Reader Support
Is my Homegroup accessible to all?
Should I go to Moto?
QIn Issue 532’s Buy It section, on page 30, you recommended the Motorola Moto G6. I was happy with this recommendation and about to buy the phone. However, in the very same issue Jane Hoskyn stated there was an inherent problem in all Moto phones (page 74). This has made me put my purchase on hold. Could you explain, please? W Underwood
AJane can certainly be forthright at times, but she didn’t declare that there was a problem with all Moto phones. Rather, she bemoaned the restart-loop problem affecting her G4. Forums run by Lenovo (which owns Moto) suggest it’s a quirk that’s suffered by many other users of the G4, and perhaps other Moto phones – but to reiterate, not all.
Obviously, we cannot offer an absolute guarantee that the G6 (pictured below) is free from this particular problem. Indeed, some members of the Lenovo forums have reported the same hiccup with the G6. The solution is the same: a factory reset fixes the problem. Whether or not you consider that acceptable is for you to decide.ide.
Why won’t Paperscan install?
QPlease can you help? I have tried in vain to follow the Paperscan Workshop on page 40 of Issue 533, on my Windows 10 PC. I have downloaded the zipped file and then many times double-clicked the setup file. I do not see a Next button at any stage, and nor do I see one labelled Install. In fact, all I see is an advertising pop-up that invites me to download numerous games programs. Leonard Palmer
AYour last line gives us the heebiejeebies, meaning that by the sounds of things you may have accessed a fake website. We’ve doublechecked all our instructions and, while developer Orpalis has changed the download from a ZIP to an EXE file, thus negating Step 1, the subsequent steps remain accurate. So, a pop-up imploring you to download random games suggests something serious is amiss.
While the website address we printed was also accurate, we played with the spelling of the ‘orpalis.com’ domain and, by making intentional mistakes, we did find some fake destinations. So, we suspect that’s where you ended up.
To be absolutely certain that you reach the correct place, we’ve converted it into one of our own snipca links – so visit www.snipca.com/28740 (see screenshot above) to be sure you’re downloading the correct tool.
Is my Homegroup accessible to all?
QI followed your Workshop in Issue 530 (page 35) about bringing back Homegroup-style tools in Windows 10. It worked well, and it’s good to restore that functionality. My question is about privacy. There’s no password protection involved, so what’s to stop anyone with a computer logging into the folders that I have set as shared? Thanks for an excellent magazine. Michael Scott OBE
AIt depends what you mean by ‘anyone’. The whole point of Homegroups is to share stuff easily with other people using computers connected to your home network. So if you enable this feature as described in our Workshop, then that’s what will happen.
To be clear, these shared folders will not be available to PCS outside of your home network, so don’t think that any Tom, Dick or Harry on the web can access them. They will be visible only to people using a PC connected to your network, which they would of course need the password to access in the first place.
However, if you want to restrict access to specific users on your network or on a particular PC then, at Step 6, instead of choosing Everyone in the dropdown menu just pick the relevant user (see screenshot above). Then repeat if you want to add more users.