on.
The key difference is that there’s no
room inside for a dedicated bass driver – so
when you do kick off the tunes, the effect
is rather like listening on a tiny laptop
speaker. It’s not too bad at low volumes; it
while you’re
working, or for
a quiet bedtime
playlist. For
everyday
listening, though,
you’ll want to use
the 3.5mm audio jack,
or the Dot’s built-in Bluetooth
capabilities, to route the audio through a
more substantial speaker.
At $58, the Dot is Amazon’s cheapest
smart speaker – but we’d hesitate to
recommend it as an entry point to the
world of Alexa, as music is a big part of the
Echo’s appeal. It makes a lot more sense as a
secondary device: stick it in the kitchen, for
example, and it’s a convenient way to control
your smart home devices, set timers etc.
$58 • www.amazon.com.au/Echo

If you’re buying into a smart might be acceptable for background music

speaker ecosystem, the Echo is
the one we would go for. With so
much momentum behind it, you

AMAZON ECHO PLUS

can expect Alexa to work with
the widest range of devices and
services. There’s also the best range
of companion devices available,
from the tiny Echo Dot to the
extravagant Echo Show, not to
mention a generous selection of
third-party Alexa-powered speakers
– so if you choose to expand the
network throughout your home,
you can pick the right device for
each room.
In particular, audiophiles might
want to take a look at the Sonos
One, which partners Alexa’s smarts
with far better sound quality. Yet
that device costs a stiff $458, while
the standard Echo is frequently
discounted. Even at the regular
price, it’s a lot cheaper than the
Google Home, making it a clear
winner – it’s the original, hugely
versatile smart speaker at an almost
irresistible price.
$119 • www.amazon.com.au/Echo
IMPROVED SOUND AND A BUILT-IN SMART HOME HUB
MAKE THIS A GOOD CHOICE FOR IOT BEGINNERS
he Echo Plus looks identical to the needing an intermediary
T  original 2016 Echo, except that it’s
available in a space-age silver inish as
well as the classic black and white options.
hub connected to your
router. This doesn’t really
solve an urgent problem,
That means it stands quite a bit taller than but if you haven’t yet
today’s standard Echo, and has a twisting invested in Hive or Philips
volume control at the top, which we ind Hue smart lighting, it
much more pleasant than the up and down could make the Echo Plus
buttons that are now otherwise standard. more cost effective, as it
Inside, as beits the “Plus” designation, means you won’t need
you will ind upgraded audio hardware in to spend $100 or so on a
the form of a bigger tweeter. This makes a standalone hub.
very perceptible difference: music instantly Otherwise, while the
gains a clarity and presence that the regular improved music quality
Echo simply can’t match. Despite the larger and user-friendly volume
size, it’s also quite a bit quieter than the control are certainly nice,
second-generation Echo, topping out at we would be hard pushed to say they justify
72dBA. For everyday listening, though, it the price gap between this and the regular
will please all but the pickiest listeners. Echo.
The other major enhancement is an
integrated IoT hub, which can discover and $159 • www.amazon.com.au/Echo
control certain smart home devices, without

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 71

GROUP TEST SMART SPEAKERS
APPLE
HOMEPOD
SIMPLY THE BEST-SOUNDING SMART
SPEAKER ON THE MARKET – IF YOU’RE
WILLING TO BE LOCKED INTO APPLE MUSIC
pple’s late arrival in the smart speaker
A  market means it’s playing catch-
up with Amazon and Google – but
the HomePod might be special enough to
persuade Echo or Google devotees to switch.
It doesn’t look particularly assuming.
Actually, it looks rather bland. A fabric mesh
(in either white or “Space Grey”) covers the
entire exterior, save for a black plastic blob on
top. Neither branding nor controls are visible
– the only physical connector is the power
cable. Address it with “Hey, Siri!”, though,
and a familiar luminescent circle appears on
the top surface to show it’s listening. Touch-
sensitive volume controls also appear on the
same surface as needed.
Not blown away? Start playing some music
and you just might be. We don’t just mean that
the HomePod is loud – although it certainly
can be. On paper, its maximum volume level
of 77dBA may look merely average, but unlike
most speakers it doesn’t distort at all even
when pumped up to ten, making it feel much
more powerful than its rivals.
What’s really stunning is how vibrant,
arresting and perfectly controlled everything
sounds. Apple’s custom speaker arrangement
gives dance music an irresistible driving
kick; indie rock grinds and roars as it should;
and the timpani in Verdi’s Requiem have a
palpable impact. Even at moderate volumes,
the HomePod has a muscular musicality that
easily outshines anything else this month.
Perhaps the cleverest part is that the
HomePod can listen in on its own output, and
automatically apply acoustic processing as
needed to ensure you get the best sound no
matter where it’s placed. If a nearby wall is
producing nasty resonances in the mid-range,
the HomePod will adjust those frequencies
to compensate. Treble getting muffled
by a nearby curtain? Again, the
HomePod will sort it out.
The upshot is that you can stick
the HomePod carelessly on a
shelf, or in a corner, without the
slightest regard for its acoustics,
and get an effect that sounds like
a high-end hi-i system. All that’s
missing is a stereo soundstage – and
72 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
The bland design belies the vibrant,
distortion-free sound
Apple’s working on adding that
feature right now. Once it’s available,
we suspect there will be no shortage
of audio enthusiasts queueing up to
buy HomePods by the pair.
For the rest of us, the HomePod
isn’t quite such a straightforward
proposition. First of all, $500 is a
heck of a lot of money for a device
that does the same basic job as the
everyday Amazon Echo. Sure, the
difference in audio quality is night
and day – but whether it’s worth the
gaping price gap will depend on
your priorities and your disposable
income.
Then there’s the uncomfortable
question of compatibility. Alexa and
the Google Assistant will both work
with either Android or iOS, and
you can happily use either to access
Spotify, Netflix and so forth. The
HomePod, by contrast, works only
with iOS – Android users are
shut out – and services such
as Spotify, meanwhile,
get treated very much as
second-class citizens.
You can kick off Spotify
playlists manually from
your iPhone (using
Apple’s proprietary
An opalescent circle shows
that the HomePod is hanging
on your every word
AirPlay transport), but if
you’re looking for voice
control of streaming music,
you’re limited to your own
purchased iTunes songs,
plus Apple Music and Beats
1 radio – assuming you have
obediently paid for your
subscription. There’s not
even a Bluetooth option for
playing tunes from a non-
Apple phone or laptop.
If that doesn’t put you off,
there’s one last consideration
to bear in mind: compared
to its established rivals, the
HomePod is a somewhat
limited device. As beits its
design, it’s at its strongest
when it comes to musical
functions. Siri does a superb
job of picking out new music
you’ll like, or assembling killer
mixes within a given genre or era.
For general smart speaker duties,
though, the HomePod lags behind
Amazon and Google. You’ll look in
vain for features such as phone calls
and multi-user voice recognition. It
works with smart home devices only
to the extent that Siri can control
them via HomeKit, and right now
you can’t even use it to control an
Apple TV. Oddly, there’s also no
manual microphone-mute control:
you can tell Siri to stop listening, but
then you have to use the Home app
on your iPhone to enable it again.
What you make of all this will
depend on what you want from a
smart speaker. If you’re looking for a
convenient voice hub that will work
with your Android phone, Spotify
account and mishmash of smart
home devices, the HomePod clearly
isn’t a good it. It’s almost insolent
how pointedly it refuses to integrate
with non-Apple services.
If you’re primarily a music fan
who’s already devoted to the Apple
way of doing things, however, the
HomePod will likely make you
vastly, qualitatively happier than
any of this month’s rivals. It’s not
perfect, and it’s far from cheap – but
you’ll be loving the sound of it long
after the expense is forgotten.
$499 • www.apple.com/au
 SMART SPEAKERS GROUP TEST

TOP
SKILLS
FOR ALEXA
ALEXA CAN DO FAR MORE THAN JUST GIVE
YOU THE WEATHER FORECAST OR LATEST
FOOTBALL SCORES – HERE ARE OUR
FAVOURITE SKILLS FOR THE AMAZON ECHO

nce you’ve checked the weather,

O  and turned your lights on and

off a few times, you might be
wondering what else Alexa can do.
Here are some of our favourite skills
that really extend the usefulness of
the Amazon Echo – and they can all
be installed with a single, simple voice
command.

“ALEXA, ADD NATIONAL RAIL”

This practical skill allows you to check
upcoming departures from any station
on the national network to any other. It’s
a bit pedantic – you have to step through
the process of naming your departure and
destination stations – and you can’t easily ask
it about future services. Still, it’s a convenient
way to make sure that you’re not left hanging
around on the platform.
“ALEXA, ADD JUST EAT”
Link Alexa to your Just Eat account and you
can re-order recent meals with just a few
words. You can add and remove individual
items, and track your order once it’s placed.
The latest version of the app includes a visual
interface for the Echo Show, so you can see at
a glance where your food’s got to.
“ALEXA, ADD MY
GUITAR TUNER”
Perhaps not everyone needs this skill, but if
you’re in the mood for a quick strum, it’s a
very handy way to quickly check your tuning
– just ask the skill to “give me an E”, or “play
all the notes”. If you’re playing solo, also check
out the Guitar Backing Tracks skill.
“ALEXA, ADD FIND MY PHONE”
If you’re constantly misplacing your phone,
this skill is for you. Once it’s installed, simply
invoke it by name and it’ll ring your phone. It
can also import other people’s numbers from
your contacts, so it can ind family members’
phones, too – just tell it the name of the
relevant person.
“ALEXA, ADD CHAT BOT
FOR SLACK”
If your ofice is even remotely techie, it’s
probably embraced Slack for intra-ofice
communications. This simple skill won’t read
the deluge of incoming messages out loud –
which is probably just as well– but it lets you
quickly dictate a message and post it to your
desired channel, which could be very handy
for keeping colleagues up to date.
“ALEXA, ADD TOMATO HELPER”
Need a short, focused blast of productivity?
Tomato Helper gives you an instant 25-minute
countdown, then alerts you when it’s time to
take a break. By default it plays a quiet ticking
noise. But, if you ind that distracting, you can
tell it to “start silent timer”. And at any time,
you can “ask Tomato Helper for progress” to
check how much time remains.
“ALEXA, ADD MAIL BOT”
The Mail Bot skill reads out messages from
your Gmail account. Link it with your Gmail
account via tinyurl.com/ycxvmnqh and you
can check unread messages, review emails
from a speciic date, check starred messages
and more. Just note that there’s no security, so
anybody who knows about the skill can get
Alexa to reveal the contents of your inbox.
“ALEXA, ADD HARMONY”
Logitech’s Harmony range of
universal remote controls can
control TVs, appliances, smart
lights and more. With the Harmony
skill, you don’t even need to pick
up the controller: simply tell Alexa
to “open iPlayer”, “pause Netflix”
and so on, and the command will
be relayed to your Harmony hub.
Perfect for anyone who’s constantly
hunting high and low for the
remote.
“ALEXA, ADD
KNOW-IT-ALL”
Alexa can answer a lot of simple
questions herself, but if you
really need to settle an argument,
Wikipedia is where it’s at. Sadly,
there’s currently no oficial
Wikipedia skill, but this third-party
implementation does the job nicely.
Simply “ask Know-it-All about
Spain” – or whatever – and Alexa
will obediently read out the top
section of the requested Wikipedia
page.

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 73

GOOGLE
HOME
A CREDIBLE RIVAL TO ALEXA WITH SOME
DISTINCTIVE FEATURES – BUT IT’S A LESS
PERSONABLE PRESENCE IN YOUR HOME
he Amazon Echo may have come
T  irst, but the Google Home is no mere
imitation. It’s a credible rival with
distinctive strengths – and weaknesses. That
the device has a character of its own is obvious
from the moment you set eyes on it. Next to
the textured cylinder of the Echo, its two-tone
design and angled top make much more of a
statement. The upper section comes only in
white, but the grey fabric speaker cover can be
replaced with a jaunty coral fabric, or – for a
more industrial look – metal shields in carbon
or copper.
The interface is more futuristic, too. While
the Echo’s ring of LEDs is clearly visible
around its top edge, the Home conceals them
beneath the top panel: when it’s thinking,
they shine through, spinning in tasteful pastel
colours. When it’s dormant, the lights wink
out and the device appears featureless again.
No doubt, the Google Home creates a
striking impression, but the design has
its compromises. The Echo’s light ring is
designed to be clearly visible from all angles,
something that the Home can’t claim. And
the minimalist philosophy means that the
physical controls aren’t exactly intuitive: to
adjust the volume, you have to drag a inger
clockwise or anticlockwise around the Home’s
unmarked upper panel – it’s a capacitive
surface – or tap to manually pause music or
stop a timer. Wisely, Google has given the
Home a physical button to mute the mic, but
it’s hidden round the back, so it can take a
moment of fumbling to successfully engage.
Still, as with all of these devices, the whole
point is that you should rarely, if ever, need
to use the manual controls. Voice control
is where it’s at, and when you address the
Google Assistant it responds promptly and –
it must be said – with impressive intelligence.
Much has been made of the Assistant’s ability
to understand context, and you can more
or less get into a conversation with it – to
a greater extent than you can with Alexa.
“Where’s my nearest pizza restaurant? What
do the reviews say about it? Do they deliver?
What time does it open?” The Google Home
takes such interrogations in its stride.
Even so, once you start your irst chat with
the Google Assistant, a few niggles quickly
become apparent. The irst is the wake word:
74 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
you can say either “Okay Google” or
“Hey, Google” (which is helpful for
those of us who have other devices
listening for the former phrase).
There’s nothing exactly wrong
with this, but say it a few times
and you realise it’s a much more
mealy-mouthed mode of address
than “Alexa”, which flows neatly off
the tongue. In a back-and-forth it’s
tiresome to have to preix it to every
statement – and, unlike the Echo,
the Google Home doesn’t give you
any other choice of name.
That touches on a more subtle
point. For better or worse, most
major voice assistant technologies
are somewhat anthropomorphised:
Alexa, Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana
all have personal names, and talk
about themselves in the irst person.
The Google Assistant, by contrast,
is overtly inhuman. Ask its name
and it will simply respond “I am
the Google Assistant”. To wake
it up, you invoke the corporation
that operates it. Sci-i aicionados
might love the idea of interacting
with an impersonal intelligence,
but it doesn’t feel like a comfortable
The Google Home’s grey
fabric cover can be replaced
with a coral or metal version
presence in my home.
It doesn’t help that the
Google Assistant’s
speech comes across
as slightly stilted and
artiicial, in contrast to
the relative fluency of
Alexa and Siri.
Still, it’s something
you can certainly get
used to, especially
since most of the
time you’ll be
issuing short, one-off
commands. One
obvious example
would be instructing
Google Home
to play music:
predictably enough,
the Assistant
integrates with
Google Play Music
as well as Spotify, and
if you have a premium
subscription with either
then it will play more or
less anything you ask it to.
Disappointingly, though, if you
only have a regular, free Play Music
account, you can’t play songs you’ve
uploaded yourself – even though
this exact capability is available on
every other Play Music platform.
You can stream your songs to the
Home over Bluetooth, or via the
Home’s built-in Google Cast feature,
but it’s an irritating speedbump.
On to the important question:
how does it sound? Not bad. It
certainly has a different character
to the Echo, sounding more open
and warmer at moderate volumes,
versus the flatter tone of the
Amazon device. However, it’s not
so good under pressure. Dial up
the volume and things start to
sound unpleasantly boxy – and its
maximum volume of 74dBA feels
a lot quieter than the Echo’s. It’s
ine for a dinner party, perhaps, but
nothing more raucous than that.
As with the Echo, though, you
do have other options. There’s no
physical connector for an external
speaker, but thanks to a recent
software update you can now divert
the audio from your Google Home

to one or more other speakers over
Bluetooth. You can also cast your
playlist to a Chromecast-compatible
device, so you could, for example,
route your playlist through your
TV’s sound bar. If you have
multiple Google Home devices,
you could also use the Google
Home smartphone app’s multiroom
feature, and stream your music
to several devices at once. There’s
currently no support for setting up
two units as a stereo pair, but the
US-only Google Home Max speaker
has that ability, so hopefully it will
come to the Home at some point in
the not too distant future.
Another slight disappointment
about the audio hardware is that
where the Amazon Echo has seven
microphones, the Home has just
two. This doesn’t make it unusable
– we had no problem speaking to
it from across the room in normal
conditions. But when there was
music playing, or the TV was on, the
Google Assistant seemed to miss
our invocations slightly more often
than Alexa.
As you’d hope, the Google Home
integrates with Google Calendar,
so you can ask it what your next
appointment is, or create new events
by voice. Alexa can do that too, but
Google Home takes it a step further
by recognising the voice of the
person asking, and automatically
selecting the appropriate calendar
(if it’s been registered). There’s also
simple integration with messaging
apps and services, and you can use
voice control to cast and control the
playback of YouTube videos and
Netflix shows.
There’s some support for voice
communications, too: you can
broadcast messages from a Google
Home device (or from your phone)
to all the other stations in your
home, but you can’t open a two-
way intercom connection. You
can’t drop in on a friend’s Google
Home device either, but you can
use your Home to call their regular
phone – something Alexa can’t
currently do. If their number’s in
your Google contacts, it’ll be picked
up automatically, and you can even
set the correct caller ID, so they’ll
see it’s you calling and, hopefully,
pick up.
GOOGLE HOME MINI
ALL OF GOOGLE HOME’S CAPABILITIES
IN A COMPACT, LOW-COST PACKAGE – AND IT DOESN’T SOUND BAD EITHER
he tiny Google Home Mini is, self-
T  evidently, the company’s answer
to the Echo Dot. In fact, it looks
rather classier than Amazon’s miniature
device, with a (non-exchangeable) white,
charcoal or coral fabric exterior.
It sounds far better than the Dot,
however, thanks to its 40mm full-range
driver. To be clear, music lovers won’t
swoon at the quality: the bass is quite
rumbly and uncontrolled, and there’s little
crispness to the treble. For background
music, though, it’s vastly more listenable
than its rival, and the maximum volume of
68dBA is louder than the Dot’s 62dBA. That
said, the quality of the sound drops off as
you dial up the volume, with an unpleasant
harshness to the tone at full blast.
While the Mini may appear entirely bereft
of external features, a series of LEDs lurks
beneath the cover, which light up when the
unit hears your call and pulse while it’s
working on a request. There’s also (as on
its big brother) an inscrutable set of touch
controls: tap the right or left-hand side of
the unit to adjust the volume, or hold down
either side to play and pause music. Once
again, the only physical control is the one
that mutes the microphone – in this case, a
On top of that, you can use IFTTT to
connect your Google Home to a wider range
of online services and Internet of Things
gadgets: the Google Home works natively
with big names such as Philips Hue and
(Google-owned) Nest, but it doesn’t have
such extensive partnerships as Amazon, so
you may have to do a little plumbing yourself.
In truth, this can be a little confusing to
set up at irst, as there’s no dedicated Google
Home channel in IFTTT – the relevant applets
are all found under the general Google
Assistant channel. It’s a similar situation
with the Google Home app. It’s nicer looking
than the Amazon Alexa app, and much
more responsive, but the sheer range of
menus and settings on offer (for both Home
and Chromecast devices) makes it rather
overwhelming and dificult to navigate.
On paper, the Google Home is a solid,
point-for-point competitor to the Echo. Yet,
we didn’t warm to it in the same way in use.
Part of that is to do with its more impersonal
SMART SPEAKERS GROUP TEST
switch hidden
round the back.
Since the Mini runs the exact same
software as the Google Home, it has all the
same clever tricks, and all the same foibles.
That includes the lack of an audio output
socket, but you can pair it with a Bluetooth
speaker if the built-in driver doesn’t satisfy.
In all, if you’re not too concerned about
audio quality – or if you have a convenient
Bluetooth device to play your music through
– the Home Mini is a ine deal, offering all
the beneits of the full-fat Google Home at a
third of the price.
$64 • www.store.google.com
character – but there’s more to it
than that. The design isn’t quite as
practical as the Echo’s. It doesn’t hear
quite as well, it doesn’t go quite as
loud, and at present there’s no stereo
option.
None of those criticisms ruins
the basic idea, and if you’re a fan
of the big G, we certainly wouldn’t
discourage you from investing
in the Google Home. It’s a very
capable device, and with Google’s
immense resources behind it it’s
surely only going to get cleverer over
time – witness the recent arrival of
Bluetooth streaming, which had
been missing at launch. Right now,
though, the Google Home feels like
it’s half a step behind the Echo – and
decidedly more expensive.
$579 • www.store.google.com
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 75
GROUP TEST SMART SPEAKERS
AMAZON ECHO SHOW
A NICE VISUAL SPIN ON THE SMART SPEAKER, BUT WE’D LIKE TO MAKE MORE OF THE SCREEN
he Echo Show features a 7in LCD
T  touchscreen, which lets Alexa play
videos as well as music. That might not
sound very useful for a living room device,
but it’s ideal for the kitchen, where you can
stick on a sitcom for company while you’re
slaving over your Quorn Bolognese. It’s not
exactly a cinematic experience, but its sharp
and colourful.
The experience isn’t perfectly slick, though.
Browsing and selecting videos involves
a degree of scrolling around with the
touchscreen, so you lose the effortlessness
of voice control. The range of content is
disappointingly narrow, too: Amazon Prime
members have the run of the Prime Video
library, but there’s no Netfli. YouTube is also
missing, since Google blocked it from Echo
devices at the end of last year.
When not streaming video, the screen
acts as an informational display, supporting
Alexa’s spoken responses with text and
images. Some third-party skills take things
further: the Allrecipes skill, for example,
AMAZON ECHO SPOT
AN ALEXA DEVICE DISGUISED AS A BEDSIDE CLOCK – IT’S A GREAT LITTLE PERSONAL COMPANION
hysically, the Echo Spot looks like a
P  bedside clock – and when dormant its
circular 480 x 480 touchscreen shows
a colourful clock face (there are 23 styles to
choose from). Like the Show, it can also cycle
through upcoming calendar entries, news
alerts and so on – although, since the screen’s
only 2.5in in diameter, it can be a little hard to
read from across the room.
The Spot isn’t exactly a small device, mind.
A sizeable bezel surrounds the display, and
the rounded casing bulges out behind it: the
black model is a bit more slimming than the
white, but whichever you choose the footprint
is slightly larger than that of an Echo Dot.
Happily, its sound quality is vastly better,
thanks to a much larger 35mm driver. There’s
zero in the way of sub-bass, but music is well
balanced, and the 66dBA maximum volume
is loud enough to sing along to while you’re
getting dressed in the morning. There are
only four microphones, rather than the Dot’s
seven, but we had no problem getting the Spot
to hear and understand us.
Functionally, the Spot is all but identical
76 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
shows step-by-step guides to
creating thousands of culinary
masterpieces. The Uber skill gives
live updates so you know how far
away your ride is.
If you have a compatible camera,
you can also tune into its feed with
a simple voice command. And the array is just as loud as an Echo
Show’s own built-in camera can be Plus, and sounds noticeably more
used for two-way video calls with expansive and warmer: while it
other Echo Show or Spot devices, or doesn’t exactly qualify as hi-i, we’d
to friends’ smartphones if they’re say it’s Amazon’s best-sounding
running the Alexa app. Echo.
Finally, when sitting idle, The Echo Show is a solid Alexa
the Show displays upcoming device all round. It’s nice to be able
appointments, news updates and so to check your calendar at a glance,
forth. It’s not very customisable – and if you fancy a bit of Parks and
annoyingly you can’t even tell it to Recreation while you’re frying
use the 24-hour clock – but overall onions, it’s perfect.
it’s a positive addition to your work
surface.
While the screen is the headline,
$320 • www.amazon.com.au/Echo
the Show’s audio hardware deserves
a mention. Its twin 50mm speaker
to the Echo Show. You can even
watch videos on its tiny screen,
should you so wish: the picture gets
letterboxed at the top and bottom,
and rounded off at the sides, but if
you like to doze off with a TV show
in the background, it’s perfectly
doable. It’s just a shame that you’re Alexa device, but there’s something
restricted to Prime Video: here’s particularly likeable about the Spot.
hoping that Amazon will sort out If the Echo Show’s sizeable screen
some additional video sources for seems to over-promise, the Spot’s
the future. dinky display sets expectations
It’s also possible to make video much more realistically. And while
calls from the Spot to other Echo sound quality isn’t exactly stellar,
users, or to other devices in your you get both a 3.5mm jack and
own home. Amazon doesn’t reveal Bluetooth to connect to an external
the resolution of the little embedded speaker – so there’s no reason why
camera, but it looks perfectly sharp you couldn’t use a Spot as your
on the receiving end. The angle isn’t primary Alexa device in a living
adjustable, though, so if you have room or study.
it on a nightstand, you might have
to slump down on the bed or your
friends and family are liable to end
$180 • www.amazon.com.au/Echo
up conversing with your crotch.
Technically it may be just another

JBL LINK 20
A VERSATILE GOOGLE HOME DEVICE WITH ARRESTING
AUDIO AND A HANDY BUILT-IN BATTERY
BL makes a whole range of Bluetooth
J  speakers, and at irst glance there doesn’t
appear to be anything particularly
special about the Link 20. Look closely at the
top, however, and you’ll spot the distinctive
multicoloured logo of the Google Assistant.
Indeed, as far as the software’s concerned,
this might as well be a regular Google Home
unit. The Link 20 integrates right into the
Google Home app, and it can do very nearly
anything Google’s own hardware can, from
music streaming to checking your calendar.
The only major feature that’s been held back
is the ability to make phone calls from the
device.
Although the Link 20 works just like a real
Google Home, it’s physically much less showy,
with push-button controls on top and four
pulsing white LEDs at the front, in place of the
Home’s swirling coloured dots. It’s probably
fair to call the design “inoffensive”.
Inside it sports a pair of 50mm drivers, just
like the Home – but JBL’s speaker has a much
KITSOUND VOICE ONE
THIS DISTINCTIVE SPEAKER HAS SOME NEAT TRICKS, BUT WE’D HOPED FOR BETTER SOUND
he Alexa-powered Voice One costs the
T  same as a regular Amazon Echo – but
with plenty of original design touches,
it’s an interestingly different proposition.
For a start, the Voice One is relatively large:
it’s taller than an Echo Plus, with a footprint
almost as big as the Apple HomePod’s. The
LED ring on the front is surrounded by a
volume dial, and flashes when you turn it.
Above it, there’s a microphone mute button
– the light ring turns red when the Voice One
isn’t listening – while below a source button
lets you switch between Alexa, Bluetooth and
3.5mm line inputs. At the bottom sits a play/
pause control, along with a KitSound logo that
pulses in time to the beat.
In Wi-Fi mode, the Voice One can do most
of the things we expect from Alexa; you can
stream music from Amazon and Spotify,
and via the KitSound app you can also
access Tidal and Napster. That points to an
inherent irritation of third-party Echo devices,
though: settings and features are inevitably
split between the oficial Alexa app and the
manufacturer’s own software.
brighter, airier tone than
Google’s. It can become a
little harsh and resonant
at high volumes, but
there’s an immediacy to
it that makes the Google
Home’s restrained
performance seem dull
by comparison. It goes
louder, too: at maximum
volume we measured
it pumping out 78dBA
– enough to properly
annoy the neighbours. Note
though that, like the Google
Home, the Link 20 has just the two
microphones, and it can struggle to
hear you in noisy environments.
The other thing that really sets
the Link 20 apart from the Google
Home is the ten-hour internal
battery. This means that, while
most smart speakers are tethered
There are also a few
notable features
missing: you can’t
make calls to other
Echo devices,
and nor can you
change the wake
word – for better
or worse, you’re
stuck with “Alexa”.
On the upside,
there’s a graphic
equaliser built into
the KitSound app,
which you don’t
get with Amazon
gear – and unusually
there’s a remote
control in the box too, which
provides a civilised alternative to
shouting at the thing, and lets you
switch input sources and mute the
microphone without leaving your
seat. Most excitingly, if you own
more than one Voice One speaker,
SMART SPEAKERS GROUP TEST
to the mains, you can yank
out the power cable and
carry the Link 20 up to the
bathroom, while your music
happily plays on. It’s also
waterproof, meaning you
don’t have to worry about
splashes from the shower.
You can even throw the
Link 20 in a bag and take it
on a picnic. The Assistant
functions need Wi-Fi,
however – and you can’t
simply use your phone as
a portable hotspot, because
you have to be on the same
network as the speaker in
order to switch its network
settings in the Home app.
You’ll either have to use a
second phone, or make do with
regular Bluetooth streaming.
Still, if the Link 20 isn’t quite the
perfect mobile music companion, it’s
certainly a more versatile speaker
than the standard Google Home.
$249 • www.jbl.com
you can set them up as a stereo pair.
This takes a bit of iddling in the
app, but it’s well worth it: instantly,
the sound gains a sense of space and
depth, and seems to come from all
around rather than emanating from
a single point. The Voice One
speakers go jolly loud, so they
really can ill a room in more than
one sense.
Sad to say, the sound quality
isn’t all that great. The bass
is quite weak and flappy, and
there’s a deinite boxiness to the
mid-range. It’s hard to say that
it’s more enjoyable overall than
Echo, which is a disappointment
considering the much bigger
enclosure. That being the case,
it’s a toss-up. The Voice One’s
remote control and stereo
option are certainly appealing
for the price, but you’ll have
to decide whether that’s worth the
trade-off of missing features and a
fragmented app experience.
$87 • www.amazon.com
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 77
GROUP TEST SMART SPEAKERS
LIBRATONE ZIPP / ZIPP MINI
THESE CHUNKY SPEAKERS WORK WITH ALEXA, BUT WON’T LISTEN TO YOUR COMMANDS
ibratone’s Zipp and Zipp Mini speakers
L  take their names from the chunky
fastener that secures their boldly
coloured fabric covers. They also sport
distinctive leather straps that encourage you
to pick them up and go: with a claimed ten-
hour battery life, these speakers don’t need
to be chained to a mains socket. Unlike JBL
and Ultimate Ears’ battery-powered speakers,
however, they’re not waterproof.
That’s not the only way in which Libratone’s
characterful speakers differ from other
contenders. Rather than being designed as
smart speakers from the beginning, they’re
regular Bluetooth speakers that have been
retroitted with updated irmware to work
with Alexa – and, sad to say, it’s not a good it.
For a start, while both Zipp units have
built-in microphones, they’re not designed
for always-on operation. When Libratone
announced the Alexa upgrade last year, the
idea was that you’d tap the panel on the top
to activate the microphone, before issuing
your command to Alexa. That’s clearly far less
SONOS ONE
THE BEST-SOUNDING ALEXA DEVICE YOU’LL FIND, BUT A FEW QUIRKS MAR THE EXPERIENCE
onos specialises in multiroom audio,
S  and the One looks and feels like
a mature bit of audio hardware. It
sounds fantastic, too: at moderate volume, the
bass is reassuringly weighty, yet wonderfully
precise. The overall tone isn’t quite as excitable
as the JBL Link 20’s, and the mid-range gets a
bit oversaturated at maximum volume – but
you’ll rarely want to turn it up that far, as the
Sonos One goes up to a deafening 84dBA.
The One also does a pretty good impression
of an Amazon Echo. You can address it as
“Alexa”, instruct it to stream music, control
smart home devices, access skills and so
on. As is usual with third-party products,
however, you can’t change the wake word, and
you can’t make calls to other people’s Echo
devices.
The Sonos One has some unique foibles.
For one, you get almost no visual indication
that Alexa is listening – in place of the Echo’s
light ring, there’s just a tiny white LED on
the top. To make up for this, the One plays
a little chime every time it hears its wake
word. Unfortunately, this almost invariably
78 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
convenient than simply being able to
call out to her from across the room.
In the event, even that capability
hasn’t materialised. It might at some
future point, but for now all you
get is a skill that lets Alexa stream
music to the Libratone speakers on
your home network. In other words,
the Zipp does technically work with
Alexa – but you’ll need a separate
Echo device to actually control it.
If you don’t mind jumping
through that hoop, the sound Indeed, taken on their own
isn’t bad at all. The Mini sounds terms, the Libratone Zipp and Zipp
admirably solid and well balanced; Mini are clever bits of kit. They’re
a hint of distortion creeps in at nowhere near as smart as their
maximum volume, but it’s unlikely rivals, though – and next to the
you would ever want to push it Amazon Echo or Google Home, the
up that high indoors. The full- price isn’t remotely competitive.
sized Zipp goes even louder, and
while the bass response can get a
Zipp $599 Zipp Mini $469
little over-enthusiastic at times it’s
• www.libratone.com
undoubtedly one of this month’s
better speakers.
interrupts you while you’re talking
and wrecks your flow – and it can’t
be disabled. The One feels slower
to respond than a real Echo too,
though that may simply be down to
the lack of visual feedback.
Another quirk is that – again, as
usual with third-party devices –
coniguration is split between the
Alexa app and Sonos’ own software.
This can be rather confusing,
because the Sonos ecosystem
doesn’t map perfectly onto the smart transformational effect, giving a real
features provided by Alexa. For sense of space and scale to what was
example, you can conigure Google already an engaging sound.
Play Music as a streaming source If you can afford it, a pair of
in the Sonos app, but you can’t use Sonos One speakers in stereo mode
Alexa to play it. provides the best musical experience
One thing the app does handle we’ve heard this month.
superbly is stereo conigurations. As a general home assistant,
There’s no messing around with however, the Sonos One isn’t quite
channel settings: as soon as a second so exceptional.
device is detected, you’re invited to
$458 • www.sonos.com
link it to the irst with a tap. As with
the KitSound Voice One, this has a
GROUP TEST SMART SPEAKERS
ULTIMATE EARS
BLAST / MEGABLAST
POOR MICROPHONES LET DOWN THESE PORTABLE ALEXA DEVICES
ltimate Ears’ Alexa-powered Blast
U  speakers have a real outdoorsy style.
Beneath their tough rubber exteriors
lurk sizeable internal batteries, lasting for 12
hours on the smaller Blast and 16 hours for the
imposing Megablast. They’re IP67-rated too,
so you don’t need to worry about dirt or water
splashes.
As usual, coniguration is split between a
dedicated Ultimate Ears app and the regular
Alexa app, but the former just handles basic
connection settings, so there’s no confusion.
And it’s delightfully easy to conigure your
phone as a portable hotspot for the Blast, so
Alexa continues to work while you’re out.
Smart features are mostly present and
correct. Predictably, there’s no voice calling,
and you can’t change the wake word from
“Alexa”, but queries and commands generally
work as you’d hope.
The physical design of the Blast is also
ZOLO HALO
A SURPRISINGLY COMPETENT BUDGET SPEAKER
THAT SOUNDS FAR BETTER THAN THE ECHO DOT
f you’re looking for a small, low-cost Alexa
I device, but can’t tolerate the hollow sound
of the Echo Dot, the Halo could be just the
thing. It has a tiny 70 x 70mm footprint, with
a low-rise design that won’t dominate your
desk, yet crams in a speaker that’s three times
the size of the Dot’s.
To be clear, we’re not talking blow-your-
socks-off hi-i here. You’re never going to get
thundering bass from a device this size, and
we measured the Halo’s maximum volume at
a fairly restrained 68dBA. Even so, it gives an
impressively full-bodied sonic performance
that’s in a different league to the Dot’s. The
low end is warm enough to ill out the sound,
while the upper frequencies never become
tinny or harsh.
Even better, it’s possible to buy a second
Halo and conigure them as a stereo pair. This
involves a bit of clunky dragging and tapping
in the Zolo app, but once that’s done you’re left
with an impressively airy sounding system –
and doubling up the number of speakers gives
the sound a bit of extra oomph as well.
80 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
oddly wayward, with the
power socket hidden under
a flap at the bottom, so the
speaker can’t be charged
while it’s standing upright.
The volume controls aren’t
brilliantly thought out, either; you
have to steady the unit with one
hand while you push the huge front-
facing buttons, or it’ll topple over.
Still, as speakers, they’re not bad.
The regular Blast has more presence
than you’d expect from its size and
overall it’s a crisper, more exciting
tone than the Amazon Echo. The
Megablast has a much solider
bottom end and a more balanced
sound all round – and it cranks up
to a suitably mega 86dBA.
We’ve one last quibble.
Purportedly, these units feature
Another
approach is to
hook up the
Halo into a
full-sized hi-i,
via the 3.5mm
output socket at
the rear. What
you can’t do,
however, is connect
wirelessly to a Bluetooth speaker:
you can use Bluetooth to play music
from your phone on the Halo, but
unlike the Echo Dot it won’t stream
in the other direction.
On the subject of missing features,
it’s hardly a shock to note that the
Halo also can’t currently make voice
calls, and that the wake word can’t
be customised. You can’t include the
Halo in one of Alexa’s multiroom
music groups either, although you
can separately group Halo devices
together in the Zolo app.
three
microphones
with noise-
cancelling
technology. In
practice, we often
found that once
we’d asked them
to start playing
music, they couldn’t always hear us
tell them to stop.
With no charging base and a
somewhat deaf ear to commands,
the Blast and Megablast can’t be
recommended as our favourite
general-purpose smart speakers.
Even so, their portability and decent
sound make them hard to dislike: if
you’re heading for the beach, there
are far worse companions to take
along.
Blast $278 Megablast $378
• www.ultimatears.com
Aside from that, though, there’s
very little you can’t do. Unlike the
Ultimate Ears speakers, the Halo
is perfectly happy to stream music
from Spotify, as well as Amazon
Music and TuneIn, and you’ll have
no problem using it to access skills,
routines and smart home controls.
It’s also pleasing to see that a
bit of thought has gone into the
physical design. The Halo might
look a little plasticky, but the LED
ring is sensibly raised up from the
top of the unit, so you can see at a
glance when the Halo is listening
or working. The microphone mute
button is nicely accessible at the
front, and while the Halo has only
two microphones, they’re sensitive
enough to pick up commands even
when there’s music playing at top
volume.
In all, the Halo is an endearing
little speaker. Its limited multiroom
capabilities are a shame, especially
since it’s the cheapest way to get the
Alexa experience in stereo.
$135 • www.zoloaudio.com
 SMART SPEAKERS GROUP TEST

VIEW FROM THE LABS

IT’S EARLY DAYS IN THE WORLD OF SMART SPEAKERS AND SOME MODELS LACK
BASIC FEATURES – BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD DELAY YOUR PURCHASE

s I’ve lamented before, friends work in a multiroom arrangement? It So if you’re waiting for a speciic feature

A  and family have more or less

stopped seeking my opinion on
which smartphone or laptop they should
buy. I can see why: the technology has
progressed to a point where the shiny
widget that catches their eye in the shop
is almost certainly good enough for their
needs – so why bother asking?
When it comes to smart speakers,
however, we’re nowhere near that point.
If you don’t know the ins and outs of the
market, it’s very possible to end up with a
device which is quite wrong for you. And
so, for the irst time in ages, friends and
colleagues are once again coming to me for
advice. Which device will work with all my
existing gear, they wonder? Which gives
me all the features I want? It’s been quite a
shot in the arm for the old ego.
Sadly, as this month’s reviews make clear,
there is no single, simple answer. Looking
for a battery-powered device which also
supports voice calling? For some reason,
there isn’t one. Will a particular speaker
depends. You can’t even take Spotify
for granted – just ask Apple, or Ultimate
Ears. It’s confusing, and frankly it’s rather
frustrating: there’s no real reason why a
software feature that’s available on one
speaker shouldn’t work on another.
All of which being the case, you might
well be thinking it’s too early to invest. Wait
a year or two and the market will surely be
a lot more mature – and a lot less risky.
But perhaps that’s not necessary. Since
these devices get most of their smarts
from the cloud, a feature that’s missing
today could easily appear tomorrow.
Voice calling, multiroom audio and online
shopping have all come to the Echo since
its original release; Google’s devices have
similarly, post-launch, gained phone-call
capabilities, EQ settings and more. My
testing for this very Labs was complicated
by the surprise arrival of a Google Home
update that added outbound Bluetooth
streaming to devices that had previously
lacked it.
to arrive on your chosen smart speaker
platform, you might as well buy the darn
thing now, and enjoy its other features
while you wait.
Of course, there is one thing that won’t
change very much, and that’s sound
quality. That’s a shame, because the truth
is that most smart speakers fall somewhere
between “meh” and “ine” on the sound
quality scale. Truthfully, I’d say only the
Apple and Sonos speakers approach what
you’d call hi-i, and even then you really
need two of them.
Even so, that doesn’t have to be a reason
for denying yourself an Amazon Echo or
a Google Home. In the long run, you’re
inevitably going to want more than one of
these devices in your home, and they don’t
all need to be top-quality music centres.
If you buy your irst smart speaker now,
you can get on with enjoying what it has to
offer; and when a better one comes along,
you can upgrade, move the original to your
kitchen and enjoy an ever-smarter home.

TEST RESULTS
MAXIMUM VOLUME (dBA, measured) CLASSICAL MUSIC (subjective scores out of 10) MODERN MUSIC (subjective scores out of 10)

Ultimate Ears
87 Apple HomePod Recommended 10 Apple HomePod Recommended 10
Blast
Ultimate Ears
Megablast 86 Sonos One 9 Sonos One 10

Amazon Echo
Sonos One 84 8 Libratone Zipp 8
Show
Amazon Echo Libratone
79 Libratone Zipp 8 8
Show Zipp Mini
Libratone Amazon Echo
Amazon Echo Labs Winner 78 8 7
Zipp Mini Show
Amazon Echo Ultimate Ears
JBL Link 20 Recommended 78 7 7
Plus Blast
Ultimate Ears 7 Ultimate Ears
Libratone Zipp 78 7
Blast Megablast
Ultimate Ears 7 Amazon Echo 6
Apple HomePod Recommended 77 Megablast Plus
Libratone 7
Zipp Mini 77 JBL Link 20 Recommended JBL Link 20 Recommended 6

7 KitSound
Google Home 74 Zolo Halo Recommended 6
Voice One
Kitsound
74 Amazon Echo Labs Winner 6 Zolo Halo Recommended 6
Voice One
Amazon Echo KitSound
Plus
72 6 Amazon Echo Labs Winner 5
Voice One
Google Home
Mini 68 Google Home 6 Google Home 5

Amazon Echo Recommended Amazon Echo

Zolo Halo Recommended 68 5 3 Recommended
Spot Spot
Amazon Recommended Google Google
Echo Spot 66 Home Mini
5 Home Mini
3

Amazon Amazon Echo Amazon Echo

Echo Dot
62 4 2
Dot Dot
0 25 50 75 100 0 2 4 6 8 10 0 2 4 6 8 10

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 81


WHERE DOES
THE WEB
GO NEXT?
THE FACEBOOK DATA SCANDAL HAS FINALLY
FORCED REGULATORS TO TAKE ACTION ON PRIVACY.
NICOLE KOBIE REVEALS WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE
FUTURE OF THE INTERNET
he future of the internet
T  is at a crossroads, with
the direction set by
regulators who are
inally giving due weight to the
importance of privacy. The most
obvious sign? That US politicians
alike are ready to slap down
Facebook in the wake of the
Cambridge Analytica scandal,
summoning CEO and founder Mark
Zuckerberg to answer questions
over the missteps made by the
world’s dominant social network.
“It’s a really big moment, a
cultural awakening about what’s
happening with our data,” said
Laura Tribe, executive director at
OpenMedia. “My biggest hope is…
that we can have a conversation
as a society about how we want
this to go. It’s about trying to build
something that’s better.”
We can’t say if Facebook will exist
in its current form in ive years –
perhaps it will be cast aside like
Myspace before it. But we do have a
sense of what regulations are likely
to be faced by internet giants, along
with the lobbyists and influencers
who will be trying to influence
governments.
Those lobbyists will include
Facebook, which is always keen to
help fund election campaigns, but
don’t ignore the noisy constituents
tired of their rights being trampled.
“No-one really knows what’s going
to happen next, but it’s up to us to
shape what it’s going to look like
– because it’s clear that something
82 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
needs to change,” said Tribe.
Here’s how regulators could alter
how businesses behave online – and
what that means for the future of
tech.
SCENARIO 1 STOP
SELLING DATA
Facebook has an extra piece of
data on us – our credit cards.
After hearing ad nauseam that the
problem isn’t Cambridge Analytica
but Facebook’s business model,
regulators ban the trade in data.
To protect their bottom lines,
Facebook, Twitter and Google all
start charging. The result? Plenty of
us opt out, making social media a
niche hobby.
Tribe isn’t convinced this
scenario is very likely, noting that
Zuckerberg has said there will
always be a free version of Facebook
– but if it did, expect user numbers
to fall off. “Right now, Facebook’s
fundamental model is based on
people sharing their data,” she
said. “If Twitter started charging
$2 per month for an account, what
would that do? Would that change
the amount of trolls and bots that
are on there? Would that change
the amount of people just on
there watching? Is it really worth
my money to invest in trolling?”
Besides, we shouldn’t have to pay
for privacy, she adds.
Matt Stoller, fellow at the Open
Markets Institute, argues it’s not us
that will pay, but Facebook. “One
of the really important changes
that’s going to happen is you’re going to see a
redirection of ad revenue from Facebook and
Google back into the rest of the ad inance
space,” he said. “These guys are monopolists,
and they have been capturing revenue that
is not rightfully theirs… that’s why Facebook
has $40 million of revenue and 50% margins,
because stealing is a great business model.”
And antitrust regulators pushing revenue
back to traditional ad companies is potentially
very good news for struggling newspapers
and the like.
SCENARIO 2 COPY GDPR
Facebook wants to roll out a new facial-
recognition feature – but before hoovering
up user data to do so, it asks permission.
Users ignore the pop-up and, instead of
capturing every detail of our faces and
accidentally leaking the data to governments,
Facebook isn’t allowed to turn our lives into
a surveillance hell hole. A future that isn’t
dystopian – now that’s novel.
Just as American regulators are struggling
with what to do about privacy online, their
European counterparts are readying for their
own protective measures to come into play –
the EU General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR) is nothing if not timely. One easy way
for American politicians to catch up to the
Facebook scandal would be to copy over the
GDPR rules. This wouldn’t be very onerous
for the companies in question, as Facebook
and Google need to meet the laws for us
Europeans anyway, but it would have the
beneit of kickstarting privacy protections
across the pond.
“I think it would be a great start, as we’ve
seen legislation in the US about ISPs being
able to sell your data – here, we’re going in
the wrong direction,” Tribe said. “Having
something like GDPR or any strong privacy
rules implemented with enforcement would
be a great start.” However, it would only be
the start: Facebook is still allowed to operate
in Europe, after all, so it’s still making money
out of our data.
Stoller says it’s worth waiting to see how
successful GDPR is in Europe before dragging
it into the US. “It’s hard to get right the irst
time,” he said. “But I’m glad they’re doing it,
and if I had to pick, implement it [in the US]
or not, I’d probably say implement it.” That
would mean the US would have to admit that
Europe and its bureaucracy did something
right, so don’t hold your breath.
SCENARIO 3 BREAK
UP THE MONOPOLY
Facebook is still around, but it’s only a social
network. The advertising business, Instagram
 FUTURES

and WhatsApp have all been spun out
into independent companies. Google’s
reorganisation into Alphabet turns out to be
prescient: Google is broken up into Search,
Gmail and Ads, while its “moonshots” are
dumped into a loss-making company, ending
its expensive “balloon internet” and other
creative projects.
Senator Lindsey Graham suggested to
Zuckerberg at the hearing that Facebook is
a monopoly: “If I’m upset with Facebook,
what’s the equivalent product that I can
go sign up for?” They go to rivals such as
Twitter and Snapchat, but frequently also
to Instagram and WhatsApp – which are
owned by Facebook. Is it time to break up
Zuckerberg’s behemoth?
“First of all, you can just separate out
Instagram and WhatsApp and the Facebook
network, that’s the easy part,” said Stoller.
“It wouldn’t take care of all the problems,
but it would immediately reduce Facebook’s
leverage over ad buyers, because now you’d
have three places to buy ads instead of just
one.”
Stoller also suggests banning any more
acquisitions, saying there’s only so much
consolidation they should be allowed. “You
could do it by size threshold, so if you’re
over a hundred million dollars in market
cap, you can’t buy anyone,” he said. “But
you could also just take a much more ethical
view towards those mergers and acquisitions
and then companies like Facebook which
has signiicant track records of violating
consent… you could just say: ‘you broke your
agreement, so no more acquisitions for you’.”
have any tech panacea.”
That said, she points to the
success of messaging encryption,
which is enabled by default on
platforms such as Facebook-
owned WhatsApp but not its own
Messenger. Make it easy, make it the
“As much as we’re scared of
“As
Facebook and what it’s doing
with our information, it can’t
put me in jail or deny me at a
border crossing”
default, and people will use it, Tribe
believes.
Stoller suggests interoperability
is the answer, “forcing Facebook to
open its network so that you could
communicate with your friends
and family who are on Facebook…
even if you weren’t on Facebook.”
The idea is similar to how Trillian
opened up the desktop messenger
market, he noted.
“If they did that then all of
a sudden you’d have a lot of
competition in that market, kind of
opening up the social grid.”
SCENARIO 5
NATIONALISE
THE TECH GIANTS
Facebook and Google are declared
necessary assets to the US
government and nationalised.
Travellers crossing the border
into the US are no longer required
to hand over their social media
logins, as the government already
has them. We’re all on Facebook,
whether we want to be or not, with
digital citizen cards linked to our
proiles, and we’re all suddenly
friends with Trump.
“To me it just puts shivers up my
spine that we would take all of this
information... and hand it over to
the government,” said Tribe. “The
idea they could take it over and
buy it is really scary.”
She added: “We want a space
that is not the government. As
much as we’re scared of Facebook
and what it’s doing with our
information, Facebook can’t
put me in jail or deny me at a
border crossing. Information is
power, and Facebook has a lot
of power, but not as much as the
government.”

SCENARIO 4 TECH
INTERVENTIONS
Facebook no longer holds our data: it’s stored
on a blockchain that it has no direct access
to (just roll with it, okay?). Messages are all
encrypted by default and all social media is
interoperable, making it possible to interact
with friends and family without having to
join every platform.
The blockchain is the tech buzzword
du jour, so it’s no wonder plenty are
spitting it in social media’s direction.
Could it help? “This isn’t about one
tech and one platform, it’s about the
structures we’ve put in place and
our philosophy,” said Tribe. “Will
technology like blockchain save
us? No, the tools we’re using are
based on surveillance culture, so
unless it’s an actual pushback to
surveillance culture… unless we
actually shift the culture itself I
think it’s going to be really hard to

83
BETTER VISION: HOW SELF-
DRIVING CARS SEE IN THE DARK
THE UBER DRIVERLESS CAR FATALITY RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW WELL SENSORS CAN “SEE”
he video of the Uber driverless
T  car’s fatal crash is disturbing. The
Arizona road is unnaturally dark,
with the car’s headlights picking up
the pedestrian and her bike fewer than two
seconds before the crash. From another camera
angle, the Uber safety driver is looking down,
glancing up in horror as the car strikes and
kills the woman, Elaine Herzberg.
The March incident raises a host
of questions, with investigations underway by
the local Tempe, Arizona police department as
well as Uber, which has pulled its driverless
test cars from US roads. “The video from
the Uber crash seems to point to a clear
failure of the technology,” said Jack Stilgoe,
senior lecturer at University College London,
although he adds it’s unclear whether
the problem was with the sensors or the
algorithms interpreting their data. “The
car’s lidar and radar sensors should have
detected the pedestrian, as they can see in the
dark. This suggests that the car decided the
pedestrian was a ‘false positive’.”
Reports from Reuters revealed that, in 2016,
Uber reduced its use of key vision system
lidar to a single sensor versus the ive or six
that rivals such as Waymo and GM use, with
lidar-maker Velodyne saying that could leave
a 3m blind spot around the car. At the time
of publishing, Uber hadn’t released a report
into the incident, but stressed “safety is our
primary concern”.
HOW CARS “SEE”
Driverless cars use a range of technologies
to see: cameras, with the images interpreted
by algorithms; lidar, the acronym for “light
detection and ranging”, which pulses
light to spot objects; and radar, which uses
radio waves to do the same. “The different
sensor types have different strengths and
weaknesses,” explained Jim Hutchinson,
CEO of Fusion Processing, an automated car
software developer. “Generally it is better to
combine multiple sensor types to get the best
of all worlds.”
Michael Milford, professor in computer
science at the Queensland University of
Technology and chief investigator at the
Australian Centre for Robotic Vision, says
84 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
In March, Elaine Herzberg was killed when a
driverless Uber SUV failed to notice her crossing
the road
that lidar is the “crown jewel” of
self-driving cars. “They see the exact
range to every object around the car
up to a range of 10m or more,” he
told PC & Tech Authority. Velodyne’s
lidar uses 128 beams of lasers to
see, with the company saying it can
discern a “butterfly from a broken
tire at 70mph”.
Radar, meanwhile, is largely used
in “collision avoidance”, in particular
in poor weather conditions such as
fog, which can trip up lidar. And
then there are cameras, which have
the “richest” view of the world,
Milford says, illing in detail that
helps the systems better understand
what humans are doing.
While human vision is
remarkable, this mix of technology
should let cars see more than any
one driver. “Humans
Velodyne’s roof-mounted
rely almost exclusively lidar sensor uses 128 laser
on optical sensors — beams to pinpoint potential
our eyes — and our hazards
brains are exceptionally
good at processing this
information, although
human reaction speed is
slow,” Hutchinson said. “In
poor visibility, such as fog
or direct sunlight, humans’
ability to see is reduced,
whereas a system that also
combines radar for example
will be less affected.”
Lidar tends to be mounted on the
roof of cars, giving it a 360-degree
view, and it doesn’t require light to
spot an object. “High-end cameras
can now see better in low light than
humans, and they’re starting to be
competitive in terms of dynamic
range – that is, being able to deal
with scenes that are both very bright
(incoming headlights) and very dark
[such as a] night road with no other
illumination,” Milford said.
GETTING BETTER
Even though such computer vision
systems clearly need more work,
they are improving — and the same
can’t be said about us. “Human
drivers are not getting better at a
rapid rate,” noted Milford.
“Technology has the potential to
keep improving rapidly still, but it’s
no certainty that it will get all the
way to a fully acceptable solution,”
he said. If computer vision
is never perfected, Milford
notes that self-driving car
safety could be improved
by “augmenting the
infrastructure” where
such cars will be used
— perhaps banning
pedestrians from crossing
at certain points — or
lowering speeds to reduce
the danger of accidents.
Of course, that’s true for
human-driven cars, too.
 FUTURES

Q&A BTEACHING ROBOT SWARMS

RESILIENCE THROUGH LIMPING
RESEARCHERS ARE TEACHING ROBOTS TO “EVOLVE” ON THE GO SO THEY CAN KEEP
WORKING DESPITE INJURIES, LETTING THEM LEAP FROM THE LAB TO THE REAL WORLD.

warms of drones could soon about how you could apply them to How long until robot swarms

S  take to the air to check farmers’

ields or be sent swimming in
groups to monitor pollution, while
robots already work together in distribution
warehouses. But what happens if one gets
hurt, breaking a rotor or arm?
Dr Danesh Tarapore has been training
robots to be more resilient, learning to
compensate for faults or damage. Picture a
dog with only three legs – it runs to chase
after a thrown ball just ine, said Tarapore.
Robots sent out in the real world need to learn
to do the same. Here’s how Dr Tarapore is
teaching broken robots new tricks.
Where did the idea come from?
When I was a postdoc researcher in Paris
at the Pierre and Marie Curie University, [I
was investigating how to] get robots to adapt
quickly from damage. We’d been looking
at six-legged robots, and it’s quite common
when these robots are operating in the ield
that they’re going to sustain some damage.
Maybe a leg snaps off, or you lose the power
connection. We were looking at machine
learning algorithms, and we came up with
a way to do this so we could get robots that
could adapt in two minutes or so to these
damages.
a swarm. When I say a swarm, I’m
talking about a pretty large number
of robots that work together in a
coordinated fashion, that do lots
of different tasks. One could be
monitoring temperature of a leak,
for example, looking for pollutants,
or precision agriculture – depending
on the kind of weed that is growing,
as you want to have the right kind of
pesticide. All of those applications
are quite interesting.
The current swarms that we have
are quite stuck in the laboratory and
so we want to use these algorithms
to push these robot swarms out of
the lab and into the real world. If
you have a lab environment, you
can control what the robots are
interacting with, the obstacles in
the robots’ way. Once you move
out of this lab, into the real world,
everything changes… that’s why
you need to have these rapid
adaptation algorithms.
Robots already work well in controlled
conditions such as factories, but must
learn to adapt to challenging environs
can learn to respond?
We need to develop a good
simulator for these robots, because
we don’t have existing simulators
which are good enough and which
are open-source… and then look
into reformulating these adaptation
algorithms so that we can work with
the swarms.
The ield is moving quite fast,
but still there are fundamental
problems that need to be solved.
In very controlled environments,
you can get things working – for
example, you have Amazon’s
warehouse management system,
which has teams of robots working
collectively to process orders…
but that’s still a very controlled
environment.
Robots operating in the real
world, that’s going to take some
time. That requires solving these
fundamental problems of rapid
adaptation. That’s probably going
to take about ive years or so, [as] a
rough estimate.

How do the algorithms work?

If a dog loses a leg, it’s still really good at
running around in the park… when you get
injured, you have this map of different ways
in which you can move. It may not always
be a regular walking gait, but it could be like
hopping or skipping. For example, if you’re
in a forest and you sprain your ankle, you
would probably try out different ways of
moving around until you ind some kind of
limping gait that causes you the least amount
of discomfort. That’s a good way to explain
this, taking the inspiration from biology and
applying it to an artiicial setting.

And now the idea is to apply those

algorithms to groups of robots?
The project that I proposed was to take these
algorithms for rapid adaptation and think

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 85


BATTLETECH
STOMP YOUR WAY TO VICTORY – IF THE BUGS DON’T STOMP YOU FIRST
do not want to be writing this review. I
I would much rather be playing Battletech,
Harebrained Scheme’s tactical break into the
more than 30-year old universe of the same
name, a game about giant walking mecha
striding about the battleield causing glorious
mayhem in a universe that is as rich as it is
far-fetched.
And I would be playing it now, and far
happier to be writing this review, but to date I
have tested Battletech on three different PCs,
and the damn thing just won’t run – and not in
any comprehensively familiar pattern, either.
My home PC crashes before launching the
tutorial. My work PC managed the game for
a few days, before it too mysteriously started
refusing to launch, and a borrowed gaming
laptop simply crashes out before the game
even launches. With each crash a window pops
up asking you to post your bug reports on the
oficial bug-reporting forum…
There are currently 44 pages of bug
reports, often with more bug reports nested
in each top-level report. It is remarkably
disheartening, because what I have seen of
the game makes me think it should rate – and
among those who can play it, it certainly will –
86 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
as one of the best games of the year.
For a game that’s about robots the
size of buildings smashing other
robots to pieces – an idea that makes
no damn sense when you think
about real military vehicles, but is
cool as heck – the game delivers
a strong and emotional start to its
campaign. In fact, it reminded me
a lot of the start of Dragon Age:
Origins. Three simple choices do a
lot of heavy lifting – they mark out
where you come from, why you’re
a Mechwarrior, and what kind of
ighting you’ve taken part in, while
also speccing out your starting skills.
These decisions are written into the
main story structure, too, and as you
zoom about the galaxy picking up
contracts and trying to keep your
mercenary company afloat, they’ll
often come back to haunt you.
But as rich as the game’s story
is, the game’s got a lot going for it.
Initiative cleverly ties into how light
or heavy each mech is, and the game
makes it very easy to keep your
lance of up to four mechs under
control. Combat can be as brutal
or precise as you want, especially
once you start equipping mechs to
match your play style. Whether you
like standing back and sniping with
PPCs or rushing into action with
assault mechs, or any other tactic –
and game’s certainly deep enough
to warrant a lot of experimentation
- combat is deeply satisfying.
But the fact remains: the game is
simply too buggy for a deinitive
review, for me, at this time. So take
this 3/5 score as an as-it-stands
judgement. It’s deinitely worth
waiting for a patch, but for now, I
have more stable games that could
use the hard drive space. And that
really hurts to say.
DAVID HOLLINGWORTH
KEY SPECS
Genre: Turn-based strategy • Developer:
Harebrained Schemes • Publisher: Paradox
Interactive • Platform: PC
http://battletechgame.com

FROSTPUNK
CITY BUILDING WITH AN ICE-COLD HEART
1 bit Studios, the same dev behind This
1  War of Mine, is at it again with Frostpunk.
Kinda. While both simulators, This War of
Mine has a micro focus on its cast of characters
and Frostpunk takes more of a macro
approach. The setup is simple enough: the
world has frozen over in an alternative history
and it’s up to you to keep your people alive.
Things start out chilled enough, but you’ll
soon be met by threats that range from
predictable to unexpected. There are times
when past decisions came back to bite me in
the arse, but by midgame, I was conidently
able to roll with the punches. Admittedly, this
was after a few false starts. Part of the early
tension is about managing the unknown, so
while it’s worth restarting once you wrap
your head around the early build order, it’s ill-
advised once you get deeper into proceedings.
There are some relatively straightforward
things to learn but, ultimately, you’ll be aiming
to keep discontent low and hope high. During
early game, engagement is high because
the path to best managing these things isn’t
immediately clear. Part of that early game
is also microing the limited workers and
engineers between resource gathering and the
types of tasks that help to bolster hope and
bash discontent - sometimes literally.
As you start unlocking technologies and
signing new laws, though, the path becomes
a whole lot clearer. While still paranoid and
regularly saving during midgame, I started to
pave a path towards a self-reliant simulation.
By the time I crept closer to endgame,
Frostpunk became easier rather than harder.
Sure, the temperature continued
to drop, but my savvy generator
upgrades made short work of that.
When endgame arrived, though,
there’s an event that creates a
fantastic sense of momentum until
Frostpunk’s somewhat abrupt
ending. That fantastic tension
returned, and I was forced to deal
with the reality that I might not be
able to achieve every essential item
on the new to-do list before that
ending swept in. I was fully engaged
again.
That said, more concerning
GAMES REVIEWS
was the lack of connection to
my populace. In late midgame,
when I was cruising on autopilot,
I also discovered that the game
throws arbitrary debuffs at you.
For instance, it doesn’t make sense
that discontent is rising because of
apparently sick people, when I have
empty beds in my health facilities.
I irst noticed I wasn’t connecting
with the human element of the
game when I would freely march
wasteland inhabitants back to my
city without a guide, knowing full
well that some would die.
That way, I reasoned, at least I
wouldn’t have to build more beds.
While I can acknowledge that
these kinds of decisions are part
of the game anyway, the lack of
emotional connection to them, and
the absence of discontent/hope
consequences for these kinds of
decisions lessened the oomph of
these regularly occurring moments.
There are some clear missed
opportunities with Frostpunk,
especially in the lack of meaningful
replayability.
Despite my lack of an emotional
connection with the population—
which is clearly supposed to be a big
part of the game—I was still warmed
by Frostpunk’s simulation element,
even if there’s only a handful of
hours in the main campaign (and
very little reason to replay).
NATHAN LAWRENCE
KEY SPECS
Genre: City-building survival • Developer: 11
Bit Studios • Publisher: 11 Bit Studios •
Platform: PC
www.frostpunkgame.com
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 87
WARHAMMER VERMINTIDE 2
THE SKAVEN RETURN, AND THEY’VE BROUGHT FRIENDS... AND BUGS

atshark pretty much came out of more detailed with game modes the game’s quite adept at offering a

F  nowhere a couple of years ago with

what is arguably one of the greatest PC
games ever developed. It also had one of the
and dificulty, and as other players
join your session, you pass through
the mystical Bridge of Shadows
lot of replay value.
Each match offers waves of
villains, singular bosses, and every
silliest names when it came to overblown to wherever the next ight is. This combination in between. Watching
pomposity. could be in a forest of towering a horde of Skaven pour out of a
Warhammer: The End Times: Vermintide. trees and choked ravines, the sewer or over rooftops, or a mob of
It was a tie-in to the End Times event that undersewers of Helmgart, or in its chaos foot soldiers storming up a
saw the Warhammer tabletop game morph ields and streets. The variation in hill, provides a singular thrill, and
fatally into Age of Sigmar, and a damn ine setting and terrain keeps the game a constant sense of barely hanging
take on gameplay pioneered by Left 4 Dead. fresh, and with only four slots for on. Every one of the ive characters
Four adventurers, hordes of the Skaven ive different adventurer classes, has both ranged and melee modes,
rat-men, and lush, challenging levels to
negotiate from point A to point Z.
Vermintide II - the Warhammer moniker
is still there, but the End Times have now
pretty much come and gone (look, the
Warhammer timeline was always pretty
damn fluid, but over the last ten years
it’s gotten downright sloppy), but the
adventurers remains, and now there’s a
whole new blasted city to ight over, in, and
through.
In a lot of ways, the heart of the game
hasn’t changed at all. Before every session
you start in your hidden keep, where you can
indulge in a bit of light crafting, play around
with weapons and gear, and queue up for
a ight. You can seek a Quickmatch, or get

88 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU

and watching your supply of arrows - yes,
I always play the elf, what of it? - run out
faster than the bodies you’re trying to shoot
down is pretty epic. Then you just draw your
sword - or spear, or daggers, or... - and wade
on in.
Each character now also has a special
ultimate style ability, but there pleasantly
underpowered compared to games like
Overwatch. They’re still useful, but they’re
many moments of sheer, over-
not game-winners.
There are also more ways to customise
your character than before. There’s more
equipment to fuss over, and each character
now has three archetypes they can further
specialise in, each with their own special
ability and cosmetic look. And on top of that,
there are talents to invest in and unlock as
you level up.
All in all it’s a richer, deeper experience.
But, then again, that pretty much describes
the bugs, too.
Fat Shark is a small development outit,
and while they’re very good at what they
do, Vermintide 2 feels a much less polished
product than its predecessor. Connection
issues are always going to be present in a
game that’s built around a host/client model,
but in this game it seems particularly fault-
prone. If the host drops, it’s impossible to
switch to a new one, so disconnects are fatal.
And I’ve been getting a lot of disconnects.
“The game still offers just as
awed and joyful panic”
On top of that, the various bosses
in the game - giant skaven, chaos
spawn, trolls, and all manner
of large beasties bestowed with
a huge supply of hitpoints - are
ludicrously hard to take down.
It’s doable, but the effort seems
massively out of proportion - it’s
like they exist only to make sure
you run through every potion and
explosive you have, so the next
normal ight is that much harder.
Just hammering away at these
monsters for minutes on end is
kinda boring, and if you have even
just one bot in your team, it’s nigh
impossible – end up with all bots
(which is all too regular) and you
may as well quit right now and just
play something else.
GAMES REVIEW
On top of that, the complex
terrain these ights can happen in
further adds to the frustration, as
you get stuck on a slim vertex of
architecture and pound to death
by a character animation that’s
phasing in and out of the game.
Two cases in point really mark
just how poor this part of the game
can be: an ambush on a farmyard
where I spent more time stuck in
a corner getting whaled on by a
giant thing while a slew of players
logged on, saw the dire situation,
and just logged out again; and one
where the giant monster thing
attacked my party in a sewer, so
the entire ight was just constantly
getting knocked from one level to
another, and then struggling to the
one ladder leading between upper
walkway and shit-illed cesspit. It’s
just… not fun.
The game still offers just as
many moments of sheer, over-awed
and joyful panic, but the ‘just one
more game’ draw of the original is
tempered by the fact that the next
game could harsh your entire buzz.
I’ve no doubt that Fat Shark will
overcome these issues, but for
now... I think I’ve made my last
effort to save Helmgart.
DAVID HOLLINGWORTH
KEY SPECS
Genre: First-person action • Developer: Fat
Shark • Publisher: Fat Shark • Platform: PC,
XONE, PS4
www.vermintide.com
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 89
THE A-LIST THE BEST PRODUCTS ON THE
MARKET, AS PICKED BY OUR EDITORS

Dell’s new XPS 13 (review page 53) replaces last year’s Dell XPS 13 for our best premium laptop. This
machine is a masterpiece and is the start of the laptop art. Apple’s new iPad (review page 58) has also
demoted the iPad Pro and is our new most-loved tablet, while the iPad Pro is still one of our recommended
alternatives. Also new, D-Link’s Covr mesh system replaces Google Wifi.

PREMIUM LAPTOPS
DELL XPS 13 9370 ALTERNATIVES
Ultraportable
MICROSOFT LENOVO YOGA 920 HP SPECTRE 13
SURFACE BOOK 2 An ultra-thin convertible The best laptop on
This 2018 update to the all-dominant Dell A unique and versatile from Lenovo that not the market for anyone
XPS 13 keeps tweaks to the minimum: laptop with a screen that only looks great, and wanting uncompromised
slimmer bezels, eighth-generation detaches to become a has supreme power, but performance, extreme
Intel Core processors and tablet. lasted for over 12 hours in portability and
the promise of even our battery tests. something other than a
longer battery life are the grey rectangle.
key benefits. Just note that Dell has
embraced USB-C ports at the expense of
the old-fashioned Type-A.

EVERYDAY LAPTOPS
ASUS ZENBOOK ALTERNATIVES
UX310UA
Great quality on ACER HP CHROMEBOOK ASUS ZENBOOK
a budget CHROMEBOOK R13 13 G1 UX330UA
This may seem A stylish and high- If you need a higher spec
It’s a basic Core i3-powered system expensive, but you’re quality laptop, but than the UX310UA, the
with 4GB of RAM. We love getting a top-notch with Chrome OS, not UX330UA doubles the
the 13.3in 1,920 x 1,080 spec: 13.3in 1,920 x 1,080 Windows. It’s fast, has RAM and SSD size, and
screen as much as ever, and the screen, 64GB of storage all-day battery life and boosts the pixels to
ZenBook is super-stylish, too. Its only real and 4GB of RAM in a slim won’t look out of place in 3,200 x 1,800.
negative is the 128GB SSD. chassis. a boardroom.

TABLETS
APPLE IPAD ALTERNATIVES
9.7in tablet
APPLE IPAD PRO MICROSOFT SAMSUNG
While we criticise Apple – and quite 10.5 SURFACE PRO GALAXY TAB S3
rightly – for its failure to deliver a With the Pencil and (2017) Stunningly expensive,
new design on this thick-bezelled Smart Keyboard, the Pro If you’re after note- but the brilliant S Pen,
basic iPad, we can’t quibble about is pricey but – for mobile taking skills when you super-slim design and
its value for money. With support workers – it’s definitely want them, and a laptop all-round quality make
for the Pencil, it’s now also a viable worth it. when you don’t, then this this our top Android
alternative to the iPad Pro. is a great choice. choice.

90 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
 A-LIST

SMARTPHONES
SAMSUNG GALAXY S8 ALTERNATIVES
Android, sexy piece of kit
32GB GOOGLE PIXEL 2 ONEPLUS 5 APPLE
The Pixel 2 XL proved a OnePlus crams in top- IPHONE 7
The Samsung ads that claim the S8 reinvents the phone disappointment, but not end performance and Not a world-beater, but
may be a little over the top, but it has created something so the Pixel 2: this built battery life, plus a great water-resistance, superb
beautiful. With the screen spreading across almost every on all the best aspects of dual-lens camera, at design and numerous
surface, including the left and right edges, it’s stunning the Pixel – with a better a price that undercuts tweaks add up to a great
to behold. The price is equally stunning, but in return you camera. rivals. phone.
get an excellent camera, great battery life and chart-
topping speed.

EVERYDAY MONITORS
EIZO FLEXSCAN EV2 ALTERNATIVES
1080p display
SAMSUNG C34F791
A great-value 24in IPS display that It may seem expensive, but this is a
offers more colour-accurate images top-quality 34in 3,440 x 1,440 curved
than you’ve any right to expect at monitor. At 1500R, it’s very nearly the
this price – and a reassuring five-year same curvature as the human eye,
warranty too. which justifies the term “immersive”
whether you’re playing games or
working.
PHILIPS 276E7
The obvious sacrifice you make for a
27in IPS panel at this price is resolution
– it’s 1,920 x 1,080 – but it offers good
all-round image quality and looks
attractive on the desk thanks to a
slimline design, but it’s the price that
makes this one a real champ.

PROFESSIONAL MONITORS
EIZO ALTERNATIVES
COLOREDGE CG277
Professional monitor DELL ULTRASHARP UP2716D
This 27in screen can’t match the
Eizo CG277 for outright quality, but
Spectacular image quality; stunning compared to most screens it offers
colour accuracy; amazing flexibility. superb colour accuracy – especially
Just three reasons the ColorEdge for the price. It supports hardware
CG777 won our Labs dedicated to calibration, has ultra-thin bezels and is
monitors for professionals. packed with connectivity. And you can
buy almost three to each CG277.
NEC MULTISYNC EX341R
This 34in display is the strongest
argument yet for curved technology,
making it easy to replace dual- or even
triple-monitor setups with a 3,440
x 1,440 resolution. It’s expensive but
produces a great-quality image that
you – or your employees – will love.

WIRELESS NETWORKING
D-LINK COVR ALTERNATIVES
Mesh networking
SYNOLOGY RT2600AC TP-LINK ARCHER VR2800
The Google nodes’ Rock solid performance and just so A terrific value router, able to beam a
appearance may appeal easy to set up. The Synology RT2600ac powerful signal throughout a medium-
more to some but the also benefits from the famously sized home. Add strong parental
D-Link is significantly faster. intuitive and nice to use interface the controls and two handy USB 3 ports,
As such, it’s our choice for company uses for its NAS products. and it’s our top choice for people who
adding mesh Wi-Fi to your Perfect for medium-sized homes. don’t want to go the mesh route.
home.

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 91

A-LIST
HOME OFFICE PRINTERS
BROTHER ALTERNATIVES
MFC-J5330DW
All-in-one inkjet EPSON WORKFORCE PRO
WF-5690DWF
A high-quality and versatile printer – it A thoroughbred office printer, with
can even print in A3 – with a tempting beige boxy looks to match, the
price, and it won’t cost the earth to run. WF-5690DWF hit speeds of 11.8ppm for
Provided you have space for it, it’s a great black-and-white prints and 8.5ppm for
choice for home and small office use. colour, but it’s running costs and print
quality where it excels.
NAS
SYNOLOGY DS918+ ALTERNATIVES
4-bay NAS
QNAP TS-453BE-4G
While all Synology’s NAS drives share the Qnap markets the TS-453Be at
same great OS, with all the a endant apps, businesses rather than home
the DS918+ stole top spot in our Labs due to users – although, in our opinion, it’s
its horsepower, the four available drives and equally at home in both situations.
the sheer number of roles it can perform. It’s straightforward to use and a
very solid performer, as well as
beingextremely versatile.
SECURITY SOFTWARE
BITDEFENDER INTERNET ALTERNATIVES
SECURITY 2018
AVAST FREE ANTIVIRUS
We recommend dumping Windows
A stellar selection of extras, including ransomware protection, along with rock-solid Defender, but if you don’t want to spend
antivirus protection, makes this our top choice for 2018. a penny then Avast’s superb protection
makes it the best choice. Just ignore the
inevitable, relentless upsell.
PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE
MICROSOFT OFFICE 2016 ALTERNATIVES
LIBREOFFICE 5
We’ll be honest: there’s very little here for anyone upgrading from Office The interface looks a little dated, and
2013. However, this is still the best office suite for professionals. the lack of collaboration features is a
shame. But interoperability with Word
and Excel is better than ever, making
this a fine upgrade.
CREATIVITY SOFTWARE
ADOBE CREATIVE CLOUD 2017 ALTERNATIVES
The best! Complete plan, $44/month
SERIF AFFINITY PHOTO
Adobe entrenches its position as an indispensable resource for creative Don’t be fooled by the low price: this is
professionals, with useful upgrades to the core print-orientated apps such as a serious rival to Adobe Photoshop in
Photoshop, and exciting new additions for digital designers too. terms of features, even if it does require
a hefty system to make it fly. $80.
92 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
EPSON ECOTANK ET-4750
If you do lots of printing then this
EcoTank is almost certainly going
to save you money, with enough ink
supplied to last 14,000 black pages
and 11,200 in colour.
WD MY CLOUD EX4100
If you’re looking for a solid, speedy
NAS – particularly for a small office
– then take note of the affordable
WD My Cloud EX4100. Despite that
reasonable price, it includes four
bays,and its mid-range specification
can handle office duties well.
KASPERSKY INTERNET
SECURITY 2018
The best choice for power users, with
little different from last year’s but with
so many features already, that’s fine.
SCRIVENER
A brilliant package for serious writers:
not only a word processor, but a tool
that helps you organise your ideas and
manage the process of composition
from start to finish.
STEINBERG CUBASE PRO 9
A big bump in performance and
a handful of UI improvements keep
Cubase at the top of the audio-
production tree. A worthwhile upgrade
(note we reviewed v8). $149.
 www.aten.com

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KITLOG BEAUTIFUL BUILDS BALANCING PERFORMANCE WITH VALUE

MINI BUDGET
For lounge room gaming and streaming The perfect entry-level gaming PC
CPU + COOLING CPU + COOLING
Intel Core i5 7500 Intel Core i5 7500
w/ stock cooler w/ stock cooler
$259 $259
intel.com intel.com

MOBO MOBO
ASRock Z270M-ITX/AC ASRock B250 Gaming
Motherboard K4 Motherboard
$179 $145
asrock.com.au asrock.com.au

GPU GPU
Asus DUAL- MSI GTX 1060 Aero ITX
RX480-4G 6G OC
$338 $429
asus.com.au msi.com

MEMORY MEMORY
16GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance G.Skill Ripjaws 4 DDR4
LPX Low Profile 2400MHz 16GB Kit 2x 8GB
$185 $135
corsair.com/en-au gskill.com

STORAGE STORAGE
Crucial MX500 SSD +2TB HDD 2TB HDD
(any) (any)
$389 + $50 $50
crucial.com/au www.staticice.com.au

CASE CASE
Fractal Design Define Corsair Carbide SPEC-02
S Nano Mid Tower Gaming Case
$125 $85
fractal-design.com corsair.com/en-au

PSU PSU
SilverStone SFX Gold SilverStone Strider
500W SX500-LG Essential 500W
$129 ST50F-ESB $55
Silverstone.com Silverstone.com

SOUND SOUND
Your sound Cougar
system Phontum
What you paid $69
for it cougargaming.com

DISPLAY DISPLAY
Your AOC
TV e2450Swh
What you paid for it $158
aocmonitorap.com/anz

KEYBOARD KEYBOARD
Roccat Tesoro
Sova Tizona G2N
$299 $55
www.roccat.org tesorotec.com

MOUSE MOUSE
Roccat Cooler Master MM530
Kone EMP $59
$99 coolermaster.com
www.roccat.org

TOTAL: $2,044 TOTAL: $1,499

94 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
 KITLOG

The key phrase below, as we describe the Performance PC is ‘without breaking the bank’. So as not to break said bank we’re not adding
in the Samsung 970 Pro SSD... yet. There’s a lot of activity and price cutting going on with M.2 NVMe SSDs right now. Samsung 960
Evo drives can be had for cheaper than the RRP listed below so we’re sticking with that recommendation for this month.

PERFORMANCE THE BEAST

Most bells and whistles, without breaking the bank When overkill is barely enough...
CPU + COOLING CPU + COOLING
Intel Core i7 8700K with i9-7900X +
Noctua NH-D15 CPU Cooler Corsair H105
$569 + $119 $1,299 + $145
intel.com coolermaster.com

MOBO MOBO
MSI Z370 Gaming Pro MSI X299 Carbon
Carbon AC Motherboard Pro Gaming AC
$319 $549
msi.com msi.com

GPU VIDEO
Galax GTX 1080 EXOC 8GB Aorus GeForce GTX
$689 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition 11G
galax.com
$1,229
gigabyte.com.au

MEMORY MEMORY
G.Skill RIPJAWS 4 32GB 4x8GB G.Skill Trident Z RGB quad-
KIT 4X8GB channel 3466MHz DDR4
$289 $819
gskill.com gskill.com

STORAGE STORAGE
2TB HDD (any) + SAMSUNG 500GB M.2 2 x Intel Optane 900P 480GB +
NVMe SSD 960 EVO Seagate Barracuda Pro 10TB
$415 $1,878 + $649
samsung.com/au intel.com

CASE CASE
Fractal Define R6 CoolerMaster Cosmos II 25th
$209 fractal-design.com Anniversary Edition
$469
coolermaster.com

PSU PSU
Be Quiet! Dark Power Corsair RM1000i
Pro 11 850W Power Supply Special Edition
$279 $279
bequiet.com corsair.com/en-au

SOUND SOUND
Sennheiser Astro
PC 373D A50
$299 $459
en-au.sennheiser.com www.astrogaming.com

DISPLAY DISPLAY
Acer Predator Alienware
XB271HU AW3418DW
$999 $2,099
acerstore.com.au alienware.com

KEYBOARD KEYBOARD
Cooler Master MK 750 Corsair K95
$189 Platinum RGB
coolermaster.com
$299
corsair.com/en-au/

MOUSE MOUSE
Corsair Razer Deathadder
Glaive Elite
$109 $89
corsair.com razerzone.com/au-en/

TOTAL: $4,336 TOTAL: $10,379

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 95
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It’s super easy to set up, too. Covr
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AMD RYZEN 2 + X470 BOARDS REVIEWED! • NEW INTEL 8TH-GEN CPUS

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FILEFUSION 2018
Find and remove duplicate
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Find and then completely
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YOUR PCTA EXCLUSIVE
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Each month the PCTA team secures a collection of apps that we think you will find useful – all
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were we not giving them away to you free. Most usually come with an unlimited registration. FOR THESE APPS
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We hope you get good use from the apps! site.

ASHAMPOO SNAP 9
There are a number of reasons why you
might want to take a picture of the contents
of your desktop. Such images can be useful
when putting together a web site, creating
tutorials, demos or manuals, or just to
record something for posterity. Windows
makes it easy to create simple screen
captures by simply pressing the Prt Scr key,
but Ashampoo Snap opens up a number of
new options.
As well as capturing precisely what you
see on screen at any given moment, Snap
can also be used to capture timed shots from
within games. These screen captures can
then be joined together to create a video.
Recording can be paused and resumed at
any time so you can compose your screen so
everything looks exactly as you would like
it to.
Snap can be used with a multi-monitor
setup so huge screen captures can be created
as easily as capturing a single window. If
you would like to highlight a particular area
of a screen capture, resizable shapes, text
and other graphics can be added.
There will be circumstances in which it
is not possible to compose your screen to
show everything you would like to include
in a screen capture - such as when working
with a lengthy web site. Snap enables you to
perform scrolling captures so such lengthy
documents can be captured in more process
rather than having to manually stitch
together numerous images. Enjoy its ability
to capture non-standard shaped portion REQUIREMENTS: Windows 7, 8, 10 32/64-bit
of the screen, the option of adding voice 200 MB hard drive space
over recordings to your video captures and LIMITATIONS:Registration required.
support for a range of video codecs. www.ashampoo.com

DISCLAIMER: As the delivery platform only, PC & Tech Authority and nextmedia Pty Ltd cannot and will not provide support for any of the software or data contained on
these discs. Although all app files are virus scanned, nextmedia Pty Ltd cannot accept any responsibility for any loss, damage or disruption to your data or computer system
that may occur while using the apps, the programs, or the data on them. There are no explicit or implied warranties for any of the software products on the discs. Use of
these apps is strictly at your own risk.

98 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU

HACKCHECK
You may not even be aware but there are
various websites which have been hacked
over the years where your email address
(plus password and other information) was
made available and personal information
sold over the internet.
HackCheck is a simple tool where you
can load your email address and then the
tool will go to work and check for potential
hackers who have compromised your
details. Simply insert your email address
and immediately HackCheck will check a
database against known hacks and inform
you if you have been compromised.
We think HackCheck is using an external
database such as the free “Have I Been
Pwned” and their Pwned Passwords API to
STICKY PASSWORD
There are now a large number of web sites
that require users to login to make use of
their services and this can mean having to
remember a huge number of usernames
and passwords. Sticky Password can help
to make your life easier by i lling in online
login forms for you. Your usernames and
password are stored in a protected database,
and rather than having to manually enter
details by hand, the program can take care
of form i lling on your behalf.
The passwords you store in the program
are protected in a number of ways. The
i rst level of protection is provided by the
master password that must be conigured
during the setup process. You then have the
option of using a USB or Bluetooth device as
WATCHDOG
Watchdog Online Security Pro 2018 is a
smart tool which uses multiple antivirus
engines to detect threats your regular
security software might miss.
It’s all very easy to use. To get started,
just select the “Smart” (quick) or “Deep”
(thorough) option, click “Scan”, and watch as
Watchdog goes to work.
The program crawls over your hard drive,
and when it i nds something suspicious,
passes a i ngerprint (not the whole ile) to its
cloud scanner for further analysis.
Watchdog “Cloud Scanning Platform”
then checks your i le using multiple
antivirus engines, ensuring you’ll detect
threats that individual packages might miss,
before returning its verdict to the program.
APPS
check your email against their database. For
example, enter your email address on the
“Have I Geen Pwned” website and you get
exactly the same information presented to
you by HackCheck.
There are some advantages of using
HackCheck. It will run in the background
and constantly monitor more than one email
account. Reaction to a hack is everything. It’s
essential if your email is hacked you quickly
change your account details and password.
REQUIREMENTS:Windows 7, 8, 10 32/64-bit
100MB hard drive space
LIMITATIONS:Registration required.
www.abelssoft.de/en
a secondary authentication method - as an
added level of security a virtual keyboard
can be used for password entry to avoid
problems with keylogging software.
There are Sticky Password plugins
available for a number of programs
including Firefox and Thunderbird, and
passwords that you have already stored in
various applications can be imported in a
few mouse clicks.
This is great time saving tool and avoids PC REQUIREMENTS:Windows 7, 8, 10
the problem of forgotten passwords and 32/64-bit
the associated password resetting. With 50MB hard drive space
protection against keyloggers and phishing MACOS REQUIREMENTS:MacOS X
50MB hard drive space
web sites, Sticky Password is not only
LIMITATIONS:Registration required. 1 year
useful, but also fantastic for security. license.
www.stickypassword.com
You don’t have to worry about any of the
technicalities, fortunately - all you’ll see is
a report where threats are listed as they’re
discovered.
When the scan is complete, you can
browse the report, choose to delete
individual items, quarantine them, maybe
exclude them if you’re sure they’re safe,
before cleaning up your entire system with
a click.
Watchdog also offers simple real-time
protection, analysing i les before they’re
executed, and running a quick “Smart
REQUIREMENTS:Windows 7, 8, 10 32/64-bit
Scan” when your system starts. This worked 50 MB hard drive space
well for us, but if you don’t need that level LIMITATIONS:Registration required. 1 year, 1
of protection then it can be tweaked or device license.
disabled in the Settings dialog. www.watchdogdevelopment.com
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 99
JON HONEYBALL
“CONFIGURING STANDARD SSD
DRIVES TO CACHE IS A PIECE OF CAKE
– AND IT SHOULD MAKE THINGS FASTER”
JON TRIES TO DISCOVER WHY ONE PAIR OF SSD DRIVES IS WEARING QUICKER THAN
ANOTHER, HOW TO CERTIFY HIS EMAILS, AND WHETHER OR NOT THE WORM HAS TURNED
oth of my big Synology
B  installations have two
SSD cache drives in them.
These are standard SSD
drives that you it, but you then
conigure them to be cache rather
than storage. Doing this is a piece
of cake, and it should make things
faster. Looking at the statistics, I
get a pretty good set of cache hits
from the SSD drives, so they’re
clearly doing their job.
When I conigured both Synology
NAS drives, I set up all the disks in
one big volume. I prefer to have one
big pool and then to share out access
via shares. Others might disagree,
saying it’s better to have pools of
volumes, splitting the hard drive
count into a number of selections.
To be honest, when I initially set up
both NAS drives, I wasn’t sure about
how I’d be using the storage. Now,
some months in, I have a clearer
idea of how the functional use has
developed and how the storage
could be split.
The upside of the single volume
approach is that all storage is
available to all shares, so you don’t
need to make arbitrary decisions
about how to slice and dice the
space. Shares can have an upper
limit of storage space applied to
them, so you can prevent one share
space running away with all the
spare storage. I use this for Time
Machine backups, for example,
where it’s useful to limit the overall
size – and, thus, the maximum
length of time that backups are kept.
Another advantage of the single
volume approach is that the SSD
cache can work across the whole
thing. If you create multiple separate
volumes, then you need multiple
SSD cache installations. So it kind
of made sense at the time. At some
point, I might dump the whole thing
onto a new NAS and reconigure.
100 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
But for the moment, this is where
I’m at.
So it was interesting to compare
the two SSD caches, one in each
of the two NAS drives. They had
broadly the same size of disks to
cache. The irst one has 11 5.5TB
drives, and two 120GB SSD units
by Kingston. The second one has
ten 8TB drives, and two 250GB SSD
units by Samsung. If you drill into
the disk information, it tells you
an “Estimated Lifespan” value for
each drive. The Kingston SSD drives
have 89% left for both. The Samsung
drives each have 52% remaining.
Now this is somewhat curious.
Why should the Samsung
SSD drives be “wearing out”
signiicantly quicker than the
Kingstons? I had no idea, so I
reached out to Synology technical
support. Daryl replied saying,
“Increased wear on these SSDs isn’t
something that I personally have
heard of, nor are there any other
issues with this particular drive that
I can see on our systems. It may be
that they just don’t like being used
as a drive in an SSD cache; however,
this is something that you’d need to
discuss with Samsung, I’m afraid.”
There are some settings you can
iddle with to control how the SSD
drives are used in cache mode.
There is one called “Skip sequential
I/O” that says, “Read and write
sequential data from/to the drives
to improve speed and performance,
as well as to increase the life span
of the SSDs. Please enable this
function when you are using backup
applications”. And this is ticked on
both NAS drives. Maybe the size of
the SSDs is too small? But the SSD
Cache Advisor app on each NAS
says that some 91% read hit rate is
being achieved, and that the volume
has been effectively accelerated.
There’s another possibility to
HP can create consider. Maybe the Samsung
lovely swish drives weren’t 100% kosher when I
graphics of its
bought them? However, they were
Ultrium drives in
operation, but bought from Amazon. And it’s
buying HP LTO6 odd that both drives have exactly
WORM tapes the same life-remaining igure. If
proved trickier they’d been different, then I might
have suspected something of their
provenance.
I’m keeping an eye on the
numbers on both the Kingston
and Samsung SSD drives to see
how they change over time. If
you’re using SSD drives as cache
on a NAS (or, indeed, in any other
implementation), then it might be
well worth having a look at their
wear rate. If you’re using Samsung
850 Evo 250GB drives in a Synology
as cache, and are seeing similar
things, then drop me a line – or if
yours appear to be doing just ine.
I’ll report back in a few months with
what has changed by then. You can’t
say I don’t spoil you.
COMODO EMAIL
CERTIFICATION
Certiication is clearly a timely
topic, because recently I decided
it would be a good idea to have
SSL certiication on our outgoing
JON emails for the lab. As a grown-
HONEYBALL up serious organisation, with
is the MD of
an IT consultancy
auditing and accreditation, it made
that specialises sense that outbound emails could
in testing and be SSL-signed and thus clearly
deploying hardware
authenticated as coming from us.
 JON HONEYBALL REAL WORLD COMPUTING

I trundled over to the Microsoft

Ofice 365 website, expecting to ind
a simple “give us some money and
we will generate an SSL cert for you”
button. But no, there was nothing.
I hunted around, and found that
Comodo was one of the go-to irms
for such things. So I went to the
Comodo website and discovered it
could indeed offer me SSL certs for
my company email domain. The cost
would be around $300 for certs for a
number of our email accounts at the
“woodleyside.com” address. And ABOVE:Synology generating a certiicate for the email but to get this going isn’t exactly
they would last for three years. Storage Manager address of lab@woodleyside.com. straightforward either. Go to
Having done the original displayed some No, of course you can’t use Safari on Settings | Accounts & Passwords,
very weird results
purchase, I ran out of time and had indeed… a Mac to do this; that would be too then choose the account. On the next
to move onto other items, so it was RIGHT: Meet the easy. You have to use Firefox. You screen, choose the account again
a week or so before I returned. And easy part of the generate the cert and then download and then go to Advanced Settings
at this point, it was similar to being operation: where it into the Firefox browser on your on the next screen. Finally, you
Comodo gets you
thrown into a classic computer to pay
desktop. Don’t move away: you’re should see the
adventure game where “you are in not done yet. S/MIME button; turn that on. Then
a maze of twisty passages, all alike”. Now you need to export the choose the Sign function. Turn on
Now I’m sure that the Comodo certiicate to your ile system and Sign and choose the Certiicate you
website and process makes absolute then suck it into Keychain Manager have sent over on an email to this
sense to Comodo – but it’s just as a certiicate. Are we done yet? client.
gibberish to the rest of us. Of course not. Now you have to go Now I’m sure that much of this
Essentially, I had to authenticate to Microsoft Outlook and ind the would have been easier on Windows
myself as being owner of the Accounts information for that email using Outlook, especially if I had
domain. This shouldn’t be too account. Under the Security tab, you certiicate services running on
dificult, but we went down a rabbit can ind the Certiicate combo that Active Directory to let me push and
hole whereby Comodo decided that should list your certiicate. Choose publish certiicates out to my users.
my domain didn’t belong to me. this and the outgoing emails will be But this really was a huge ball-ache.
That’s because it’s held at Joker.com digitally signed. So far I have set it up on one client
and the domain owner is obfuscated After all that fandango, it inally machine, for just me. And I’m left
to prevent unwanted spam. No worked. I then decided it would be wondering if it’s worth all the hassle.
matter that I could email Comodo useful to have this signing on the The documentation on the Comodo
support from the domain name Outlook app on iOS. After a huge website is vast and equally obscure
itself. No matter that it was clearly amount of tearing of hair, I came and unhelpful. Even the process
held at Microsoft Ofice 365. I gave to the conclusion that this simply you have to follow to get the blasted
them my company registration wasn’t possible. Yes, it seems that thing is very unclear.
details, but that wasn’t enough Outlook for iOS doesn’t support So, in answer to all those asking
because of the Joker obfuscation. So digital signing at all. this question on our letters’ pages,
I went to the Joker site and turned You can digitally sign emails on is it really any surprise that so few
that off so it would list the lab iOS if you use the Apple Mail app, emails, even corporate ones, are
address on the domain
name. No, that didn’t
work either because
my company registered
address is, like many
businesses, registered
to the address of my
accountants. And those
two addresses weren’t
the same. So I had to go
back to Joker to change
the registered address to
the accountants. Finally,
Comodo decided I was
really who I said I was.
Then I went about

PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 101

REAL WORLD COMPUTING JON HONEYBALL
“I’m sure the Comodo
website and process
makes sense to
Comodo – but it’s
just gibberish to the
rest of us”
digitally signed? Isn’t this just a
repeat of the nonsense we had with
unsigned VBA macros, whereby any
old bit of crud that you coughed up
into Word or Excel could be run and
passed around your organisation?
We’ve had the facility to digitally
sign this code for decades, yet
almost no-one does it.
There is a moral in this story:
security must be made easy for
normal people. It should be “it just
works”. Anything less than that is
simply unacceptable.
DOWN A WORM HOLE
As I may possibly have mentioned
once or 15 times before, I have
multiple backup solutions in place.
We hold a lot of data, and need
access to a wide range of it at a
moment’s notice, sometimes going
back decades. It’s one reason that we
have such a signiicant disk storage
solution, which is geolocated on
more than three sites. I use multiple
protocols for backup: SMB ile copy,
synchronisation tools, Synology
disk snapshots, replication via
Dropbox and Backblaze. You name
it, we’ve got it.
Finally, there’s an installation of
Retrospect covering the main stores
that writes, via ibre Thunderbolt
and a Thunderbolt-to-SAS adapter,
to an HP LTO6 tape library that
takes eight tapes. This runs nightly,
taking snapshots of the main
storage. I decided it would be wise
to also have a snapshot written to
LTO WORM (write once read many)
tape. This is a special form of the
LTO tape that has, I believe, a chip
in the casework to identify it as a
WORM tape.
The advantage over a normal tape
is that data on it can’t be changed. I
believe it’s legally admissible as an
unchangeable copy in a court case.
Given the sort of data we handle,
having a inal backstop of a WORM
tape seemed like a good idea.
Then I hit some issues. Trying to
102 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
ind LTO6 WORM tapes was harder
than inding a politician willing
to apologise. Even more dificult
if you wanted them with WORM
barcodes on them – the tapes,
not the politicians – to allow the
LTO tape library to automatically
catalogue which tapes were inserted
just by reading the barcode. In the
end, I ordered a set of HP WORM
tapes from Keiper.
A day or so later, a box of normal
LTO6 tapes arrived. It turns out it
was the fault of both myself and
Keiper: I told it I wanted WORM,
but gave the RW tape code. It took a
week or so for it to ind anyone with
supply of WORM tapes in stock.
It seems that no-one stocks them.
For the barcode labels, I ended up
buying a set of LTO6 WORM tape
labels from Dell, which had them in
stock.
Having put a WORM tape into
the library, I’m now running an
incremental overnight WORM
update, and I plan to replace that
tape every month or so, depending
on utilisation. It’s only taking a
small snapshot of the most current
and important data, but it’s a
backstop worth having.
DRIVE ENCRYPTION
Talking of encryption, I decided
to set up a rugged external drive
at home to take regular backups
of Andre’s MacBook Air. We run
Time Machine against storage at
his ofice, and also against a NAS
at home – but a third seemed like
a good idea. I had a spare 4TB
LaCie Thunderbolt external rugged
drive that seemed ideal. I started
up Time Machine on his laptop,
plugged in the drive, reformatted
it, and told Time Machine to do its
stuff. As part of that setup, it asked
if I wanted to encrypt the disk,
which seemed like a good idea.
The backup completed and then
Time Machine told me that it was
encrypting the disk.
Unfortunately, there was no
indication of how long this would
take. I left it a few hours and then
noted the message hadn’t changed.
So I left it overnight, and still the
message didn’t change. In the end,
I shut down the laptop, unplugged
the drive, and brought it into the
Yet another lab and plugged it into my Mac Pro
backup-related desktop to let it run. It seems okay
problem, but
to do that, because the encryption
this time the
challenge was process is incremental and can
getting Time be stopped and restarted. Indeed,
Machine when you plug in such a drive
that needs to complete, the OS just
starts up the relevant process for
you automatically.
A few days later, the drive light
was still furiously flickering. So
I went hunting. Turns out that
this is an OS function, so there’s a
command line to use: “diskutil cs
list” tells you all about the drives on
the system. One of the information
lines you get is conirmation that
it’s converting, and a “Conversion
Progress” percentage. It was at
4%, which came as somewhat of a
shock. So I left it for a week, and
it crawled up to around 50%.
I have no idea why it’s taking so
long. An online search suggests it
should take a few hours at most,
because this is the same process
that FileVault uses to encrypt the
internal storage of the laptop, and
I know from experience that this is
quite quick. The drive isn’t full of
data: it has about 400GB of stuff on
it out of the 4TB space. The light is
flashing hard, 24/7, so something
is happening.
The irony would be that it
completes successfully, and then
fails catastrophically because I have
worn out the drive. Oh, how I’d
laugh. X

PAUL OCKENDEN
“NO PHONE, BROADBAND OR
ELECTRICITY. SO HOW TO REMOTELY
MONITOR THAT THE EMPTY HOUSE
IS SAFE AND SECURE?”
PAUL USES VODAFONE’S V-CAMERA TO MONITOR A DESERTED HOUSE WITH NO
BROADBAND, AND DELIVERS HIS VERDICT ON KIT FROM THE SAME STABLE
I 
continue to be impressed with
the Netgear Arlo Go camera.
I was one of the executors of
a deceased in-law’s estate a
few months back, and part of my
duties involved looking after the
house the person had lived in,
prior to the estate being divided.
When someone dies, one of the
irst things you have to do is notify
their bank; they then promptly
freeze the accounts, cancelling
all their direct debits. When that
happens, the various suppliers all
get notiied, so they in turn cancel
their services. No phone, and so no
broadband. And in many empty
properties no electricity either. So
how do you remotely monitor that
the house is safe and secure?
The Arlo Go in its Vodafone
V-Camera guise turned out to
be the perfect tool for this job. It
doesn’t require Wi-Fi or power – just
a mobile signal. The battery is good
for about a month in this kind of
application, but I plugged it into a
Mrcool Power Bank and I reckon it
would probably have lasted for well
over six months.
The camera triggers when it
detects either motion or sound, so
it’s ideal for monitoring an empty
property. I found that with the
audio detection turned right up, it
was being set off by passing lorries,
for example – probably because
the house was otherwise so eerily
quiet – but with the sensitivity
turned down a notch, it was ine.
You get instant alerts on your phone
or tablet when the camera triggers,
and you can also set it up to send
emails (although, obviously, these
will have an inherent delay in most
cases).
You can use the Arlo app to
see what’s going on, listen in to
Netgear’s Arlo live audio, or conduct a two-way
Go just needs a conversation with any miscreant
mobile signal to that you happen to spot (“The police
work
are on their way”). You can even
trigger a siren in the camera when
motion is detected – but, if I’m
honest, it isn’t loud enough to scare
my cat. I suppose it might startle a
burglar...
Both the video and audio
quality are excellent. The camera is
described as HD but is only 1,280
x 720 pixels, so not the “Full” HD
1,920 x 1,080 pixels or higher that
some other cameras provide. I
wouldn’t get too hung up on this,
though: the quality is very good.
In terms of the Arlo Go
feature set, there simply isn’t any
competition. As far as I’m aware,
this is the only readily available
battery-powered and LTE-
connected mobile camera. The only
alternatives that I’ve found have
PAUL been homebrew hacks.
OCKENDEN
I used the camera indoors, but it’s
owns an agency
that helps fully waterproof to IP65 standard,
businesses exploit so you can use it outdoors too.
the web, from
sales to marketing I’ve even heard of someone using
and everything an Arlo Go in the Kenyan bush
in between
to monitor wildlife! If using one
PAUL OCKENDEN REAL WORLD COMPUTING
outdoors, though, I’d advise that
you either disguise it well or mount
it fairly high, otherwise it would be
quite easy to pinch.
Other uses could be as a granny-
cam for someone who has carers
or who lives in a care home, or
maybe for monitoring a business
premises. There’s a schedule option
that you can use to arm and disarm
the camera, or you can even control
it via IFTTT or Stringify (perhaps
only arming it when your burglar
alarm is set). It would also be good
for building sites or people doing
up properties. A plasterer friend
has had his tools stolen a couple of
times when leaving them on-site
overnight – a camera such as this
might have helped.
V WHIZZ
I mentioned some other devices in
the V range from Vodafone – I’ve
been testing three of them: V-Auto,
V-Bag and V-Pet.
V-Auto is interesting. It’s come
from Vodafone’s Automotive
division, and is a device that you
plug into your car. If you’ve ever
owned a super-expensive car, you
might have had a tracker itted to it.
There are a few manufacturers of
these things, including the likes of
SmarTrack, Traficmaster, Tracker,
Scorpion and Cobra. Except the
Italian company Cobra doesn’t exist
anymore – in 2014, it was bought by
Vodafone, and in 2015 it changed its
name to Vodafone Automotive SpA.
The company mostly produces
the expensive trackers that you’d
expect to ind itted on high-end
cars, but the V-Auto is an attempt
to make something a bit more mass
market.
It’s important to note from the
outset that this isn’t a stolen vehicle
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 103
REAL WORLD COMPUTING PAUL OCKENDEN
solution. The device plugs into
the OBD-II (on-board diagnostics)
socket in your car, so in many
vehicles it’s quite visible, and it even
announces itself with a flashing
red LED. The app even comes with
a database of where the OBD-II
port is on a huge range of vehicles,
displaying pictures of where to
install it. It’s all very well done.
What can the V-Auto do? Well,
it does track your vehicle position,
continually and in real-time.
Obviously, this is done via the
Vodafone network. However, with
this particular device there’s no SIM
to install inside – it’s already there.
I’m not sure whether it’s a soft-
SIM or just something physically
installed; I want to stay on good
terms with Vodafone, so I didn’t
want to pull the loan device to bits!
You can see all of your trips from
within the V-Auto app. “Big deal”, I
can hear some of you cry – you can
view that info in Google Maps (and
for those who don’t realise just how
much of your life Google tracks,
head to google.com/maps/timeline
and scare yourself!). The thing is,
the tracks provided in Google Maps
can be quite low resolution. The
journeys shown in the V-Auto are
more accurately tracked. They’re
nicely presented, too, showing the
miles travelled (useful for those
expenses claims), average speed for
the journey, and how long it took.
You’re also presented with a
“trip safety score”. This is based on
various factors including speed,
your acceleration and braking,
and even the types of road you
drive on. Vodafone doesn’t publish
information on whether the device
also grabs data from the car via
the OBD-II port, or whether this is
simply being used for power.
You get an overall safety score
too. Mine is currently 79%. It’s the
same kind of technology used by
the “black box” telematics units
that insurance companies it,
particularly as a way of bringing
down premiums for inexperienced
drivers.
All of these sensors mean that
the device will also know when
you’ve crashed your car. If this
happens, it alerts a team of people at
Vodafone, who then give you a call
104 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
to ensure all is okay. They’ll call the
emergency services if needed, too. I
think this would be a real beneit to
younger drivers, and help remove
some of the worry from their
nervous parents.
The other thing the V-Auto can do
is locate your car. Not only useful
if you sometimes forget where
you’ve parked, but it comes into its
own with shared vehicles owned
by small irms. If the car is parked
“The Arlo Go can be used
outdoors. I’ve even heard of
someone using it in the Kenyan
bush to monitor wildlife!”
close by, it will provide directions
to ind it.
I don’t think V-Auto is for
everyone, but for new drivers
and small company fleets it could
provide a real beneit. And when
you think about it, £4 a month is
nothing. It’s the price of a sandwich
or a fancy coffee.
KEEP ON TRACKING
Finally, the two other V from
Vodafone devices: the V-Pet and the
V-Bag. As you can probably tell by
Vodafone’s “does what it says on the
tin” product naming strategy, one
is for tracking your animals and the
other your personal possessions.
At irst sight, the two devices
appear similar. They’re pretty much
the same size, and are of a similar
weight too. They even have a
similar four- or ive-day battery life.
Yet despite the similarities, they’re
actually quite different, in terms of
the hardware and the apps used to
control the devices.
Both trackers have been bought
in by Vodafone, much like the
V-Camera was from Netgear. In
this case, the V-Pet is a device called
Vita, made by Kippy – again, an
Italian company. Meanwhile, V-Bag
is the Movetrack manufactured by
Alcatel (which used to be French,
but it’s now owned by the Finnish
bit of Nokia that wasn’t sold to
Microsoft, and the devices are
manufactured under licence by
the Chinese company TCL, which
started out making imitation
TDK cassette tapes but now owns
BlackBerry and Palm!).
Vodafone says V-Pet is suitable
for cats and dogs bigger than 4kg.
Well, our cat isn’t exactly small
but the tracker looked huge on
his collar. Imagine a human with
something the size of a very thick
paperback book strapped around
their neck and I think it will give
you some idea of how it appeared.
Anyway, the cat was having none
of it, so I ended up tracking myself
to test the device. I think it would
be ine on most normal-sized dogs.
The app allows you to track your
pet if they go missing, receive
alerts if they go outside a geofenced
zone, and also tells you how active
they’ve been – although for dogs
you’ll probably know, as it will be
you that’s taken them for a walk!
I found the app a bit clunky, but
it worked. The location tracking
works using GPS, but where that
isn’t available, it will also use
cell-tower triangulation. This
isn’t as accurate, but it’s better
than nothing. It can be a bit laggy,
though – sometimes, the position
shown was from several minutes
before, which isn’t what you want
when chasing a lost dog across
town. As with the V-Auto, V-Pet
comes with a built-in SIM.
V-Bag was in many ways better.
It does similar things – allowing
you to track locations and receive
alerts when leaving a particular
area – but the app felt more
polished. Unlike the V-Pet, it can
even use known Wi-Fi networks
for determining its location.
It comes with a V-Sim that’s
a little iddly to it, but that’s a one-
time-only problem. I’d almost be
tempted to suggest using the V-Bag
as a pet tracker, but it isn’t fully
waterproof (only splash-resistant). X
MRCOOL IS COMING
Speaking of the Mrcool 24,000mAh Power Bank, just a couple
of days after our issue hit the shops, the device completely
sold out on Amazon – such, apparently, is the power of this
column (smiley face emoji, only we don’t do those here).
Well, as a wise man once said, with great power comes great
responsibility, and so I contacted the manufacturer in China.
They told me that they were surprised by the extra sales,
and are sending a load more over by air freight. So if you’re
one of the several people who contacted me saying that you
couldn’t buy one, hopefully by the time you read this they’ll be
back in stock again on the Amazon website.
CRISPIN HORSFIELD
“IN A SMALL CORPORATE
ENVIRONMENT, A PROJECT
CAN GAIN MOMENTUM AND
BECOME DIFFICULT TO STOP”
AFTER NEARLY 40 YEARS WORKING IN THE TECHNOLOGY FIELD, CRISPIN SHARES
THE LESSONS HE’S LEARNED ON HOW TO RUN IT PROJECTS
M 
y irst proper IT job
was in the early 1980s.
It was for a corporate
video irm. I’d started
an electronics business a few years
earlier, building industrial and
scientiic equipment, but since
this was a bit specialist, I also did
work for local sound studios. It
was as a pro-audio engineer that I
approached Spafax Television to see
if it had any work – and to my good
fortune, it had a problem routing
video and audio between edit suites
and the video tape recorders.
This was the era of early micro-
computers, so I used a Dragon
32 and designed and built PCBs
populated with relays to switch
the various channels. As I’d
demonstrated knowledge about
computers, Spafax offered me a
contract to join a project to “sort
out the production ofice” with an
IT system. Although I knew little
about corporate IT, they were fun to
work with and so I signed up.
We duly purchased an HP 3000
minicomputer system and I trained
to be its system manager. Now
qualiied, it was back to dealing
with the production ofice black
hole problem. With the naivety
of youth, I’d assumed that there
was a reasonably standard way
of producing videos. This turned
out not to be the case. So, together
with my immediate boss and the
senior producer, we asked all ten or
so producers how a video should
be made – and of course received
ten or so answers back. From this
we created the authorised version
of how a video was made, and this
alone pretty much solved the issue
of the production ofice black hole.
That proved to be my irst lesson:
this analysis should have taken
106 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
place before buying the IT system,
not after. The second was that, even
in a small corporate environment,
any project can gain momentum
and become dificult to re-evaluate
or stop.
The dificulty was that the IT
project was perceived in some
quarters to have “gone wrong”
“Training and procedures
are important – particularly if you
don’t want to face a maelstrom
on returning from your holidays”
when it had barely started. It isn’t
that the HP 3000 was useless; there
was a need for word processing
and accounting, and the system
provided much-needed centralised
storage and management. But
few people noticed the massive
increase in productivity that word
processing brought to the party.
Spitting out TV scripts at a high rate
of knots became the new normal
within months.
RIGHT PERSON
FOR THE JOB
One good thing was that I realised
early on that, as a techie, I probably
wasn’t the best person to train the
staff. For this I needed a teaching
professional. So, at my instigation,
the company hired a former teacher
to do that and help with the IT.
Once the bulk of the training was
done, she switched over to become a
production assistant and eventually
ended up as an award-winning
producer.
At this point I needed a new
assistant and was offered a couple
of Youth Training Scheme people.
One of these showed a quiet
determination to learn, and the
An HP 3000 minicomputer in its pomp
back in the late 1970s
irm offered him a job after the
scheme period ended. This meant
I could take holidays again. As I
was jetting off to New Zealand, the
whole system crashed, bringing
the company to a halt. This young
lad quietly and quickly ixed the
problem, to the amazement of the
production ofice manager who had
been hovering over him. The lesson
here is that training and procedures
are vitally important, particularly if
you don’t want to face a maelstrom
when you get back from your hols.
After three years, I left the
corporate video world and returned
to my electronics business. Now I
was experienced in “proper” IT and
had done Pascal programming too.
Casting around for work,
I observed that a friend was
manufacturing an industrial rack
system for measurement and control
applications that might beneit from
a single board computer (SBC) card.
I particularly liked the Motorola
6809 microprocessor instruction
set, so I designed a Eurocard-
sized SBC using a 4-layer PCB.
Once built, I joined forces with a
programmer friend and we wrote
a monitor/primitive-operating-
system in assembly language that
then allowed C programs to be run.
Interestingly, this 0.5MHz clock SBC
could outperform a 12MHz PC of
the era running the same program.
By the time this was all inished,
CRISPIN the original use I’d envisaged for the
HORSFIELD SBC had gone out of the window.
has run his own
technology However, I did ind applications
company – among for it in a research sonar system, a
various side jobs
– since 1979. He
trim meter for cross-channel ferries
now specialises (the MS Herald of Free Enterprise
in IoT and web disaster had mandated these), and
consultancy
a data-splitting system for a car

production line that was being held
up by the maximum operational
speed of the Vehicle Identiication
Number stamper. The splitter
allowed the machine that was
standing idle to be brought into use.
The lesson here was that if you
take a risk with attempting to make
something new, the market for it
may change by the time it’s ready.
That said, if you don’t take a risk
from time to time, you’re going
nowhere.
PART OF THE PROCESS
One of the next jobs was software
development. Down the road
from me was a company that
wanted to introduce a Just-In-
Time ordering system, because
its factory unit was stuffed to the
gills with parts awaiting inclusion
into manufactured goods. Over
a fortnight or so (I’d estimated a
week), I wrote a complex macro for
Lotus 1-2-3 that took ten minutes
to run but resulted in a schedule
of what quantities they should be
ordering when.
Within no time, that factory unit
had got more than half of its space
back. There should have been a
lesson here, but I failed to take it:
even with the best will in the world,
it’s nigh-on impossible to gauge
how long a software project with
this many unknowns is likely to
take. You really have to explain the
potential problems and discuss
contingencies with the customer
before committing to the work.
After Windows PCs began
to support networking, many
businesses installed their
CRISPIN HORSFIELD REAL WORLD COMPUTING
IoT is my next big irst computer systems. Word
hardware processing, spreadsheets and
interest, and the accounting packages were all pretty
Raspberry Pi
could be a key well understood, but the thought of
component creating bespoke systems to manage
company processes mostly passed
owners by. As a techie, this seemed
to me to be a lost opportunity, so I
worked hard to sell this idea.
Before I could build a custom
application, I had to analyse how
the business worked; explain to
the owner how their business
was currently working; establish
from said owner how they’d like
it to work; and then write the
application.
The process I followed was to
interview as many employees as
possible, sometimes with the help
of a questionnaire. This was to
discover both attitudes to IT and
what beneit staff members at the
coal face reckoned they could get
out of an IT system. Frequently, staff
had no idea what IT could do, so the
The single- possibilities had to be explained.
board computer I Understanding people’s attitudes
designed turned was important, because it showed
out to have many
more uses than how much effort would have to be
I imagined – it’s put into getting them on board.
worth taking a The applications were written
risk! in Visual Basic, with Access as the
database. Unfortunately, Access had
a multi-user capability of one, which
had to be overcome. Certainly,
Visual Basic was a whole
lot easier than
C for writing
Windows apps.
In retrospect,
I should have
separated this
analysis work from the
IT and programming work.
Writing custom software is a risky
business and hard to estimate
because you have dependencies on
Microsoft, third-party tools and so
forth. The process of analysis can be
made distinct and has standalone
beneits; it can be done on a time
and materials basis.
Then came the web. For some
business owners it was an IT
thing, for others it was a graphics
thing. For me, it was both. I started
working with a graphic designer,
and in 1997 we formed a company
to provide website design, hosting
and IT services. We invested in our
own hosting because we wanted the
ability to integrate remote databases
with websites.
I irmly believe that a website
should be more than just a
brochure, so we always floated
the idea of integrating them with
the customers’ IT systems. In
these early days, it wasn’t always
easy persuading people to have
online sales. In one case, a system
had to be written and demonstrated
before it was bought. It increased
their turnover by 500-fold in three
years over what it cost – now where
was that uplift clause? Oh well.
Judging when to get out of a
line of business can be dificult.
In 2017, we knew our web server
hardware needed updating again,
and web design and hosting
had become commoditised.
So we closed our commercial
hosting, switched to Azure
for our own websites, and
now pursue web consultancy and
IoT experimentation.
In the nearly 40 years since I set
up shop, I’ve learned that hardware
and software engineering is harder,
riskier, and more time-consuming
than I thought it would be – but,
nevertheless, rewarding. I’ve also
learned it’s important to disconnect
from tech and do “arty” things or
sport – in my case dancing,
recreational cycling, occasional
horse-riding and photography.
And the inal lesson? There’s
always more to learn. For me,
right now, it’s IoT, security
token services and Angular on
the hardware, IT and software 
sides respectively. But who knows
what that list will look like in a few
years’ time? X
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 107
DAVEY WINDER
“USING ANY ‘FREE’ SOCIAL MEDIA
SERVICE IS A TRADE-OFF BETWEEN
FUNCTIONAL VALUE AND PRIVACY
CONCERNS”
WANT TO CLEAN UP YOUR FACEBOOK PRESENCE? DAVEY PROVIDES
A NUMBER OF OPTIONS, INCLUDING THE FULL NUKE
W 
ho knows where the
whole Cambridge
Analytica mess will
have ended up by
the time you read this. One thing
is certain, however: the knock-on
impact on Facebook. Forget about
the $40 billion wiped off its share
value overnight, and the legal/
regulatory action that might come
from the revelation that 87 million
user proiles were used without
informed consent. The impact I’m
talking about right now is both
positive and negative.
Positive, in so far as the story does
appear to have inally alerted folk
to the danger of taking part in those
“What kind of animal am I?” and
“What is my real political leaning?”
type surveys that plague Facebook.
Yet people who do know better still
participate on the basis of “what
harm will it do?” My answer in the
midst of that Cambridge Analytica
fallout is simple: Donald J Trump.
The negative – as far as Facebook
is concerned anyway – relates to
the number of requests I’ve had
from news media and individuals
asking how best to delete their
Facebook accounts. Personally, I
think this is a knee-jerk reaction:
we’ve always known that using
any “free” social media service is a
trade-off between functional value
and privacy concerns. As far as the
latter goes, it really isn’t that dificult
to restrict who sees what and when
on Facebook just by exploring the
privacy settings and using common
sense.
Nevertheless, if you’ve had
enough of Facebook then deleting
your account, and all your social
history with it, is another matter
altogether. Facebook will want you
to deactivate your account, which
108 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
effectively leaves it in limbo. Neither
your account nor the posts and likes
you’ve made while using it will
actually be deleted. You can dig
deeper to ind the nuclear option
(facebook.com/help/delete_account),
which will take up to 90 days to
delete all posts and then light the
touch-paper.
But what if you only want to
do a bit of social gardening, and
prune posts and online activity
from certain years or subjects? For
that, Facebook expects you to delete
every such post individually. Not
really an option if, like me, you’ve
been an active Facebook user for a
decade. This is where third-party
utilities come in.
The most useful I’ve found
has been the “Social Book Post
Manager” extension for Chrome.
The developers are active in keeping
on top of bugs – although who
knows whether Facebook will
come along and throw a lawyer at
them, as it has at other add-ons I’ve
found useful in improving the site’s
woeful default user interface and
functionality.
Anyway, assuming it’s still up and
running, what you get is a powerful
utility to route through the Facebook
activity log and delete posts based
upon such ilters as year, month,
text (does or doesn’t contain a given
string) and standard AND/OR
Boolean operators. It fully automates
the process of bulk-deleting
Facebook activity, although there are
caveats.
The irst relates to speed; the
deletion process is automated
for convenience, not speeded up.
Essentially, it simulates Delete
button mouse-clicking, one post
at a time. There’s no way around
this – it’s the way the Facebook UI
works – and there’s no API to allow
differently.
It’s a limitation placed upon the
process by Facebook to prevent
accidental bulk deletions of
postings, or to make the process so
annoyingly slow that most people
won’t bother tidying up their
activity – take your pick over which
you think is most likely. As such, it’s
reminiscent of those batch or cron
jobs some of us used to rely upon
so heavily to perform routine and
time-consuming tasks. Best left to
run overnight.
If you want to conirm the posts
match your ilters before deleting,
you need to run the extension with
the pre-scan option turned on
(which is the default for reasons
of safety), but this again adds to
the time taken. Some folk have
complained of unexpected baring
during the pre-scan process,
especially where it’s a long-time
Facebook user and the activity log is
a large one.
This leaves two options, and
which you choose depends on what
your motive for using the utility
is. If you simply want to nuke
everything before deleting your
account, then switch off the pre-scan
function and let it automatically
delete the lot without conirmation.
If your intent is to “garden”,
however, then I’d recommend using
pre-scan – but working a year at a
time. Maybe even a month at a time
for heavy users.
There is a third option for veteran
tweakers: iddle with the pre-scan
DAVEY WINDER speed settings. These default to x4,
is an award- but range from x0.25 to x16, so you
winning journalist
and consultant may ind a lower speed can help
specialising in stability at the expense of time taken
privacy and security
to complete.
issues

ANDROID P: MOST
SECURE YET
I’ve been running Android 8 Oreo
for a while now, courtesy of being
on the Samsung Beta programme
with my Galaxy S8+. On the whole
it’s been a good, if not earth-
shattering, upgrade. One area I
felt particularly underwhelmed by
was security.
Take the Android Veriied
Boot 2 feature, also known as
Project Treble. It adds measures to
prevent booting up with malicious
software, or rolling back to an older
OS version with vulnerabilities.
Anyone who roots their devices
won’t like this feature – but, then
again, most devices don’t seem to
include it anyway. Expect this, and
other updates such as the OEM
Hardware Abstraction Layer that
limits unlock attempts and requires
the encryption key to access the
passcode, to be part of devices that
ship with Oreo out of the box.
I’ll keep my S8+ for another year,
before I upgrade to something
running Android P. So what
security features can we expect to
see in devices that come with P out
of the box? Quite a few, and they’re
all most welcome. The Android
P Developer Preview has been
released and reveals a swathe of
security enhancements.
Enhancements such as the
disabling of sensor access in the
background by any app. If an
app running under Android P
wants to activate the microphone,
camera or pretty much any sensor
other than GPS (which already
has a standalone toggle giving
user control) in the background, it
won’t be able to. Instead, the app
must create a foreground process,
meaning Android P can then
display a notiication – a persistent
one at that – all the while that sensor
is being used. The days of apps
spying on you without your consent
could well be coming to an end.
Talking of days being numbered,
Google is continuing to crack down
on insecure app trafic, by enforcing
HTTPS connections on all apps by
default in Android P. Any app that
wants to use a clear text connection
can do so, but only after the user
agrees to opt out of the secure
Pre-scan ensures default.
you delete only While on the subject of
what you want encryption, I’m glad to report that
–but at the cost
of speed Android P will strengthen the
security of backups. While these
are already encrypted when using
Android Oreo, the new OS will use
client-side, on-device encryption.
This is important, as it means the
encryption key becomes a “local
secret” on your device, PIN- or
password-derived, rather than
being stored on the Google servers.
The key will be needed to restore a
device backup.
The last of the security boosts
involves API warnings when older,
potentially less-secure APIs are
used by developers. Although the
format and wording of the warning
displayed to the user is still to be
decided, that it will be displayed
at all shows how seriously Google
is taking this issue. Coupled with
Google Play requirements for
enforced recent API usage in new
or updated apps, which should be
in place by the time you read this,
it’s all heading in the direction of
making the apps we rely on more
secure.
PHISH PHOOD
Remember: you Subscriber Ian P emailed me to
can download an ask for some advice regarding a
offline archive
of all your posts
neighbour who had been on the
before deleting pointy end of a phishing attack.
them Ian, a computer engineer by trade,
DAVEY WINDER REAL WORLD COMPUTING
explained he sees “very little in
the way of AV or malware issues”,
with the exception of “phone
phishing, which I see a lot of”.
Yet this neighbour appeared to
have succumbed to something
nasty.
The computer didn’t reveal
anything bad by way of the browser
history, nor were there any dodgy
extensions installed on the default
Chrome browser. The neighbour
was running an up-to-date version
of Windows 10, along with Trusteer
Rapport (often installed by banks
as part of their client security
infrastructure) and Norton for AV.
I’ll hand the story back over to
Ian to explain what the neighbour
had told him: “A failed late-night
login to his bank popped up a brief
message, possibly from Trusteer
but he couldn’t be sure, stating
that the page was ‘not covered’
before another form appeared. This
required lots of user details to be
entered. Eventually, the user realises
something isn’t right, and switches
the PC off. He then went away from
home for a couple of days before
returning to ind lots of missed
calls from his bank, mobile phone
provider and email providers,
regarding requests to change
personal details and logins.”
Ian wanted to know – as the
neighbour reckons he didn’t enter
the URL to arrive at this form – if
this is a common type of attack and
whether URL checkers are any good
at stopping such things? As an aside,
he also asked how my browser client
handles a well-known misspelling
of the Google address. As I replied at
the time, without seeing the machine
involved it’s hard to be speciic, so
my response had to be treated as
being necessarily generic. That said,
it was obviously an authentication
scraping/credential stufing attack,
of a type that’s all too common. The
popup described by Ian is actually
the payload rather than the phish
itself.
It’s hard to say whether that
happened as a result of a mistyped
login URL for the user’s online
bank, or if the original phish was
via an email/attachment and
threat execution that then sat in the
background waiting (man-in-the-
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 109
continued from page 109...
middle attack) for any attempted
logins to speciic inancial services.
I suspect the latter.
When it comes to URL
checking, it should be a core
part of cybersecurity strategy, be
that at home or within the work
environment. That said, link-
checking can’t be expected to catch
every malicious URL entered; these
change rapidly as the bad guys
attempt to keep one step ahead,
hence the oft-repeated assertion that
layered security is the way to go.
For home users, I’d recommend
one of the security suites that
consistently get top scores at AV-Test
(Kaspersky or Bitdefender as a rule)
plus a secondary line of defence by
way of Malwarebytes. For business,
things are more complicated.
That the victim’s mobile phone
and email accounts were targeted
is no surprise: both vectors
remain steady towards the top
of a credential hunter’s to-do list.
If, as looks likely, the user was
compromised by a phishing threat,
then informing all providers of the
fact as soon as possible is essential.
Passwords should be changed, and
it’s imperative that the providers flag
their systems to be aware of hack
attempts by callers pretending to be
the user.
I’d recommend any security
questions are answered again with
something totally fabricated that
an attacker wouldn’t be able to
guess, and that customer services
knows to insist on that being
provided before any changes can be
made. It would also be a good time
to get any two-factor authentication
provided by these services up and
running, to add another barrier to
the bad guys.
As for that almost-Google URL
I was asked to try, it was caught as
containing a potential malicious
malware threat by the ISP in the
ofice before I could get anywhere
near it. Interestingly, though, it
was flagged as being safe by the
Kaspersky software running on the
laptop concerned at the time. Yet
another reason that multiple layers
of security are always the way to
go.X
110 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
STEVE CASSIDY
“THE STANDARDS FOR
HANDLING A LAPTOP IN
HERE ARE TIGHTER THAN
THOSE ON AN AIRPLANE OR
IN A GOLD DEPOSITORY”
STEVE VISITS THE DELL LAPTOP STORE YOU CAN SEE FROM SPACE AND TRIES TO FIGURE
OUT THE LINK BETWEEN MALCOLM GLADWELL, AI AND BUSINESS PLANNING SOFTWARE
f the two invites to land
O  in my in-tray in early
2018, I was sure that
Tilburg wouldn’t be as
interesting as Las Vegas. Despite
an over-concentration of IT sector
events in Sin City, it’s a reasonably
safe bet that a small town in the
middle of the Netherlands holds no
secrets more intriguing than those
on offer in America’s playground.
Which just goes to show how
wrong safe bets can be: Dell’s event
in Tilburg was about as gritty and
genuine to the mission as it gets.
Also: huge. I’m writing this in the
Hotel Last Resort in Germany, on
the evening of the Dell site visit and
tour, and my feet really hurt. It’s
an enormous building. I think the
only tour that punishes the feet as
enthusiastically is the Boeing tour,
in Mukilteo, north of Seattle. Both
buildings are clearly visible from
space (although Boeing’s has bigger
doors, in fairness).
For those inclined to check for
themselves, Dell’s building is near
Tesla’s. I’m not going to be more
speciic than that because I think
I might run out of invites if I was.
Apart from talking about the job
done inside this vast tin shed, Dell
wanted to talk too about how secure
everything was. This is the irst
time I’ve been anywhere where the
receptionist’s job includes checking
your passport and taking down
your smartphone’s IMEI. This is
part of a process of security taken
from a body that I confess I should
have come across many years ago:
TAPA, or the Transported Asset
Protection Association.
TAPA was formed because
it became nigh-on impossible
to safely move a laptop around
without a human to accompany
it: and I really mean, accompany.
Right up to the level of having it
chained to their wrist. Losses due
to theft inside the distribution
chain were so stereotypical that
insurers would demand premiums
equal to the replacement cost of the
machine – not annually, per owner,
but per shipment. The transport
and logistics business realised that
“We watched a nice Dutch lady
punching in about 40 doggy
doors in a big stack of screens,
with her thumbs”
this ball was in their court and so
we now have a set of standards for
security and handling of someone
else’s laptop, which – based on my
experience – are tighter and more
closely followed than those on an
airplane or in a gold depository.
Under TAPA rules, they lift the
insoles of your shoes to look for
hidden USB keys. At Dell’s big
laptop distribution centre, the toilets
are positioned outside the TAPA
security cordon.
Moving swiftly on, the reason
that Dell wants TAPA standards
is because this is the hub for its
enhanced customer care operation.
Those enhancements take more
than a leaf out of Apple’s book when
it comes to supporting even the
most annoying and cack-handed of
STEVE CASSIDY
executives. Yes, they’ll ship you a
is a consultant laptop, with your stuff on it and all
who specialises in your corporate apps, when you drop
networks, cloud,
HR and upsetting yours off the Burj Khalifa, or leave it
the corporate apple on the summit of Annapurna when
cart

the helicopter rescue arrives – or
even if you just forget where you left
it in the Bigg Market in Newcastle.
To achieve that, Dell has 350
staff skilled in only one thing:
reloading laptops. It isn’t a matter
of being a wizened old XP ninja,
with CD-swapping skills and a
Torx screwdriver tucked behind
the ear. It’s about driving Dell’s
machine portfolio management
software. Or actually, in some cases,
it isn’t – customers can remote in
to this facility and take care of
it themselves, if they feel that’s
necessary.
The need for TAPA standards
in the physical security becomes
clearer when you think about how
much network management and
VPN setup is required to keep
customers happy and separated
from each other. Some are so large
and dependent on the service that
they even have servers permanently
racked inside the Tilburg building
– although the team were clearly
good at reading my expression,
because they quickly explained that
it isn’t them joining the customer’s
VPNs, it’s the customers joining
their VPNs.
While the headline-grabbing
work is around the pizza-box
shipments to laptop-less road
warriors all over the EU, the centre
also does deployments as part
of a regular IT refresh process. It
can even ship your new machines
without the standard cardboard-box
packing, by agreement, to reduce the
carbon footprint. This pious, green
conversation was swiftly dismissed
in favour of something altogether
sillier: the assembled journalists got
completely lost in the story of the
“doggy door”.
Dell gets orders that include
big desktop screens, even though
you’d have to look far and wide to
ind many traditional deskside PC
boxes in the building. Big screens
and desktop PCs are the ish’n’chips
of personal computing, right?
That’s ine, because laptops drive
big screens now, too. But in the
EU, there’s no standard for mains
voltage power delivery. In fact,
Euroland has over 100 different
types of power cable. For monitors,
these are selected only at the
Think Amazon
warehouses
are big? Dell’s
warehouse can be
seen from space
One order saw
12,000 laptops
built and
personalised, ready
for user login,
within four days
distribution centre, because there’s
no other difference in a monitor.
The same unit is shipped, from
Cadiz to the Czech Republic, from
Milan to Yucatan. Only the power
cable is different. To deal with this
variability, Dell puts a “doggy door”
in the monitor box. We watched a
nice Dutch lady punching in about
40 doggy doors in a big stack of
screens, with her thumbs.
The press pack immediately
began to speculate on how to
replace the doggy door lady with
a robot. Dell’s team remained
polite, but pointed out that they’d
run the logic, and this was more
eficient. Looking around the whole
operation, it seems to be almost
overstaffed: until you hear what
they have to say about “flexibility”.
The volume of work isn’t consistent.
Each delivery arrangement is driven
by contractual obligation, not by the
number of people who come to work
on a given day. So, on occasion, the
building flips over to 24/7 operation.
The Dell team was very proud of
recent demand that saw it shipping
12,000 laptops – built, personalised
and ready to log in – in four days.
STEVE CASSIDY REAL WORLD COMPUTING
That’s 125 machines an hour, for
96 hours.
This is when the staff show their
mettle as not just single-job experts.
Dell doesn’t use robot forklifts, for
much the same reason. A huge fleet
of yellow pallet-movers are driven
by real people, who check what
they’re moving and where it’s going,
constantly. When big jobs come in,
there’s both labour ready to come in,
and skills inside the team, to adapt
to the demands of the order.
And they’ll adapt an awful long
way. We walked past the rackmount
cage building zone, where a few
rows of ladies with small hands
were sitting on kick-stools, wiring
up racks to be sent out in a big-bang-
style rollout. On top of each rack
was a box with a prominent “Cisco”
label. Dell will take foreign kit
and include it in your build and its
delivery: it’s all just a matter of how
much you’re willing to pay, and who
you want doing the work.
While Dell was happy to point
out that its rack builders were all
girls, because small hands are better
for small parts, I felt a twinge of
anxiety on behalf of these workers.
Health and Safety is very important
but racks are dangerous, and the
occupational-health impact of
sitting on a kick-stool for hours
every day isn’t something I’d like
to contemplate for too long. As if to
prove my point for me, a couple of
forlorn servers sat on a crate nearby,
their back-end metalwork crushed
and bent.
I like rack layout work: it’s
enormously satisfying to get right.
But if I was put on that production
PC&TECH AUTHORITY JULY 2018 111
REAL WORLD COMPUTING STEVE CASSIDY
line, I’d want some robots of the
reactive kind you see in Tony
Stark’s Iron Man lab, who hold
heavy things for the human and
have built-in rules about not letting
go without safe support. That
would make an interesting AI
programming project!
Racks can easily weigh over a
tonne. Even though the build that
we were seeing was of two-thirds
height units, there was too much
of the manual labour pragmatism
that we’d admired so much with the
doggy door lady on the monitors
bench. For example, I’d have arrester
cables hanging from the roof over
every build point so the rack was
guaranteed not to fall over, and
possibly have presented them on
inclined turntables, so that the
working face (front or back) was
presented at an angle that stopped
the workers from having to bend
over.
Back in the laptop area there was,
if anything, an oversupply of care.
We watched impressively large
laptops being deboxed, and then
handled on a series of cradles and
a ive-tier, cast-alloy moving frame
on wheels, suitable for super-high
output pizza production. Dropping
a laptop here, on the concrete
floor mandated by whizzing
forklifts, wouldn’t be conducive to
productivity.
It was quite dificult to take in the
overall scale of this operation: 63,000
square metres, most of it laptops,
most of it for corporates. The rate
of turnover of machinery by end-
users must be incredible. Tilburg
processes 16 million units a year
(or almost one per second when not
in 24/7 operation) – and I’d remind
you, this isn’t the warehouse. It’s
the distribution centre. It’s like
Heathrow for laptops.
Of course, there are irms whose
software manifest won’t work in
a build-in-factory process, or that
choose not to believe the security
promises made. (This is perfectly
fair, incidentally: if the irst time
you ind out about a security
problem is when your competitor
beats you to the stores with your
own design, then no amount of
crying over spilt milk is going to
repair the situation.) They may
112 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
work completely traditionally,
with brown boxes arriving and
internal guys ishing about behind
the doggy door for the power lead.
Dell has no quarrel with a
customer’s decision, with flexibility
a key part of its proposition. As
one of its employees remarked
when I said the intro presentation
was mostly about software brands
recently acquired, “we’re not
afraid to know that tomorrow is
different”. But it doesn’t matter how
much in the cloud you are, how
scalable you can be, or how many
cryptocurrencies you’ve launched:
the world still gets its work done on
laptops.
The burning question posed by
63,000 square metres of hustle and
bustle is: is this the future? Dell
itself acknowledges that
the market is changing, “Dell knows the market teacher performance, it
as reflected by all those is changing; it’s ‘not
acquisitions mentioned afraid to know that
above. We might retain
enough trust in our tech
tomorrow is differen” relevance and sensitivity.
brands to let them work
on our data, as well as on our
hardware. Or, we might ind that
the wind is blowing the other way,
and that data becomes more private,
ruling out this type of operation.
I expect this is a Vegemite
situation: you’re either going to love
the freedom it presents, or hate the
loss of control.
AI AND BASKETBALL
IN VEGAS
Few of us have heard of Anaplan.
This isn’t an accusation of bad
marketing on its part; it’s just
that its software is comparatively
specialised. I just about remember
it in a “back in the day” way, so I
was partly ready for an unexpected
invite to go to its annual conference
in Las Vegas and schmooze with the
heavy-hitters.
Just barely dodging planet-sized
snowstorms in Europe and the US
East coast, I rode an ageing 747 out
there and back, mostly cursing the
10,000ft pressurisation in the cabin
and reflecting on how small the
back of the plane felt after last year’s
near clean sweep in Airbus A380s.
Getting in comparisons like that
was almost the entire subject of the
show. Anaplan has been all about
helping people make and then
track plans for business operations,
software development and the like
– and this year it wanted to talk
about AI. So much so that it hired
Malcolm Gladwell to come and talk
about it. Being such a famous author
and all, he didn’t; he talked about
teachers and baseball statistics,
saying that he was worried that his
subject might be a bit nerdy. But he
suspected everyone in the room was
a nerd, so that was okay. Cue irst
warm cheer and round of applause
from the floor.
Initially, I struggled with the
connections. Maybe that’s because
I know nothing about baseball –
so little, it might even have been
basketball – but eventually, once
Malcolm attacked the same topic
by way of metrics for
clicked. His point was that
metrics can themselves
be measured, for
I don’t mean that they’re
empathic; I mean they can be
crude or even counterproductive
measures. Like the dashboard
of a vintage car, in which the oil
pressure reads 0 or 70psi and
nothing else, the temperature gauge
stays on “C” even when you’re
blinded by the steam, and the
speedo has been on 66mph since
1957.
Anaplan seems to be on the
cusp of a statement about AI,
both via Gladwell and through its
own conversations. It’s quite hard
to work out whether planning
software can make use of AI – a
“bank holiday spotter” algorithm
isn’t really AI. But it seems
like nobody dares to have the
conversation about whether AI is
relevant to the job, sensitive to the
constraints in the right way, or able
to offer useful advice or labour-
saving to the hard-pressed planner.
Sitting with Anaplan’s CEO for a
chat showed me that the company
is wary of the same issues, and
that there’s a world of difference
between what it does and what IBM
Watson does. If you like, the AI mix
in Anaplan isn’t much more than
20% of the job, whereas with Watson
it’s more like 100%. X
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EPILOG
JON HONEYBALL CONFRONTS THE EXISTENTIAL
DIFFICULTIES OF SOCIAL MEDIA. OR DOES HE?
’m not sure which was worse. Was it
I watching Zuckerberg sit on his “big boy”
cushion attempting to persuade the US
Senate that he and his company were jolly
good chaps? Or the sight of Senate committee
members asking questions of marginal
relevance of a company that had paid them
US$381,000 in campaign contributions since
2007, according to the Center for Responsive
Politics? Although I admit that the smirk
was wiped off my face at the assertion by
Mr Zee that Facebook was all in favour of
regulation, just so long as it was the right sort
of regulation.
But enough of him and the Great Facebook
Meltdown To Come. I’ve been slowly getting
back onto Twitter this month. Not in any
radical way, of course, because all the things
I hate about it are still there – it’s still an
inane and stupid platform designed by idiots.
The signal-to-noise ratio is inadequate, and
it drives me nuts that there’s no at-source
metatag iltering.
For example, a good mate writes some
very interesting things about IT, and I like to
follow his ramblings. Right up until he starts
talking about football. Now I would like to
think that I am a considerate and generous
chap, but football is one of those subjects that
makes… me… fall… asleep. It isn’t that I have
no interest in it; I have a positive rejection of
the subject.
I might yet ind a Twitter client that lets me
ilter out everything from my friend that has
football-esque keywords in it, but I would
run the risk of missing out on an IT insight
that made a passing reference. Maybe there
should be a big AI engine working out what
my friend is talking about, and preprocessing
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114 WWW.PCAUTHORITY.COM.AU
it so my client could distinguish between quite add up. The latest to cross my
useful content and twaddle. But I doubt that’s
coming any time soon.
No, my interest has been piqued by fake
Twitter accounts. Those that are obviously
bonkers are easy to spot. It’s the ones where
path was @BuyMilk, on which it
appeared that the member of staff
had been made redundant and gone
on a vitriolic spree. A quick scan
of the history of the feed showed
the joke is subtle enough to make you think it couldn’t have been real, but for a
“errr, really?” For there has been a spate of moment there, I might have been
Twitter accounts where the authors appear convinced.
(legitimately or for humorous purposes) to Is it any better on Facebook? No,
have lost the plot. not at all. A lot of forums appear to
Take JD Wetherspoon, which has closed be operated by the manufacturer
all its social media accounts, claiming it just or vendor, but aren’t at all. They’re
wasn’t working for them. Now this can be just fan sites with pretensions. I’ve
read several ways. Either it was an expense managed to get myself thrown out
having people sitting on Twitter each day, of a few recently by speaking some
and the “return on investment” wasn’t there. cold hard truths, which doesn’t go
“Currently we’ve got a massive commercial down well with fans. Someday I’ll
advantage because everyone else is wasting learn.
hours of their time,” said chairman Tim The blue tick that Twitter offers
Martin. “We were also concerned that pub up as an accredited source isn’t
managers were being side-tracked from the enough. We need a much more
real job of serving customers. I don’t believe robust mechanism for identiication,
that closing these accounts will affect our because the consequences of a
business whatsoever.” spoof takeover could be huge for
I see his point. Huge amounts of time can a company that has annoyed the
disappear down the social media hole. This wrong person. Just look at the recent
is especially expensive if, like Wetherspoons, “$40 free voucher for Morrisons”
have “hundreds of different Facebook, meme that swept through Facebook,
Twitter and Instagram accounts” according enticing people to print out this
to the Beeb. Which, if true, sounds like bad voucher and take it to their local
management to me. Having one account on store for redemption. I pity the
Twitter through which you can funnel all customer services staff who had to
communication on that platform can make deal with the onslaught.
a great deal of sense. Having every publican For myself, if it’s here then it’s me.
watching a Twitter feed seems stupid to me, so I think. Or maybe it’s the Editor in
shutting it all down could make a lot of sense. disguise and I haven’t been here for
Then there are the social media feeds that years? Hello? Is anybody out there?
are almost plausible but which just don’t
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Printed on paper sustainably sourced Please recycle
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