Kodi: New TV Streaming Sensation

Kodi is one of the most powerful media players that’s ever been released for Windows – and it’s also one of the most controversial. David Ludlow explains how to use it legally

Few programs in recent years have proved as controversial – or as popular – as Kodi. On one level it’s a brilliant music and video player, letting you stream content between computers. If you connect your laptop to your TV with an HDMI cable you’ll also be able to access and watch everything on the big screen of your television.

Kodi – known as XBMC until 2014 – also excels at online streaming. It gives you access to all kinds of add-ons that expand its basic features, so you can watch YouTube, iPlayer, out-of-copyright movies and a whole host of other video content straight from one convenient location. In addition, you can listen to hundreds of radio stations from around the world, view all your photos and stream podcasts.

Start afresh in Windows 10

If you upgraded to Windows 10 from a previous version your PC will probably be bloated with old apps and programs. Mike Plant explains how to restart Windows 10 with a clean installation

How did you install Windows 10? If, like the vast majority of Windows 10 users, you installed it over the top of a previous version – such as 7 or 8.1 – you’ve probably never enjoyed a full and clean version of Windows 10. That’s because installing one operating system over another is similar to wiping a whiteboard with an eraser. Most of what you scrawled on there has gone, but look close enough and you’ll see remnants of what was written there before.

The good news is that Microsoft’s new Refresh tool is there for users looking to make their version of Windows 10 as fresh as if it had come pre-installed on a new computer.

Here, we’ll take you through the process, starting with making a backup of all the important files and information on your PC, before explaining how to refresh Windows 10 and then get it off to the best possible start.

Keep your PC perfectly safe with sandboxing

Wayne Williams explains how to use a sandbox to protect your PC from malicious programs, snoops and more

Sandboxing is a method used to prevent software from taking control of your operating system or making any changes to it. It works by containing the program in a secure and disposable section of your computer’s hard drive or memory. Software running in this ‘sandbox’ is allowed to read data from the hard drive as normal, but it can’t write data outside of the sandbox or make any changes to Windows.

There are several benefits to sandboxing software in this way, such as keeping your system safe from potential malware and letting you try as many programs as you like without worrying about cluttering up Windows or causing problems.

It’s also useful for privacy reasons: if you sandbox your web browser, nothing you do will be recorded on your computer, and bookmarks, cookies, cached pages and browsing history will vanish when you empty or exit the sandbox.

Centralise your storage with a NAS

NAS drives take the pain out of backing up and sharing files across your PCs. Jonathan Parkyn explains why you might need one and how to set it up

Network attached storage (NAS) devices used to be costly and complicated to set up. But prices have dropped to the point where some models aren’t much more expensive than a standard external drive – Western Digital’s 2TB My Cloud, for example, can be bought for around £110 (www.snipca.com/23561). User-friendliness has also drastically improved, and many NAS devices are now simpler than ever to configure. But what is a NAS? Do you need one? And, if so, how do you go about setting one up? Read on to find out.

Complete guide to digitising your old photos

Scanning photos doesn’t have to be an organisational nightmare. Jane Hoskyn explains how to digitise and sort whole albums of photos for free

You might assume that turning your dusty old photo prints into digital photos is a right palaver. And, until recently, you’d have been right. You had to fork out for an expensive flatbed scanner, then spend days, weeks and months using the infernal thing to churn out massive files with meaningless names like ‘1931304_47829780167_8088_n.TIFF’ – not the most charming title for an image of your wedding day.

But things have changed fast, thanks to powerful scanning and tagging tools that make this once-Herculean task quick and easy. Here, we reveal the best new ways to capture entire albums of prints, then organise them using tags so your favourite scanned photos are even easier to find than when they were in albums on your bookshelf - and it won’t cost you a penny.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War

Talion sprints towards the walls of Seregost Castle, undaunted by the glittering volley of flaming arrows streaking towards him and his loyal Uruk army. Nearby, a deluge of crude orcish artillery lands, exploding into a fireball that blooms and dissipates, leaving only a shower of wet earth and green bodies tumbling in its wake.

Talion charges on. This haggard ranger of Gondor is technically a dead man – given life only by the elven wraith Celebrimbor that resides within his undying frame – but he is feared and despised by Sauron’s forces nonetheless, who trade foul stories of the Gravewalker’s unnatural abilities and martial might.

During his first tour of duty, Talion spent most of his time engaged in a scrappy guerrilla war, shanking the odd captain here and beheading the occasional warlord there. But this time, Talion’s mounting a siege on Sauron’s fortresses across Mordor and beyond – and he’s building an army to dismantle the Dark Lord’s forces.

Access hidden Netflix categories

Get more from streaming-TV services Netflix and Amazon Prime Video with our expert hacks and secret tips

Netflix offers thousands of movies and TV programmes to watch, which it organises into categories or genres. When you click the Browse link on the homepage, it displays around 20 categories. There are actually many more – hundreds, in fact – but you can’t see them. Luckily, there are several websites that provide links to them.

Visit bit.ly/genre418 and you’ll see a list containing dozens of categories. Click the link at the top to view the extended list, which contains many more. Not every link works because Netflix sometimes deletes categories, but many still function and contain fascinating movies you might otherwise miss. You’ll find an alternative source of Netflix categories at netflixcodes.me. These category links are a great way to discover different films and TV series.

Best Add-Ons For Anonymity

Lots of browser add-ons claim to keep you anonymous online, but many are ineffective. Here, we pick the nine tools you need to guarantee your privacy

Your Complete Guide to Staying Anonymous

You’re never alone on the web – there’s always someone or something watching you. Jane Hoskyn, Edward Munn and Robert Irvine explain how to beat the snoopers and be completely invisible online

Spammers, scammers and other snoopers have devious ways of tracking your every online move. Google knows more about what you’ve been up to than you do, and eavesdroppers have become adept at piecing together your so-called digital ‘fingerprint’ or ‘footprint’ from even your most mundane web activity – then using it to work out who you are, what you do and even where you live.

Fortunately, there are ways to dodge these spies, without sacrificing the pleasure and convenience of life online. We’re not about to tell you to delete your Facebook account, stop using Google tools altogether or turn to the Dark Web – well, you can if you want, but these extreme measures aren’t the only ways to guard your identity.

WLAN Beats LAN

The 802.11ad wireless standard makes wireless networks faster than Gigabit LAN cables and fibreglass. We tried out the high-speed technology

The importance of WiFi speeds has never been more important than it is now. With the emergence of 4K videos, the quantities of data that we need to transfer between devices or download via high-speed fibre internet are on the rise. Furthermore, there are more and more tablets, smartphones and compact laptops with fast – but small – SSD storage. The real-time streaming that becomes necessary overwhelms the current ‘n’ and ‘ac’ WLAN (wireless LAN) standards, which are already struggling to output the required bandwidth using the available 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands. Compatible routers can only attain peak values of up to ‘5300 Mb/s’ under theoretical conditions, which only happens if you could simultaneously use multiple WLANs on a router.

Full Speed For Every SSD

Whether it’s SATA or NVMe SSD, getting the best performance out of your drives comes down to having the optimal settings. In RAID-Combine, two SSDs can achieve unprecedented speed

The ascendancy of the SSD is in full swing. Much has been spoken about the flash memory storage drive technology in the past, specifically about its limited capacities. But now, capacities of up to 1 TB have become available and becoming affordable. Also, midrange and top class SSDs have proven their durability, further reinforced by the manufacturers via their long warranty periods. Does this mean it’s time for you to setup, install the OS of your choice and start using it? Well, it’s not as simple as that. To achieve optimal performance and lifespan for an SSD, the correct settings are required. Therefore, in the first part of this article we will be showing you the settings for the common SSD types.

Tips & Tricks - March 2017

01 [Windows 10] Deactivate the Touch function and related components

If the Touchscreen function of Windows 10 is not important to you, then you can disable it in a few steps. For this, use the shortcut [Windows] + [R] to open the "Run" window, type "services.msc" and confirm with OK. In the window "Services", search for the "Tablet PC Input", then select it and open the "Properties" by right-clicking on it. You can set the Touchscreen function to "Off" or set the Start type to "Deactivate", either one works. Save the change by clicking on OK.

Born To Be Wild

Breath Of The Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi tells us how Link embraced the open world

Under ordinary circumstances, Hidemaro Fujibayashi could be considered something of an industry veteran. He has, after all, been making games since 1995, when he joined Capcom – and he’s been a level designer, after a fashion, for even longer, having previously been responsible for planning the layouts of haunted houses for theme parks in Japan. Indeed, his ties to The Legend Of Zelda alone stretch back 16 years, to the two Oracle games for Game Boy Color.

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.