Online Region Hopping Is It Illegal?

Pretending they're in America so they can stream certain content has become the modus operandi for computer users around the globe. Rob investigates the legal issues of region hopping

Anyone who regularly watches TV shows, films or other videos online will have come across the words 'We're sorry, but this video has not been made available in your region' before. It can be infuriating to be denied access to content, especially in a world where many of us have access to hundreds of TV channels via Freeview, can access most pop music free-of-charge through Spotify, and/or use services like iPlayer to access a library of free film and television content at the click of a button.

Wear It Out

Ian McGurren spends a week with Android Wear strapped to his arm

Watches eh? They're rubbish! Just telling the time and the date, maybe an alarm if you're lucky, but do they have any apps? Or a high-resolution screen? No, so by that extension they deserve to be cast from the hi-tech futureworld of 2015 like vinyl records, newspapers and the Teasmade. Thankfully, though, both Google and Apple have seen fit to bring this relic of technology into the 21st century, so what happens when the crusty old, precision-engineered wristwatch of the past meets bang-up-to-date, bleeding-edge technology?

Apple's Force Touch And Taptic Engine

David Briddock investigates the touchy-feely experience on Apple's latest MacBooks

On 9th March, at one of Apple's Special Events, CEO Tim Cook announced changes to its MacBook product line-up. Included in this was a brand-new, ultra-thin and light 12" MacBook plus an enhanced 13" MacBook Pro. Both models had Retina displays, a better keyboard, USB-C and other welcome updates.

Confusingly, the 12" MacBook is lighter than both the 11" and 13" MacBook Air products, which may well disappear altogether at some point. However, what caught many people's attention was a completely re-engineered touchpad. It's a design that embodies both Force Touch, first mentioned for the Apple Watch, and the all new Taptic Engine technology.

Remembering... Commodore 64

A monumental 8-bit computer this week

The school yards of the early 80s were home to such gaming wonders as British Bulldog, Manhunt and Conkers, but above all else, they were the battleground for who preferred the Spectrum over the Commodore.

To the Spectrum owners, the C64 was a toilet-coloured, uninspiring box that produced blocky graphics and was purchased by parents who had more money than sense. The truth, though, was something else. In fact, the C64 (however much I hate to admit it) was a far more competent and technologically advanced machine than its 80s 8-bit rival.

Fixing Files

Not all that is corrupt is lost...

As technology marches onwards, we become more and more reliant on hope that data we store long-term will remain in pristine condition. These days, it's entirely possible that everything from your music collection to your holiday snaps to your complete archive of personal correspondence could exist only digitally, with no hard copies available anywhere.

While having data on a computer makes it easy to search, archive and reproduce, it also makes it easy to destroy. Data in digital form is vulnerable, in some ways more vulnerable than when it's stored on paper and other 'analogue' mediums. After all, in what other manner could a single particle of smoke leave your half-finished novel wiped out or inaccessible? Where else can a single scratch mean that all your schoolwork or research material becomes instantly lost to you?

Tickbox confusion

In the good, old fashioned world of high street shopping, I can be pretty sure that I’ve bought a hedge trimmer, a cinema ticket or groceries without having given the retailer permission to hound me on the phone or post a brochure through my door on a daily basis. But is the same true in the world of digital sales and goods? Sadly not. and it all comes down to the tricky tickbox.

You’ll find it lurking somewhere on the checkout page. Sometimes it says something simple: ‘tick here if you want to receive further offers by email’. At other times, though, it says ‘tick here to opt out of’ the same. To make it worse, you might get one box saying ‘tick here to opt out of receiving further offers from carefully selected partners’, followed by another that says ‘tick here to receive further offers from us'.

Get the fastest internet on your street

Is your broadband slower than your neighbours? Jonathan Parkyn reveals how to keep up with the Jones's internet speeds - without paying extra

Have you ever had the sneaking suspicion that your friends and neighbours all have faster broadband than you? You may even worry that other people on your street are slowing down your broadband by leeching (stealing) your Wi-Fi.

If so, you’ll be pleased to hear there are quick and easy ways to find out how your internet speeds compare with your neighbours’, and how to get an extra speed boost if you're stuck in the slow lane - without spending any extra cash.

Seagate Wireless Mobile Storage

A wireless hard drive for movie-watching travellers

Having to cherry pick which TV shows and movies to store on your low capacity smartphone or tablet can be a pain, especially if you’re about to embark on a long journey. Seagate's Wireless Mobile Storage is an elegant solution to this problem. Multiple users can wirelessly stream files stored on this portable 500GB hard drive and it can run on battery power for up to six hours.

Finlux 48FT3E242S-T

A big TV at a surprisingly low price

Finlux, a Turkish company previously owned by Nokia, have been making HD TVs since 2006, and its 48FT3E242S-T is the biggest and most attractive smart TV we’ve seen for less than £400. The borders around the screen are narrower than we’d expect at this price, while its sleek metal stand is a welcome change from the usual chunky plastic ones. The 48in screen is the only available size, but this shouldn’t be a problem unless you have a very cramped living room.

Can the Apple Watch be a gaming device?

We haven’t played wrist-mounted games since the days when we were wearing digital watches and velcro trainers. They were pretty simple devices, fiddly and inconvenient, but we can’t deny there was something a little magical about them. Being able to carry a game around with you on such a discreet device without anyone being the wiser (as far as you were concerned) had a certain thrill to it. A thrill perhaps usurped in modern times by the existence of the smartphone, a device that can carry tens of games around in your pocket, played by four-year-olds to 84-year-olds the world over. The smartphone, and at its spearhead the iPhone, has made us all gamers, but what might Apple's Watch add to gaming culture?

Call Of Duty: Black Ops III

Black to the future

The way we play FPS games has changed. No more hammering away with just an assault rifle and grenades; no, now it's about movement, escaping, jumping, running... It's about the fluid and skilful exploitation of your environment. With this trend of attaching a thruster to every feasible place (Titanfall, Killzone, Advanced Warfare et al), we’ve all become used to moving geometrically. Imagine a heat map of your favourite recent online shooter - the trajectory of your movements would likely form an impressionist graph, etched in blood. The thing is, since the saturation of these boost jumps, mathematical 90-degree turns and U-tums. and verticality being the new buzzword in FPS games, we’ve gotten bored. It's time for a change.

Fast Fixes: CCeaner

Avoid error messages, download missing definitions and fix problems with Windows after cleaning

Error messages during installation

If you’re trying to install CCleaner for the first time, you may see an error message if you're not logged into Windows using an administrator account. Select an administrator account when prompted, and then type the correct password. Alternatively, log out and log back in as an administrator.

You may also see an ‘Abort, Retry, Ignore’ dialogue box when trying to update or install CCleaner in Windows XP or Vista. Exit CCleaner, wait a few moments then click Retry.

Make Your PC Hack-Proof

Antivirus alone is no longer enough to keep malware off your PC. Jane Hoskyn counts down 14 new rules to beat hackers' latest tactics

Happy birthday to the word ‘hack’, coined 60 years ago by the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Then, as now, the word simply means to tinker with technology, which is one of our favourite things to do (and definitely one of the MIT model railway enthusiasts' favourite things to do). But criminals are pretty keen on it too. and they’re having a particularly busy year.

Periscope

Meet the app that turns your iPhone into a live-streaming webcam

What is it?

A free iOS app (www.periscope.tv) that lets anyone, anywhere broadcast (‘stream') live video on the web. and lets anyone, anywhere watch it. Its creators (getting carried away as tech entrepreneurs tend to) said they wanted to build "the closest thing to teleportation". Despite this daft hyperbole, many web experts are predicting a live-streaming "revolution".

Microsoft Lumia 640

A great-quality budget smartphone

Microsoft's Windows Phone has always been a distant third behind iOS and Android in popularity, even though it has been available on some high quality, low cost phones. This latest Lumia is one of the first to be released under the Microsoft brand - the company has decided to phase out the Nokia name.

The 640 is as stylish and sturdy as previous Lumia's. It may be plastic, but it’s well made, glossy and available in blue, orange, black or white. The back panel comes away easily, letting you access the battery. Hidden behind that is a microSD slot essential for boosting the meagre 8GB storage.

Apple MacBook Air 13in (early 2015)

The latest version of Apple's most popular laptop

Apple’s 13in MacBook Air was for some time right up there among our favourite laptops. When it came to weight, durability, battery life and comfort it was simply peerless. However, there are now Windows ultra portable laptops (such as Asus’ Zen Book UX303LA) that are just as good. More competition comes from Apple’s very own, more generously equipped MacBook Pro Retina range, which has become more affordable of late. Yet, rather than overhaul the Air in response to rivals that have upped their game. Apple has chosen to merely tweak this latest version.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge

The latest Galaxy is dramatically different

We weren’t exactly blown away by Samsung s previous attempt at a curved-screen Android phone, the Galaxy Note Edge, but the company clearly believes there’s a future in this technology. Whereas the Note 4 was curved on its right hand edge only, the new Galaxy S6 is curved on both sides.

The S6 Edge's curved screen is far less pronounced than the one on the Note 4, barely measuring half a millimetre (half that of the Note 4). Nonetheless, the S6 Edge has almost all the same curved-screen features as its predecessor, such as the ability to display notifications, a news ticker and a bedside clock.

Microsoft Surface 3

Microsoft's lightest tablet yet - but it's lightweight in other ways too

Microsoft’s latest tablet laptop hybrid, the Surface 3. Is both a trimmed-down version of the Surface Pro 3 and the successor to the Surface 2. Whereas the Surface 2 only ran Windows RT. and was thus limited to running apps downloaded from the Windows Store, the Surface 3 runs the full Windows 8.1. so in theory you can run any Windows program you want.

All about Apple Watch

Design

Apple Watch is the world’s best-looking smartwatch. Sure, that’s not really surprising given the clunky competition, but Apple has come up trumps with its first smartwatch. The worlds of fashion and tech have very much collided, and that’s exactly what Apple intended. It’s an object of lust that consumers will buy because it looks gorgeous, rather than for any of its market-defining features. Its curved face mimics the edges of the iPhone, while the Retina display wipes the floor with any competitors. We struggled with visibility in direct sunlight, but show us a modern device that doesn’t.

Roccat Kave XTD 5.1 Analog

Become completely surround in sound

Roccat has had a good run of decent gaming peripherals of late. The Tyon mice range and Ryos keyboards have all scored highly in both the eyes of reviewers and gamers alike.

The same can be said for the headsets on offer, in particular the Kave range. We've reviewed a Kave headset from Roccat in the past and found it to be a great addition to the gamer's arsenal. Now, though, we've managed to get our hands on the higher end of the Kave scale, the Kave XTD 5.1 Analog.

ThumbsUp Neoglow Earphones

We look at some 'flashy' budget earphones

Most technology products, like USB hubs and wireless keyboards, are created to solve a problem or make life easier. Nevertheless, there has always been and always will be plenty of room for more frivolous items too. From telephones shaped like hamburgers to pen drives that resemble cartoon characters, these features add nothing other than a kitsch appeal and sense of fun. Quite often the actual functionality of these products is bog standard at best. Is that the case with the Neoglow earphones, though?

BenQ GW2765HT

Looking for an IPS, WQHD monitor for under £300? Then read on...

Despite advances in monitor technology, trying to find a good IPS display that can hit WQHD resolutions for under £300 is still something of a gamble. There are a number of them available, but finding the right one, with decent connectivity and from a company you can trust can be fairly difficult.

BenQ, though, may have the answer in the form of the GW2765HT. This is a 27" IPS monitor with a resolution of 2560 x 1440, and using the Flicker-Free BenQ Eye-Care technology to deliver a stunning image that's easy on the eyes.

Ashampoo Music Studio 6

Ashampoo presents an upgrade to its Music Studio suite

This is an update to the Ashampoo's Music Studio program that I reviewed last year. For those that are not familiar with the product, it's essentially a collection of associated utilities collated into a main menu. They cover all the essentials from extracting or recording your audio files, through modifying and organising them, to finally burning the results to CD or hard drive. It also includes a basic method of labelling them as well.

ViewSonic VP2780-4k

ViewSonic tries to muscle into the professional market with a new 4K screen

Not long ago, I covered ViewSonic's VX2880ml, a 28" 4K screen for less than £500. The problem with that display was that it only supported 30Hz in 4K resolution, making it less than optimal for gamers.

Learning from those lessons clearly, the VP2780-4K is a marginally smaller 27" panel that can deliver 60Hz operations at full resolution, even if it's really built for CAD engineers and photographers.

Quiet PC UltraNUC Pro

Just when you think a performance PC couldn't get any smaller...

We've had our share of ultra-compact PCs through our door of late, and most have left us with a very positive impression. However, there is one tiny PC that has so far eluded our test bench: the Intel NUC - until now, of course.

The Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing) bare-bones platform has quite a following these days, thanks to the amount of computing performance that can be shoehorned into such a diminutive case.

Pioneer FREEme

Michael checks out a portable Bluetooth speaker

With the tagline of 'Listen in Style', Pioneer has released its FREEme Bluetooth speaker product, which delivers audio output from two 40mm full-range speakers backed up by passive radiator. This portable device has dimensions of 151 x 45.5 x 8.2mm and weighs 361 g, so it can easily be transported in a pocket or bag. Two versions of the product are available. The IF1 model comes in a choice of black, white or aqua rubber covering, while the more expensive IF3 version has a choice of black or brown leather livery. My review unit was the black IF1 FREEme.

How Easy Is It To Hack A Wireless Network?

With wireless networks commonplace, are we becoming complacent? David Crookes looks at how safe your network really is

Seconds. Mere seconds. That is the figure many an expert will tell you measures the time it takes for a hacker to infiltrate a home network. It may sound alarmist, it may be designed to make you sit up and listen, but a study five years ago showed that half of home wi-fi networks could be hacked in less than five seconds, and the situation does not appear to have become better since.

Digital Bards

Videogame stories have come a long way since the times of text crawls, but have they gone in the right direction? Paul Walker-Emig speaks to devs about the challenges they face when telling us their tales

“I think videogames are pretty terrible for telling stories,” Jonathan Blow, the man behind Braid and The Witness, tells us. A provocative statement and one that we expect most players and developers would react to with hostility, but he puts forward a compelling argument.

Unity 5

Rick Lane revisits the Unity engine, which is now capable of some stunning graphical feats, including real-time global illumination

When we last looked at Unity in 2013, it was a rapidly growing mid-tier engine. Big on flexibility and community support, it lacked the power of mainstream packages such as Unreal and CryENGINE. Two years and two major updates later, and Unity is much more powerful, more comprehensive and, for all but the biggest developers, completely free.

It’s firstly worth recapping what Unity 4 brought, especially its DirectX 11 support, which brought it in line with other mainstream proprietary engines. Unity 4 also affixed a whole new animation system called Mecanim to the program, and switched to smaller, more frequent updates, including rendering and physics support specifically for 2D games, and broader coverage of mobile devices.

Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX

Phanteks has typically focused on the premium tower case market with its Enthoo range, but after a long wait, it’s finally turning its attention to smaller form factors and lower budgets. The Enthoo Evolv ITX is the company’s first dedicated mini-ITX chassis, and it comes in at a very attractive £55 inc VAT price, or just £50 without a window.

Not surprisingly, the Evolv ITX has a similar design to the original micro-ATX Evolv, albeit with smaller dimensions. There’s a slightly indented front section, sharp angles and minimalist panels – it’s a clean-looking chassis.

HP EliteDesk 705 G1 Desktop Mini PC

The HP EliteDesk Mini PC is a part of the 705 G1 range of desktop PCs, aimed mostly at the larger, enterprise business user. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the small office or even home user can’t enjoy its diminutive dimensions.

There are a number of G1 models available, and this particular 705 version features an AMD A4-7350B APU at 3.4GHz, 4GB of 1600MHz DDR3 memory and a 500GB 7200rpm hard drive, with a copy of Windows 7 Pro.

Banana Pro

Lemaker, a Chinese newcomer to the hobbyist electronics scene, isn’t a company to shy away from controversy. As the name implies, the Banana Pi is a riff on the Raspberry Pi theme but with a dual-core AllWinner A20 processor, SATA support and numerous other niceties.

The company gathered considerable ill will for its naming convention, then managed to fall out with the company it had asked to manufacture the boards – SinoVOIP. That company has now forged out on its own with Banana Pi variants, and Lemaker’s latest product suggests it’s learning from its past mistakes: it has a new manufacturing partner and a new design: the Banana Pro.

Net neutrality

The idea that all Internet traffic gets equal bandwidth, regardless of content, is up against strong resistance in the UK, warns Jim Killock

Did we win the net neutrality debate? If you’re reading US news stories, it would seem so, but in the UK, we’re in fact on the verge of another serious defeat: the European Council is pushing to weaken rules on Internet content to allow more blocking and discrimination. Net neutrality is the idea that all communications on the Internet should be treated equally. Whether you’re a small web service, an individual sharing files or a web behemoth such as Google, your messages and content should be sent along each Internet pipe in the same way, without deciding that one or another deserves better treatment.

Broken Age: Act 2

Point-and-click finale lives up to its creator’s name

Double Fine’s decision to split Broken Age into two parts caused a bit of a kerfuffle among the kind of noisy wallies who really shouldn’t be allowed to arm themselves with a Twitter account. It wasn’t what was originally promised, sure, but the exquisite production values of Act 1 more than justified the Kickstarter fund outlay, and when the money ran out the studio went ahead and funded Act 2 from its own, presumably double-lined, pockets. And, you’ll be pleased to hear that it’s a fine conclusion to the first new Tim Schafer-penned point-and-click adventure for the best part of 17 years.

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China

Ubisoft takes a stab at a new perspective

Typically, games progress from 2D to 3D and never look back. But it seems that Ubisoft has hidden-bladed this convention in the face and taken a leap of faith of its own as it rolls out this three-part 2.5D series: Assassin's Creed Chronicles. It sounds like a downgrade, doesn’t it? Just hold on a minute before you firebomb forums with your Ubi-rage, though, because this is actually good... well, sort of.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Not to be confused with Call Of Duty: Black Ops III

Time Moves a little slower in the Deus Ex universe. While we've been lugging our weak, fleshy bodies around not solving any conspiracies for four years since Human Revolution's release, supercop Adam Jensen's story in Mankind Divided picks up just a mere two years after the events of the last game. Like we said: life just meanders along at a slower, more relaxed pace in Jensen's world. As slow and relaxed as it can be when you're being blown up by terrorists and punched through walls by baddies with steam engines for hands, anyway.

Goodbye 5.25in drive bays

Case design has been dominated by now-irrelevant technologies for too long, argues James Gorbold

Back in the early 1990s, a CD-ROM drive was the hot upgrade for any budding PC enthusiast, opening the door to a new era of games with vastly improved graphics, audio and full motion video. Of course, that was assuming that you could stump up the huge purchase price, with first-generation drives retailing for several hundred pounds. Finally, a good 25 years later it looks as if not only CDs, but also DVDs and Blu-rays, may be going the way of the dodo.

Dyscourse

While most survival games emphasise crafting and exploration, Dyscourse is about choice. Playing a plane crash survivor named Rita, you awake in the twisted wreckage on a remote desert island. Banding together with other survivors, Rita quickly establishes herself as the leader of this troupe, and must keep them safe and healthy until the opportunity for rescue arises.

Harman Kardon Nova

Although sound quality matters more than the design or appearance of a desktop audio system, it’s hard not to appreciate the styling of the Harman Kardon Nova’s units. This powered stereo setup comes in black or white, with a spherical transparent shell surrounding each speaker, housing a 1.25in tweeter and 2.5in woofer. The transparent plastic satellites on Microlab’s FC60BT 2.1 system look good, but the Nova looks stunning.

There’s also a set of touch-sensitive buttons. You hold the touch-sensitive power button for a few seconds to power on the Nova, and slide your finger  around the speaker to adjust volume. This control system initially takes some getting used to, as it isn’t quite the same as using a touch-screen on a smartphone or tablet, but it works well enough.

Acoustic Energy Aego M

When the Aego M first launched in 2005, the tech world was a different place. Quad-core desktop processors didn’t exist and mobile phones were for calling people, not playing music or browsing the Web. It’s a testament to the Aego M that it’s endured so well, since the world of audio hardware moves at a very different pace to that of personal computing.

Available in white or black, the Aego M 2.1 setup consists of a compact tower subwoofer with a single volume control in the centre. It has two small but deceptively heavy satellites, which have a brushed-metal finish and soft edges. The design is striking, with a single power status LED at the front surrounded by a metal ring, and the whole set looks and feels every bit a premium product.

Samsung S34E790C

Samsung’s S34E790C makes a barnstorming first impression, thanks to its arcing screen and slick metallic stand. The 34in panel’s 3,440 x 1,440 native resolution isn’t as high as the 3,840 x 2,160 of most 4K monitors, and its pixel density of 110ppi can’t match the sharpness of 30in 4K panels, which sit at 145ppi. As such, its image in games won’t be quite as crisp, but it also means there’s slightly less strain on your graphics hardware when it comes to gaming.

The Samsung isn’t as tall as most 4K panels, but it’s wider, with an aspect ratio of 21:9. This ratio opens up some full widescreen movies to their native aspect ratio, and the screen’s large diagonal means this resolution is comfortable to use every day – there’s no need to deploy Windows’ scaling options to make text and icons readable.

Asus Sabertooth X99

Asus’ TUF series of motherboards has produced some corkers over the years, but with overclocking performance narrowing in most fields, it can be tricky to justify the extra cost of any premium motherboard over its cheaper mainstream counterparts. At £285, the latest addition to the TUF family – the Sabertooth X99 – certainly sports a premium price tag as well, but it justifies its cost with a plethora of additional features.

For example, there’s an Android app that enables you to view the motherboard’s power status and view POST code displays by connecting your smartphone to a dedicated USB port on the I/O panel. It also sports arguably the best automatic fan control software available – Thermal Radar 2. This software enables you to control individual fan profile curves, or even match them with one of the included thermal probes. The software can also tap into Asus graphics card cooling fans. There are seven 4-pin fan headers too, so you can cater for most cases without needing fan-splitter cables.

DeepCool Assassin II

DeepCool’s £60 Assassin II is a monster, wielding a 120mm fan at the front and another 140mm fan sandwiched between two nickel-plated heatsinks, meaning it measures 143 x 158 x 167mm (W x D x H). There’s a mass of eight heatpipes, all with a 6mm diameter, which pass through a contact plate rather than making direct contact with the CPU heatspreader. The fans sport fluid dynamic bearings, which spin particularly smoothly and quietly, and the fan section is detachable too, so you can clean it or even spray the blades with paint fairly easily.

Funky meets functional

Weather-resistant, Wi-Fi enabled and still available in ten different colour combos, Matthew Higgs find out if Pentax’s new K-S2 ticks all the boxes...

When Pentax released the quirky K-S1 last year it turned plenty of heads with its gaudy LED lights and 15 possible colour combinations. Unfortunately, despite having decent image quality, it wasn’t particularly strong on features, leading to many potential buyers writing it off as a bit of a gimmick rather than a serious entry-level contender. Eight months on, Pentax brings us the K-S2, an advanced beginner camera with a less eccentric design and a set of features on par with the competition. Sitting just above the K-S1 and below the newly announced K-3 II, can the K-S2 finally be the Pentax to win over the masses?

Canon strikes back

Is the M3 the hard-hitting CSC we’ve all been waiting for, or just another also-ran in the fast-paced mirror less race? Matthew Higgs find out...

While canon has long been at the forefront of the DSLR market, it’s been much more cautious when it comes to CSCs. In fact, up until now, the two-year-old EOS M was Canon’s only UK CSC model, although a Japanese-only EOS M2 was produced in 2013.Meanwhile, Olympus, Panasonic, Sony and the other big manufacturers have been marching forward with ever more sophisticated mirror less models.

The original EOS M was capable of decent image quality, but many other aspects of its performance were critically slated. So when the enthusiast M3 was announced recently, claiming a complete redesigned from the inside out, Canon fans were hoping for a hardhitting model that would address all of its predecessor ’s shortcomings. The question is, has Canon done enough to make the M3 a serious contender, and what statement will the camera make about the company’s commitment to the mirror less system?

From Bedrooms To Billions Special Edition

Sven Harvey takes a look at the documentary film

Funded by a Kickstarter campaign in 2013, From Bedrooms to Billions is a documentary film charting (primarily) the founding of the computer game industry here in the United Kingdom and showing how it led the world, prior to the switch to it being a videogames industry instead.

The documentary is mainly made up of talking head footage made up of excerpts from interviews with some of the pioneers of the British industry, conducted especially for the film. The interview snippets are constructed together into time frame segments (for instance all the parts of the conversations about the Sinclair ZX Spectrum are together) and intermixed with some vintage footage, advert scans and even newspaper clippings.

The Evolution Of Radio. How FM’s Future Is Fading

Mark Oakley looks at how the digital switchover has begun

Norway is a beautiful country. We’ve not actually visited it, you understand, but we’ve seen pictures, watched videos and concluded that Norway is indeed a beautiful country. According to the Visit Norway website, it’s famous for its fjords – with two featuring on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The weather is much milder than you might expect, trolls are an important part of its folklore, and it apparently has an indigenous blue parrot (at least according to Monty Python).

The Alternative ISP Guide

The consolidation of the UK Broadband market in the last six or seven years has left us with four major suppliers, and a dearth of choice, but there are alternatives out there...

The ISP market might be bigger business than ever, but if you’re a consumer it often feels as though it’s shrunk. During the days of dial-up it seemed like everyone used a different service provider, whereas now it seems to be one of a few big telecoms or media companies, many of whom aren’t exactly famed for their low prices or good customer service.

So are there any better alternatives out there, or have the big companies hoovered up the competition’s users with good reason? Let’s try to find out.

The Pursuit Of Music Perfection

Roland Waddilove shows where you can download lossless studio-quality audio files and hear music the way the artists performed it

How good is the music you listen to? This is not a question about your favourite artist, whoever that may be, but the quality of the audio. You might think that the music you listen to sounds okay, but it’s surprising how poor most music is. You would be amazed at the difference if you heard how music really sounds.

For some people, only the best quality music is acceptable, and they want to hear it like they were in the same room as the singer or musician. The pursuit of music perfection has two components: the physical equipment the music is played on and the quality of the audio itself.

Orphan

When war of the worlds collide

The end of the world is nigh. Again. Humanity is under attack once more, and unfortunately Orphan doesn’t put you in the boots of a muscular gunman, or even a wise-cracking idiot with a baseball bat. Instead you’re tasked with looking after a young boy who might just be the sole survivor of an overnight alien invasion.