Teach your old spellchecker new tricks

Do you worry that you and your spellchecker aren’t speaking the same language? Mike Plant explains how to wrestle back control and get even tougher on typing errors

If Word has a nasty habit of rephrasing your split infinitives, or you’re left tearing your hair out whenever your email client fails to catch a spelling slip, you’re not alone. The built-in spellcheckers of your favourite programs can seem to throw the rules of English grammar out of the window at times, but there are things you can do to get them under control. Here we’ll explain how to replace or expand your spell-checking options to produce error-free documents and emails.

Get a faster & safer home network

It’s time to put an end to slow and unreliable home networks. Jonathan Parkyn explains how to speed up your Wi-Fi, boost your broadband, protect your privacy, share your files safely and more

If you have two (or more) computers at home working off the same router, then you have the raw ingredients of a network. You’ve probably got a combination of laptops and desktop PCs; connected to your router by a cable or via Wi-Fi; they may even all be running different versions of Windows. It doesn’t matter – they can all form elements in a home network that interact pretty much seamlessly.

Rime

The light at the and of the tunnel. After years in the shadows, Rime finally reveals its true nature.

“When you are responsible for other people – for the wellbeing of their families – sometimes you can get a lot of vertigo. But the sooner you get used to the feeling of always falling the better, because in life you often find yourself falling forever.”

Tequila Works’ CEO Raúl Rubio knows that the development of Rime is like no other. For the better part of four years, his studio has been home to one of the most anticipated independent adventure games of recent memory. But for the longest time it has also existed only on the periphery, as a project that found itself plunged into darkness as quickly as it was pushed into the light.

Fresh Hell

A short history of modern horror games – with Amnesia: The Dark Descent’s Thomas Grip

Traversing the decaying, twilit corridors of the Baker residence, we’re lost. We’re yet to find a map for this section of the swampy compound, we’re short on bullets, and we can’t work out what combiney-item thing we’re supposed to do with that clock. We’re confused, frustrated even, but also thrillingly helpless and terrified. It feels almost profound that a game can make us feel this way. Resident Evil, the series that inspired the term ‘survival horror’ yet had long since strayed from its rotten roots, has been reborn, and this year’s Resident Evil 7: Biohazard has become the clearest testament to the resurrection of the genre in recent  years. But the credit for that return to form doesn’t go to Capcom, or to Sega for the nerve-jangling Alien: Isolation. Back in 2010, while the Resi series was goofing around with co-op and the Aliens licence was being torn a new one by Gearbox and Rebellion, a little-known Swedish developer had caught the gaming world’s imagination with its quiet release of a first-person horror game on the PC.

Download Paid-For Software That’s Now FREE!

Not all tech prices are rising – in fact, many have been scrapped completely. Wayne Williams picks the 20 best formerly paid-for programs and apps that you can now download for free

We’re so used to reading about tech prices going up – from broadband to iOS apps – that it’s both a surprise and a pleasure to learn that a onceexpensive product is now available for free.

Obviously, as you see, plenty of brilliant free programs and apps around, but Premium and Pro versions of software have the advantage of being unrestricted, offering many more features and being free of ads and nags.

Over the last year, many quality tools you previously needed to pay for have become completely free. In this feature, we round up our favourites – full software, not free trials – and explain why you should download them.

Our list of newly free products includes image editors, photo filters, professional video tools, system and security software, iOS and Android apps, and much more, and will save you a grand total of at least £1,327. We also show you how to use two of our favourite new freebies.