Readers’ comments
Your views and feedback from email and the web
You’ve got mail
Pete Mitchell’s letter ( see issue 317, p22) bemoans the withdrawal of mail forwarding from Yahoo Mail. Surely the first alternative is to use a mail fetcher process in another mail service to get the emails from the Yahoo account? The only downside is that emails may take a few minutes longer to arrive.
Many email providers have shut down, sometimes with quite short notice. That includes email provided with broadband accounts such as Tiscali, Orange, Freeserve, Wanadoo and Demon Internet. If you choose to change broadband provider, you’ll likely be charged if you want to keep the associated email address. I believe BT charges £7.50 a month if you wish to keep your @btinternet.com email address.
My advice is to switch to a provider that’s (probably) here to stay: Gmail, Microsoft Outlook or ProtonMail – all of which provide a good free service or a better commercial one for around £50 per year.
Also, if you buy your own domain name, most registrars provide email forwarding. That means you can have addresses such as your.name@ your-chosen-domain.co.uk and route the incoming emails to any other address you may have. If your email provider shuts down, you just need to change the address that emails are forwarded to.
Even better, you could do both: buy a domain name and host it with a paid Gmail, Outlook or ProtonMail account. And it’s best to do it now before the decision is forced on you. Rob Hindle
Without a trace
I’m currently recovering from Covid-19. The test centre, my GP and the hospital were all linked and worked together. It was brilliant.
Then there’s NHS Test and Trace. As soon as I got my result, I entered it into the NHS app. I then got a text with a link to fill in tracing details online. I completed this but then still
Our star letter writer wins their very own mug to help them get through even the sternest IT challenge. For your chance to win, email letters@pcpro.co.uk got a phone call from someone who went through the whole thing again quite unnecessarily.
A week later, I started getting texts saying that I haven’t completed the online system. I ignored these because I’d already done it and then got a phone call. I explained that I’d already gone through this online, as well as with a person, and was told they had no record of it. I live in the country that invented the computer so why do we have such an awful system? Dave Wright
Sky’s the limit
I feel so much better knowing that even a former editor of PC Pro doesn’t know what a fronted adverbial is
I’ve just read your article about
Wi-Fi upgrades ( see issue 317, p10).
As a Sky customer, I also had poor coverage with the Q Hub. It was good when I had Sky Q Mini boxes around the house, but when I cancelled Sky TV, I realised how much they helped the Wi-Fi.
However, it’s extremely easy to upgrade it and you don’t need to pay extra each month. You simply buy a better wireless router without a modem and connect it to the Hub via a simple LAN cable. You can then use the Q Hub as a modem only (it’s excellent at that) and I use a WAN link router with four antennas to send the Wi-Fi around the house. I have a second one set up as a repeater that boosts the signal upstairs, meaning I get a strong signal into the loft.
The result is a speed of 20Mbits/sec to 30Mbits/sec in every room for £70 with no extra monthly fee. This setup has worked with every program, including games, and device I’ve used it on. Paul Tasker
As easy as Pi
Reading Steve Cassidy’s column ( see issue 317, p20) took me back years to when I started using Raspberry Pis for the first time. I can’t help Steve with his network storage problems of named DNS zones, but I think I can help with the audio issues.
I thought he was talking nonsense about the audio socket… until I checked the specification! However, there are a number of solutions, of which a USB audio plugin is the cheapest. For example, this one is under £3: pcpro.link/319usb.
The next wrinkle is that, regardless of the connected or Bluetooth-paired audio devices (including high-quality audio cards plugged into the 40-pin socket at the rear), you need to rightclick on the loudspeaker icon and select the audio device you want the Pi to use.
My Raspberry Pi 4 has a highquality audio card (about £14) and the standard Pi audio socket (not available in the Pi 400) and I’ve used it with many Bluetooth devices,
including my TV surround sound studio monitors, with cheap audio interfaces such as the above and a 16-channel Focusrite professional computer audio interface. If you want a microphone and line out for Zoom, the cheap interface is one of the few solutions that won’t break the bank. Roy Leith
Here to help
Reading issue 318 has made me feel much better! I now have a better understanding of Wi-Fi 6, I feel better able to create an Alexa skill and I’m better placed to avoid dodgy internet banks. But most of all, after reading Barry’s column on p22, I feel so much better knowing that even a former editor of PC Pro doesn’t know what a fronted adverbial is – maybe I’m not doing so badly at homeschooling after all. Alan Ingram
Spirit of Micro Mart
Many years ago, while I was at college, I used to subscribe to Micro Mart. A few years ago I thought I’d resubscribe again and, to my horror, discovered that the magazine had ceased publication at the end of 2016. I tracked down a copy of the final issue off eBay – which was a bargain at £1.20 – and thumbed through it with fond memories. It was then that I set out to find a new publication and I duly discovered PC Pro and have recently subscribed, receiving my first edition yesterday.
I’m very impressed with the wide range of content, featured products and editorial content. It’s great to see that there’s still a market for likeminded tech enthusiasts out there. As I’m pretty old-school, I prefer to have a paper copy in my hands to read, so I hope these are around for a while longer yet. Paul Clemence
Editor-in-chief Tim Danton replies: Thanks, Paul! We intend to be around for a good few years yet, but we couldn’t do it without subscribers old and new.
Despite the controversy and challenges from services such as Signal and Telegram, WhatsApp still rules supreme with our tech-savvy readers – although that often seems to be due to inertia rather than any love for the app. “I don’t use WhatsApp by choice, but mostly because people want me to use it. I rarely initiate a WhatsApp call,” wrote Mr G.
“I miss the days when you could use an app like Trillian as a single interface for many different messaging applications.”
Kevin, meanwhile, is on the brink of leaving the Facebookowned service: “The moment WhatsApp enforces a Facebook account or changes their privacy to affect us in the EU/UK, I’ll revert to text messages.”
Persuading my contacts to switch is very difficult. I prefer Signal. After WhatsApp announced a change in their policy, users should consider ditching their service – after all, it’s owned by Facebook Chris
WhatsApp just works and is free Adrian Fairley All of my friends and work colleagues are on WhatsApp. It would only work if we all moved
Michael Milner
Others I know just won’t leave WhatsApp – how would I contact them? I try to ensure that anything I do on WhatsApp is nonsensitive David Ward