Benchmarking Guide

How well does your PC compare to your mates’ machines? Andrew Unsworth applies some new marks to his virtual bench

You’ve spent a small fortune building your dream PC and you know it’s ultra-fast, whether rendering videos in Adobe Premiere Pro or playing the latest blockbuster. You’ve overclocked it too, so the ordinarily fast PC you’ve built is even faster than the stock item. It’s better than your neighbour’s PC and faster than anything your mates have, but exactly how much better and faster is it? How can you back you up these claims?

How To Make Your Laptop's Battery Last Longer

Rob Leane explores the ways to make your portable computer last a little longer

Our laptops are supposed to let us work, play and communicate on the go. The ability to carry a powerful PC around in our backpacks should allow us to get a whole lot of stuff done when we’re away from home or work – but, of course, this isn’t always the case.

After a while, laptop batteries seem to flunk out on us. We’re often left with a device that only works for a few hours away from a power supply. In a worst case scenario, our laptop’s lifespan gets so limited that it barely seems to work at all without being plugged into a wall socket. That renders the whole idea of owning a laptop a little bit pointless, doesn’t it?

Can't Fetch, Won't Fetch

Kevin Pocock can’t fix OneDrive. And neither, it seems, can Microsoft

Having committed to Windows 10 last year, I simultaneously switched alliance from Dropbox to OneDrive. Not because of the collective synergy of Microsoft’s products, but because of the 1TB on offer to Office 365 subscribers. For £6.99 a month, remote access to a suite of MS tools is fairly useful; it’s a not a bad price and provides a good backup for the programs installed on my PCs. Yet I rarely use Office’s online tools. In fact, it’s the 0.6 pence per gigabyte of OneDrive space that I enjoy. To reiterate, 1TB of storage for £6.99. That much virtual storage, accessible from anywhere with a data connection, lands squarely in ‘shush up and take my money’ territory.

How to fix anything!

Repair Windows, hard disks, optical drives, PCs and even your Xbox One and PlayStation. Roland Waddilove has all the answers

Christmas and the January sales are when many of us splash out on new PC hardware, consoles, peripherals and software. The bargain basement prices are just too tempting, and you can save a bundle by buying at the right time. If your new purchase is not running as well as you hoped, though, and if you’re experiencing problems with it, we have some solutions and advice that could get it running smoothly again.

Keeping old hardware running can be even more challenging than setting up new kit, and often new computers, consoles and peripherals are purchased to replace old and failing ones. Don’t ditch that old hardware yet, though, because you might be able to rescue it. Let’s look at some common problems and explore the solutions.

Apple Starts To Get Serious About 3D

Increasing passion for VR and AR at Cupertino

VIRTUAL REALITY AND AUGMENTED REALITY ARE KEY AMBITIONS

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are certainly nothing new in the consumer technology space, as shown by the emergence of headsets like the Google Glass and Oculus Rift, together with all manner of associated developments. Now, with the news that Apple has acquired the motion-capture company behind the animated characters in the latest Star Wars film, it seems that the boys and girls at Cupertino are starting to get similarly serious about all things 3D.