Now Amazon is milking us customers

Barry Collins observes that customers are now paying for Amazon’s dominance

No business has done more to cultivate a cuddly, consumerfriendly reputation than Amazon. The company is the Ant and Dec of online retail: almost nobody has a bad word to say about it. Prices are low, deliveries are fast and when something does go wrong, Amazon usually resolves the problem without any fuss.

Best free file-compression tools

Windows can store your files in compressed folders to save space, but it doesn’t give you much choice over how it does this. Andy Shaw tests six free programs that work faster and compress your files into smaller packages

Why Your PC Is Still Slow

Many common PC speed tips actually make things worse. Wayne Williams exposes 21 mistakes that you may not realise are slowing down your system

We’re sure that regular readers of this magazine understand the importance of regular PC maintenance and are familiar with the basics, such as defragging your hard drive, deleting junk files, uninstalling old programs and so on. Following these good practices won’t necessarily guarantee you’re getting the maximum possible speed from your computer, however – there are plenty of mistakes we all make that can adversely affect how quickly and smoothly our PCs run.

In this feature, we highlight 21 common blunders and oversights, and explain how you can avoid them to give your computer a significant speed boost. Over the following eight pages, we explain how cleaning your system too regularly – or too thoroughly – can actually slow it down, and highlight common hardware-related errors you might be making that stop you getting the maximum speed out of your system. We also explain what you should be doing to make your PC faster.