BT has become renowned for its broadband deals and possibly one of its greatest features is its willingness to throw in a freebie or two to make them even more enticing. BT’s most recent deals are no exception, offering up a few bonuses to win you over – but they’re only here for two more days, meaning you’ll have to act fast if you want in.
As well as its usual BT Reward Card (a prepaid credit card to be spent anywhere Mastercard is accepted), right now BT is also offering a year long Amazon Prime subscription and free activation on selected deals – that’s a lot of broadband bang for your buck.
Our standout choice is the BT Superfast fibre 1 package. You get all the freebies mentioned above and fast fibre speeds for a pretty affordable monthly cost. You can see all of the deals down below or go to our best broadband deals page if BT hasn’t got quite what you were looking for.
Note: If you already have Amazon Prime the subscription will stack on top meaning your next year is free
BT’s fibre broadband deals:
BT Superfast Fibre essential | 18 months | Avg. speed 36Mb | Weekend calls | £29.99 upfront | £28.99pm + 12 months Amazon Prime This is BT’s base fibre broadband package. For just £29.99 a month you get average speeds of 36Mb and 12 months of Amazon Prime (worth roughly £79). Unlike the other deals BT has here, you do have to pay the full upfront cost of £29.99 for the delivery and cost of your new kit and there’s now Reward Card.
BT Superfast Fibre | 18 months | Avg. speed 50Mb | Weekend calls | £9.99 upfront | £29.99pm + £90 reward card | 12 months Amazon Prime BT has gone all out with the freebies here. Not only do you get the base package of fibre with 50Mb average speeds but you also get a free activation, a £90 BT Reward Card and 12 months of Amazon Prime. This seems like the best value of all the deals BT has going right now.
BT Superfast Fibre 2 | 18 months | Avg. speed 67Mb | Weekend calls | £9.99 upfront | £39.99pm + £110 reward card | 12 months Amazon Prime Going up in speed, this package offers you a bumped up 67Mb average speed. Along with that your’re also getting a £110 prepaid Mastercard and the same 12 month Amazon Prime package. You can get this all for £39.99 a month.
BT Starter bundle| Freeview TV + BT Sport + fibre broadband | 18 months | Avg. speed 50Mb | Weekend calls | £59.99 upfront | £35.99pm | 12 months Amazon Prime Feel like your broadband package should come with a little bit more? Well with BT’s Classic Bundle you get fibre broadband, Freeview TV, BT Sport and 12 months of Amazon Prime. That’s a lot packed into one deal and all for £35.99 a month.
Amazon Prime offers a lot of features but there are a few key points that stand out about the service. Unlimited one-day delivery, instant streaming of movies and TV shows, unlimited access to two million songs and thousands of books with Amazon Kindle.
If you already have an Amazon Prime subscription then don’t worry, if you sign up to any of these deals then you get your next 12 months of Amazon Prime free, it will simply stack on after your current subscription.
Wanted to get a top-end flagship phone in the new year but January spending left your bank feeling empty? Well this Samsung Galaxy S9 deal could be the perfect solution offering the device for an especially affordable price.
The offer we’re referring to is this 3GB of data Galaxy S9 for just £90 upfront and a very comforting £23 a month from Mobiles.co.uk on the O2 network. Considering the average S9 deal seems is in the monthly price range of £28-32 this is an absolutely great price to be at and you don’t even have to scrimp on data or texts to get this price.
Sound like the deal for you? Well you can see all of the details of this offer below or if you wanted something a bit different with your S9 then check out our best Samsung Galaxy S9 deals page but we promise you’ll be struggling to beat this.
This cheap Samsung S9 deal in full
Samsung Galaxy S9 at Mobiles.co.uk| O2 | £90 upfront | 3GB data | 1000 minutes | unlimited texts | £23pm Here it is, the cheapest Galaxy S9 deal available right now. You would think a monthly price of £23 would be followed by a massive upfront cost but you only have to pay £90 at the start making this a great overall price. Not to mention you’re still getting a strong 3GB of data which is great for the amount your paying. Total cost over 24 months is £642View Deal
Today’s best active noise-cancelling (ANC) headphones easily run $350 or more. You can pick up Mixcder’s E7 on Amazon for $59.99. Is this budget-priced, wireless ANC headphone a Bose or Sony killer? Not by a long shot. Nevertheless, Mixcder’s E7 headphones will deliver basic active noise cancellation and solid sound to the budget-conscious consumer.
Features
Mixcder’s E7 headphone packs a very good feature set for they money. You’ll find a 400mAh rechargeable lithium battery that will deliver somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 hours when using the headphones in wireless mode. That rating drops down slightly to 18 hours if you turn on ANC. If you use the headphones wired with only ANC activated, you’ll get a whopping 40 hours from a single charge. Recharging the headphones takes about two hours and is easy with a standard Micro-USB cable. They weigh a modest 272 grams (about 9.6 ounces).
The headphones feature a 40mm driver and present an impedance of 32 ohms. Driving them with any smart device will be easy.
The E7 support Bluetooth 4.0 and have a solid wirelless range. As with any Bluetooth headphone, you’ll see a 33-foot range on paper, but real-world range depends on any walls, doors, or interference between your headphones and your wireless audio source.
Theo Nicolakis / IDG
The Mixcder E7’s click-adjustable headband is made of metal, a nice design trade-off.
You won’t find advanced audio codecs like aptX, AAC, or high-res codecs like aptX HD or LDAC here, but that’s not surprising given the price tag.
What’s in the package
The Mixcder E7’s come packed with a slick hard case, a 3.5mm cable for wired use, and a Micro-USB charger. It’s a solid accessory bundle for the price.
The headphones’ ear cups turn flat, but the headphones themselves don’t fold like our top category picks, the Sony WH-1000XM2, M3, and Bose QC35. They are a bit bulky for frequent road warriors. I found it more practical to slip them folded into my backpack without the carrying case.
Theo Nicolakis / IDG
The Mixcder E7 fold flat, but they don’t collapse into a more travel-friendly form factor.
I liked the Mixcder’s look and styling. But delivering any headphone for less than $60 involves some tough choices and compromises. I feel as though Mixcder’s designers did a good job with their balancing act. The headband and ear cups are wrapped in an imitation leather. The quality is good, but you’ll never mistake it for the real thing.
The silver arms shine like they are made of metal; but upon closer inspection you’ll note that they are plastic like the rest of the headphone. Some budget headphones make the click-stop portion of the headband out of plastic as well. Not here. I was pleasantly surprised to see metal supported with a plastic click-stop mechanism. Once again, a smart trade-off.
Comfortable fit
The pivoting and rotating ear cups make the E7 comfortable to wear; though I’m not sure how they will fare on hot, summer days. My hunch is they’ll be prone to inducing some sweat.
I was impressed with the Mixcder E7’s ergonomics. All essential controls fell naturally with the contour of my hands. Those with physical challenges to either hand will want to take note that controls fell perfectly at my middle when reaching across to the opposing ear cup. I liked the attention to that detail.
Theo Nicolakis / IDG
The Mixcder E7 ear cups are wrapped in imitation leather.
The left ear cup has power for ANC and a 3.5mm receptacle for wired mode. The right ear cup features the main power for wireless use, volume, and a Micro-USB port for charging. The power button does double duty as a play/pause toggle. Press it once for play/pause or depress it for several seconds to turn the headphones off.
I applaud the fact that ANC worked independently of the headphone’s main power. That’s not always the case with ANC headphones. There are some times where you just want ANC while using your headphone in wired mode.
I tried the headphones with calls, voice dictation, and Siri. The performance was average, meaning that the headphone worked as advertised, but had trouble with higher noise environments.
I did notice that the E7 gave a noticeable sonic thud when going in and out of Siri or phone calls. The thud was so noticeable and bothersome that I feel Mixcder should address this issue with a firmware update. All they need to do is apply a volume fade during that transition and voila! The problem will be solved.
Noise-cancelling prowess?
Let me please state a fact: Sony’s and Bose’s active noise-cancellation technologies are in their own league. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the E7 will give you anywhere close to the same levels of ANC performance.
In every context, the Mixcder failed to put me in a total cone of silence like today’s top performers can. In fact, the E7’s are among the least-effective ANC headphones I’ve ever reviewed. But lets put things into perspective: the E7 are also among the least-expensive ANC headphones I’ve reviewed. Do they deliver $60 worth of ANC performance? Probably.
Theo Nicolakis / IDG
Mixcder E7 headband detail.
In my experience, the E7 only took the edge off ambient noise at specific frequencies. To my ears, the ANC attenuated the midrange and midbass more than the rest of the frequency spectrum. If you’re trying to block the sound of your air-conditioner, for instance, these will take that edge off, but they won’t entirely mask it.
For example, I pit the E7 with Bang & Olufson’s Beoplay H9i (in for a forthcoming review). In two noisy restaurants, the E7 muffled the ambient noise around me to a slightly greater degree than the headphone’s own passive noise cancellation. The Beoplay H9i, by contrast, deadened the restaurant’s loud din, significantly attenuating people’s voices, mechanical hum, and other ambient sounds. To use an analogy, the E7 was like putting my hands over my ears while the B&O H9i was like using pillows. The same held true in other noisy venues: a bus, walking outdoors, and in a convention center.
The B&O H9i retails for $499—five times the retail price of the E7—and the H9i’s ANC is still a notch below Bose and Sony. In this case, there was a direct correlation between price and performance. All in all, I’d say that the Mixcder’s ANC performance is comparable to it’s price-point. And I don’t intend that as a criticism.
I should also mention that the E7 exhibit higher than average ANC-related hiss. Conversely, there was little to no ANC-related pressure on my ears. Some ANC headphones give you the feeling like you’re under water. That’s not the case with the E7.
Theo Nicolakis / IDG
Detail of the plastic-metal click-adjustable headband.
Decent sound for the price
ANC performance aside, how do these headphones sound? The answer is not bad! I tested the Mixcder E7 with my iPhone XS and music from Tidal. I listened to the headphone primarily over Bluetooth.
Dynamics was one of my favorite aspects of the E7’s voicing. If you like headphones that deliver some toe-tapping, musical involvement then you’ll be satisfied with the E7’s performance.
I found myself easily engaged with Imagine Dragons’ “Natural,” Dido’s “Hurricanes,” and the Revivalists’ “Wish I Knew.”
I did, however, notice a difference in the music with ANC engaged. For example, On Amy Grant’s “Lead Me On,” the E7 delivered the kick drum and other percussive instruments with more oomph when the ANC was turned off. The same was true in the midbass and the lower midrange on Imagine Dragons’ “Machine” from Origins.
The E7’s overall tonal balance was good, though I longed for more top-end openness and less veiling of midrange frequencies. What you really give up with these headphones is the ability to resolve micro-dynamics. Here again, however, it’s hard to complain consider the $60 street price.
Conclusion
The Mixcder E7 will never be in the same ballpark as the noise-cancelling cans Bose and Sony have to offer, but they are solid value. You’ll get basic active noise-cancelling performance, good battery life, wireless freedom, and decent sound for less than the price of dinner for two.
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There are still some super cheap TV sales knocking around this week even though many stores are shoving prices back up now. Amazon didn’t get the memo though and has just knocked £150 off an already very reasonably-priced 65-inch 4K TV.
If you didn’t get around to picking up a decent offer during Black Friday, then this is exactly the kind of TV deal we would have been recommending during the sales bonanza.
It’s a 65-inch Hisense TV with HDR (that’ll be the all-important High Dynamic Range everyone’s banging on about nowadays) and a suite of built-in smart apps like Netflix, Amazon Video, YouTube and catch up services like BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, 4OD and so on.
The Hisense H65AE6100UK reviewed well with the critics at the original £699 price tag, so the value has increased even more given today’s £150 discount. The picture might not pack the same punch of the far more expensive models you’d find on our selection of the very best TVs you can buy, but it’s certainly worth a look if you want a massive TV for a low price and Hisense is one of the best brands around for meeting a nice balance of quality and price.
You know what’ll look fantastic on this TV in the next few weeks? The upcoming Super Bowl live stream. But if this TV hasn’t tempted you yet (is it just too big?), be sure to check in on our full roundup of the latest cheap TV sales and deals as we’ve tracked down the best prices on a range of sizes.
Acer’s Swift 7 (2018) is unquestionably one of the lightest, thinnest laptops around. But a genuinely frustrating keyboard and trackpad, plus poor performance—which the company appears to have solved in its 2019 edition—makes us advise passing this over for the upcoming model, instead.
Physically, the Swift 7 is awe-inspiring. It’s astonishing that the 0.35-inch thin notebook needs to widen to accommodate the minuscule USB-C connectors that run along the sides of the chassis. Acer nicely provides a leather sleeve to slide the Swift 7 into, and it’s thin and durable enough to slip easily into a messenger bag or backpack.
With a 7th-gen Core tablet-quality chip inside, however, performance lags the competition significantly, while the battery life is merely satisfactory. While I loved holding and carrying the Swift 7, the subpar performance and typing experience doesn’t make the Swift 7 worth buying.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Acer Swift 7: Basic specs
Mark Hachman / IDG
Yes, the Acer Swift 7 is indeed thin—thinner than the author’s OnePlus 5 smartphone.
The build and design
Since Acer is marketing the Swift 7 as the thinnest ultrabook on the market, its measurements naturally attract the eye. The Swift 7 is pleasingly thin but in no way flimsy, as there’s nary a wobble either closed or open, even when fully reclined to perfectly flat. Nor does the display exhibit any flex. Still, when viewed from the side it’s apparent where the Swift 7’s thinness has limits, as even the thickest portion of the chassis is is unable to accommodate a USB Type A port.
Amazingly Asus managed to cram the chassis with a 45 watt-hour battery, not to mention a CPU, motherboard, and SSD. And the design makes it one of the most aesthetically satisfying laptops on the market—until you power on the display, that is.
There’s nothing wrong with a 1080p display, per se—heck, that’s how Acer stretches out the battery life—but it’s surrounded by a sizable bezel and an absolutely massive chin. In part, that’s because of the rather basic 720p user-facing camera that’s mounted in the bezel beneath the display, but even that takes up just a fraction of the overall real estate. You’re left wondering what Acer actually did with the extra space.
Mark Hachman / IDG
That’s an awful lot of empty space for one tiny little webcam.
Besides that, we had just a couple minor quibbles with the display itself. Our review unit pumped out a maximum 275 nits of luminance, which is comfortable for indoor use but not optimum for bright outdoor environments. (We use 260 nits of luminance as a floor for an acceptable brightness level.) Also, the display leans a bit toward orange, but otherwise it’s bright and vivid.
The speakers, on the other hand, are woefully underpowered, enough that you might wonder if you somehow overlooked a setting. Fortunately, the Swift 7 ships with Dolby Audio, which dials up the volume a bit and evens out the sound. Headphones or an external speaker are virtually required though.
Mark Hachman / IDG
A pair of USB-C ports adorn the left side of the Swift 7 (2018). Though they don’t feature Thunderbolt capabilities, they can be used to power the laptop.
Count the Swift 7 among the new generation of laptops that’s made a wholesale shift to USB-C ports—again, partially driven by the thinness of the Swift 7’s chassis. Neither port is Thunderbolt enabled. There’s a headphone jack alongside these ports, as well.
On the other side of the chassis there’s something a bit more interesting: a SIM slot. The Swift 7 is a “connected” PC, with both Wi-Fi and an optional cellular connection to allow you to work on the road. You won’t find any microSD or even miniDisplayPort I/O here; if you want to connect to an external display, you’ll have to invest in a USB-C hub of some sort.
From a security standpoint, there’s a fingerprint reader that works with Windows Hello. It doesn’t rank among the best I’ve tried. While I could log in fairly consistently using the reader alone, I often had to tap once, twice, or even three times before it would identify my fingerprint. After setting it down for the holidays, I had to re-key my finger.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Our review unit came with a protective pleather sleeve, which is unnecessary but can keep the Swift 7 free from dings and scratches.
From a software perspective, Acer doesn’t gum up the Swift 7 with too many unnecessary apps. The Acer Care Center provides the basic utility software that many laptop makers supply, with everything from a driver-update checker to a disk defragmenter unnecessary with the Swift 7’s SSD. An Acer Collections app serves as a referral to some of the better apps found in the Microsoft Store. There’s also Acer Quick Access, which provides shortcuts to managing the eSIM, dialing down the display’s blue-light output to manage insomnia, and “color intelligence” to adjust the color warmth of the screen in relation to the content it’s displaying. There’s still the usual Windows 10 crapware though, with unnecessary games like Candy Crush Soda Saga.
A connected PC
As noted, the Acer Swift 7 is a connected PC, meaning you’ll be able to use it at home or in the office using its built-in Wi-Fi connection, as well as on-the-go via cellular data. The Swift 7 includes both eSIM as well as an actual SIM card tray, and Acer includes a one-month, 1GB trial through a third-party wireless ISP, Ubigi.
Mark Hachman / IDG
One of the clever bits in the Acer Sweft 7 (2018) is the SIM slot, which can be slid out with a fingernail. Requiring the normal SIM tool might be a more secure option, but for convenience Acer’s solution can’t be beat.
While I wasn’t able to test the Ubigi service—this review was put on hold for the holidays, and the trial expired—setting up a physical SIM was simple enough. In fact, the SIM tray on the Swift 7 doesn’t use a typical SIM ejector pin, but includes a small indentation in which to hook a fingernail and pull out, which I found much, much easier to use. Windows was smart enough to recognize the new SIM and configure itself, and I was up and running within seconds.
Cellular performance will vary due to a variety of factors—the carrier, the proximity to a cellular tower, network congestion, and the like—but a quick speed-test comparison between my older OnePlus 5 and the Acer Swift 7 showed the Swift 7 recording download speeds a few times faster than my phone, using the same T-Mobile SIM swapped between devices in the same location. Obviously, an integrated SIM doesn’t preclude you from tethering your phone, either.
Typing experience: Bad to worse
Unfortunately, the typing experience on the Swift 7 is rather poor. As I wrote this review upon the Swift 7, I simply found that the landing areas of the keys were slightly too small to be comfortable or accurate over longer periods of time. Function keys are scattered over the first and second rows somewhat haphazardly. Though the keyboard is backlit, there’s a great deal of light bleed from underneath the Delete key on the top row, as well as from the directional arrow keys in the bottom right-hand corner. (Backlighting can be toggled only on and off, with no gradation.)
Mark Hachman / IDG
A look at the Acer Swift 7’s keyboard.
A more egregious flaw, in my view, concerns the editing keys: The Delete key is just a fraction of the Backspace key next to it, and the Caps Lock key is even slightly smaller. (Granted, the latter key is rarely used.) But I found my fingers also tracked more naturally to the Delete key if and when I made a mistake—which, on an unfamiliar keyboard, I found myself doing more than I usually would. I also found the key travel slightly uncomfortable, perhaps not that surprising in a laptop designed specifically for thinness.
But it’s Swift 7’s precision touchpad that really disappointed. The touchpad is of sufficient size, and its glassy surface is the equal of competitors like the Surface devices.
Mark Hachman / IDG
This is the worst part of the Acer Swift 7 (2018) experience: the non-clickable touchpad.
But unlike the majority of touchpads, the Swift’s 7 is not clickable. I’ll freely confess that I had to search out a reminder on how to click and drag files with a non-clickable touchpad. (Double-tap the file or files, but leave your finger on the file and drag, instead of removing it.) But occasionally it wouldn’t register taps. I hurriedly plugged in a mouse instead.
Even after some use, I felt rather miserable typing on the Swift 7’s keyboard, making it one of the few review laptops I was anxious to be rid of, and return to…well, anything else.
Mark Hachman / IDG
A fingerprint reader provides biometric authentication protection for logging in via Windows Hello. There’s a fair amount of light bleed from the backlit keyboard, which you can see here.
Performance: A tablet challenging a notebook
The Swift 7 faces a somewhat unique challenge: it’s a notebook, but powered by a processor designed for a tablet. Unfortunately, the 2-core, 4-thread 7th-generation Y-series Core chip inside the Acer Swift 7 (2018) is no match for the 4-core, 8-thread 8th-generation U-series Core chips used by most competing notebooks during 2018. The Swift 7’s challenge is also made worse by tablets like Microsoft’s Surface Pro 6, which are powered by the same U-series chips most notebooks are.
We noticed that the Swift 7 tended to power-throttle itself, too, restricting performance further. The Swift 7 (2018) also significantly warmed up during large file transfers, especially during a large Windows rollup update where the SSD was being stressed. But the laptop remained relatively cool during a computationally-intensive benchmark like Handbrake, and also when using it on a daily basis. All of this is somewhat academic, as the Swift 7 still underperformed a mix of competing laptops, all priced somewhat north of $1,000. That includes the recent HP Spectre Folio, which is also powered by a Y-series processor.
Though we don’t always test using all three benchmarks of the older PCMark 8 suite—Work, Home, and Creative—they’re representative of the type of workloads that you’ll encounter on a near-daily basis. In each, though, the Swift 7 (2018) finished at or near the bottom of the pack.
The Work benchmark tests word processing and spreadsheet use, with a little video chat and Web browsing mixed in. While the Acer Swift 7 felt fine for daily use, the numbers show it offers less performance than the competition.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Only the recent Surface Laptop 2 fell short of the Swift 7.
Ditto for the Home and Creative tests, as well. While the Home and Creative tests both stress some light gaming and web browsing, the Creative test leans more heavily into photo editing and video.
IDG IDG
Acer’s Swift 7 doesn’t fall too far, overall, but it’s still at the bottom.
Cinebench is probably the most commonly used benchmark across laptops and desktops, as it renders a 3D scene stressing all of the CPU cores in turn. Here, the 7th-gen Core compares very unfavorably.
Mark Hachman / IDG
An older chip plus power-limit throttling, and the Swift 7 suffers.
Handbrake, an open-source viceo conversion tool, is primarily used as a stress test of the laptop’s load over time. Unfortunately, the Swift 7 records an abysmal score, though the HP Spectre Folio’s is even worse.
Mark Hachman / IDG
We didn’t notice any thermal throttling as a result of overheating, and the Swift 7 cooled down quickly once this task completed. But from a performance standpoint, it still falls well short.
Don’t buy the Swift 7 to play games, either. We use the 3DMark “Sky Diver” test as an indicator of 3D performance, and again the Swift 7 finished well down the pack.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Unfortunately, the Swift 7’s thin chassis doesn’t allow much room for a battery, and the 33 watt-hours that it can generate on a full charge is well below the forty- and even fifty-odd watt-hours of the competition. Battery life therefore suffers, though in all fairness about eight hours or so suffices for close to an all-day work experience. Our rundown test loops a 4K video over and over until the battery expires, however, and doesn’t measure the ebb and flow of a day’s work.
IDG
The Swift 7’s battery life is disappointing, too.
It’s worth noting that turning on Dolby Audio—which, as we noted above, improves the sound quality—appeared to steal possibly 45 minutes of battery life. We tested, as we usually do, using a pair of earbuds with Dolby Audio turned off. There’s enough volume that Dolby isn’t necessary except to enhance the sound.
Conclusion: Thin may be in, but count the Swift 7 out
Because of a number of delays, our review of the Swift 7 (2018) arrives after we’ve already seen the Swift 7 (2019), thanks to Acer’s booth at CES. And we’re enthusiastic: not only is it lighter, but the bezel has nearly disappeared, the USB-C ports now include Thunderbolt capabilities, and—hallelujah!—the touchpad is now a true “clickpad”. There’s an 8th-generation Core processor, too, which hopefully should bring the performance of the Swift 7 up to par with its competition. In all, it sounds like a substantial improvement.
The updated 2019 version isn’t launching until May, though. Right now, it’s hard to recommend the current iteration of the Acer Swift 7. It’s certainly a joy to behold, and to carry from home to work. But then the problems set in. We’d lower its review score as a consequence of its poor performance, certainly. Its fatal flaw, however, is the poor keyboard and even worse trackpad.
Fortunately, it’s only a few months until Acer ships an improved version of the Swift 7.
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From 1 February 2019 TalkTalk will be automatically charging its TV customers an extra £4 per month for a multi-room service, whether it’s used by them or not.
TalkTalk’s TV service comes free to its existing broadband customers, but there is an additional charge of £4 per month (or £48 per year) that allows you to watch TV in two different rooms at the same time. The charge will now automatically apply to TV only customers at the start of next month, the rise in fees coming from a change to tariff add-ons.
If multi-room isn’t something you have any use for then it is possible to opt-out of this service by using one of the methods below – thankfully, TalkTalk has made this process nice and simple.
How to opt-out of TalkTalk TV’s multi-room charge
There are two easy ways to opt out of the additional charge:
Head over to TalkTalk’s website, log into your account and access the support centre.
Call TalkTalk’s customer service department on 0345 172 0088
You won’t be breaking any contract obligations here, so you can re-join or cancel this service at any point without being charged or penalised – however, you won’t get access to ‘boosts’ which include certain Sky services such as Sports and Cinema if you do decide to opt out.
If you do wish to continue to pay for the multi-room feature, you will be able to claim a £5 film voucher from 1 February – just head to the ‘More TV’ section on your TV Box and clam the voucher there.
If you’re thinking about switching your broadband provider, make sure you take a look at our broadband deals article too.
It’s no wonder security remains such a tough challenge for marketers or developers building a website today—the security landscape is simply a difficult one to navigate. Threats continue to evolve, attacks are more widespread than ever, and cyber criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
According to a report from cybersecurity firm Imperva, 2018 saw a 23 percent increase in web application vulnerabilities, or attempted cyber-attacks against websites, from the year before. Over a two-year period, that number was up 162 percent. Security should be everyone’s concern as it’s not something that will take care of itself.
In fact, security is the number one concern among people who elect not to use WordPress, even though it’s the most widely used Content Management System (CMS) in the world. Because WordPress is so popular—it accounts for more than 33 percent of the web and powers a third of the world’s top 100,000 websites—it’s, not surprisingly, also the most targeted CMS when it comes to web application vulnerabilities, including SQL injections, cross-site scripting, HTTP floods and a slew of other attacks.
There is of course a difference between targeted attacks and successful ones. While there are a high number of attempts against WordPress sites in general, attackers tend to succeed when the administration or management of those sites is being neglected—something we refer to as “WordPress in the wild.” This is a scenario where the CMS has effectively been left to run on its own; updates haven’t been made to the latest version of WordPress, or third-party plugins, which sometimes contain vulnerabilities, have been installed. It’s often a combination of both.
Managed WordPress hosting
When WordPress is carefully managed and kept up-to-date, those associated security issues drop off dramatically. At WP Engine, for example, we manage our customers’ WordPress backend so they don’t have to worry about the latest updates. We also keep a running tab of disallowed plugins that are not allowed on our customers’ sites, which in many cases is due to vulnerabilities associated with this type of third-party software.
These efforts alone keep many of our customers safe from the vast majority of unsophisticated exploits that may be levelled against their WordPress sites. For protection against more sophisticated bad actors, WP Engine also offers customers integrations with enterprise-grade security solutions, such as our recently-launched Global Edge Security package, created together with leading Internet performance and security company Cloudflare specifically to secure our customers’ WordPress sites.
Global Edge Security combines the intelligence and expertise accumulated from serving our 90,000 global customers with Cloudflare’s web application firewall (WAF), distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection, content delivery network (CDN) and its global edge network, which spans across more than 70 countries. Together, these services help us deliver secure, scalable WordPress sites to our customers and give them peace of mind that they’re being protected against some of today’s most common cyber-attacks, as well as those directed against them from more sophisticated actors.
Today’s security landscape requires an active, vigilant approach if you are going to keep your website safe and secure. Going it alone is an increasingly complex, expensive and risky effort, which is why a growing number of marketers and developers are leaning on WordPress security experts like WP Engine to make sure their sites, and their security are in good hands.
Fabio Torlini, Managing Director EMEA at WP Engine
