Gigarefurb Refurbished Laptops News

The Mpow Universal Bike Mount Holder can be fitted on any bike, motorcycle or scooter with a handlebar of 1.1″. No tools are required with just a screw on the flipper and it’s designed with a one-button released function. It’s suitable for any smartphone of up to 5.7″. For extra security the clamp automatically adjusts to grip the device that holds in place firmly thanks to a strong adjustable non-slip clamp with silicone band straps. Get the Mpow Universal Bike Mount Holder for just £8.29.

You may also be interested in the following offers

Save 71% and get the Rampow MFI Lightning Cable for £6.29.
Charge and sync your Apple devices with this Rampow MFI (Made For iPhone) Lightning Cable. It’s compatible with all 8 Pin Apple devices including the iPhone 5, 5C, 6, and later, but also iPod Nano 7, iPad mini 2, mini 3, mini 4, iPad Air, iPad Pro and later. The nylon cable provides additional protection against bent damage and the USB and Lightning casings are protected by an aluminium shell.

Get the Mpow Grip Flex phone holder for just £8.99
With 10 inches in total length, the Mpow Grip Flex brings your phone closer to you. It can also sit on the dashboard to prevent it from falling off. Two arms keep the device locked tight and there’s a release button in the back. The Mpow Grip Flex Car Phone Holder is compatible with most smartphones including the iPhone 7 Plus, the Samsung S7 Edge and the Google Nexus. Get it for just £8.99.

46% off the Mpow Smart Fitness tracker

The Mpow Smart Fitness tracker can track your daily activities and monitor the quality of your sleep. It counts steps, calories burned as well as distances. It has a built-in screen and connects to the smartphone via Bluetooth to display caller ID and messages. It can also display messages from Facebook, Titter, Whatsapp, and more. The Mpow Smart Fitness Bracelet can also track sleep and wake you up with silent alarms. Get it today for just £21.69 with free delivery in the UK.

Save more than 50% on the Epson WF-2750DWF All-in-One Printer and get an extra £15 off

Amazon has a great offer on the Epson WF-2750DWF All-in-One Printer. Save 40% and get if for £59.99 with free delivery in the UK. You can also claim £15 cash-back within 30 days of purchase. The WF-2750DWF is an All-in-One printer with double-sided printing, scan, copy and fax. It features USB, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct and Ethernet. Using the LCD screen you can send scans to online cloud storage accounts or share them in an email. Also with individual ink cartridges you only need to replace the colour used.

£49.99 for the Blu Studio G HD 4G-LTE

This affordable 4G dual SIM smartphone has a 5-inch screen with HD resolution (720 x 1280 pixels), a quad core MediaTek processor and 1GB of RAM. It also packs a 5MP camera with autofocus at the back, and a 2MP camera at the front. Get the Blu Studio G HD 4G-LTE today for just £49.99 with free delivery in the UK.

Save 43% on the Sennheiser PC 320

This gaming headset has been developed to provide you with great audio and wearing comfort thanks to the Sennheiser-patented CircleFlex system. It ensures that the ear pads can swivel around their base and instantly adjust to your ears and head. Also the headset features an over-the-ear, open-acoustic design that ensures that air flows through to prevent sweat. Volume control are integrated on the ear cup for quick access and the microphone features noise cancelling as well as a smart mute function, which you activate simply by raising the boom arm. Get the Sennheiser PC 320 for £40 with free delivery in the UK.

Get the Veho M7 Bluetooth speaker for £69.99

With its retro design, the Veho M7 is a Bluetooth speaker to stream music from your smartphone or your computer. The dual acoustic drivers are coupled with two 10W speakers and the rechargeable battery delivers 10 hours of music. The Veho M7 is IPX4 rated meaning that it’s protected against dust and water. It also features a USB port to serve as a powerbank to charge your smartphone. Get the Veho M7 Wireless Speaker for £69.99 on eBay.

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Intel’s H270 chipset offers increased connectivity and support for faster memory and storage devices. Here is a list of all H270 motherboard’s currently available.

Intel’s H270 Chipset

Intel’s new H270 chipset was released alongside the company’s new Kaby Lake processors and it offers several improvements over its predecessor. Compared to H170, H2700 supports faster RAM clocked at 2400MHz and is compatible with Intel Optane storage devices. H270 also has eight additional HSIO lanes and four extra PCI-E 3.0 lanes than H170. This helps to boost the total number of storage devices and other peripherals that can be used simultaneously.  Intel released its 200-series chipsets, offering mild improvements compared to their 100-series counterparts.

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Intel Consumer Chipsets

Chipset	X99	Z270	Z170	H270	H170	B250	B150
CPU PCI-E 3.0 Config Support	1 x 16 or 2 x 16 or 2 x 16 + 1 x 8 or 5 x 8	1 x 16 or 2 x 8 or 1 x 8 + 2 x 4	1 x 16 or 2 x 8 or 1 x 8 + 2 x 4	1 x 16	1 x 16	1 x 16	1 x 16
Chipset PCI-E Support	8 PCI-E 2.0	24 PCI-E 3.0	20 PCI-E 3.0	20 PCI-E 3.0	16 PCI-E 3.0	12 PCI-E 3.0	8 PCI-E 3.0
Maximum HSIO Lanes	18	30	26	30	22	25	18
Memory Channels/ DIMMs per Channel	4/2	2/2	2/2	2/2	2/2	2/2	2/2
DMI	2.0	3.0	3.0	3.0	3.0	3.0	3.0
CPU Overclocking Support	✓	✓	✓	✗	✗	✗	✗
RAID Support 0/1/5/10	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✗	✗
SATA 3.0 Ports	10	6	6	6	6	6	6
Intel Optane Support	✗	✓	✗	✓	✗	✓	✗
USB 2.0 Support (USB 3.0)	14 (6)	14 (10)	14 (10)	14 (8)	14 (8)	12 (6)	12 (6)
Independent Display Support	N/A	3	3	3	3	3	3

MORE: Intel Z270 Motherboard Price List

MORE: Intel Z170 Motherboard Price List

MORE: Intel H170 Motherboard Price List

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MORE: Intel B150 Motherboard Price List

Intel H270 Mini-ITX Motherboards

ASRock

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Intel H270 MicroATX Motherboards

ASRock

Asus

MSI

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Intel H270 ATX Motherboards

ASRock

Asus

MSI

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Passwords are a necessary inconvenience. Yes, they’re a pain to create and manage, but vital for keeping your accounts and devices secure. It might seem we’re approaching the death of the password with the rise of biometric authentication and other such tech; but no single security method is foolproof. For the foreseeable future, expect to rely on a combination of techniques, including passwords.

And, really, passwords don’t have to be a pain. In fact, managing your passwords can be downright easy, or at least easier than you think.

Create strong passwords

There are a number of suggestions for how to create passwords, but the basic idea is that it be hard to guess. To be clear, we’re not trying to keep your neighbor from guessing it, but a computer running through dictionaries of common passwords.

That means no common words or phrases, and passwords that use a mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols are most desirable. Some services don’t allow the use of symbols, so be on the lookout for those restrictions. As for length, the standard suggestion is eight characters minimum, but 10 or more is even better.

The easiest way to create strong, randomized passwords is to use a password manager such as 1Password, LastPass, or Dashlane. All three of these services can create new passwords for you of varying length and complexity. Plus, a computer program is much better at remembering all of your complex passwords than you could ever be.

Whatever you do, don’t use any of the passwords listed here.

You’re probably wondering what’s so easy about creating a variety of random passwords that are hard to remember, but this is the first step. When you have hard-to-guess passwords (combined with the next step), things get a lot simpler since you can be reasonably confident your passwords are secure.

Stop changing your passwords so frequently

Common wisdom these days is that changing your passwords regularly can do more harm than good. That’s largely because people tend to pick poor replacement passwords that are easy to guess.

VROIS is a young VPN which, at first glance, seems to offer a simple, appealing service. There are 25 locations, no bandwidth or transfer limits, plus you get port forwarding support and five simultaneous connections, all for a reasonable $5.99 per single month (£4.80, AU$7.80), $4.99 per month (£4, AU$6.50) over a full year. Sounds great, until you start to browse the website, and problems begin to appear.

The base Connect plan says it offers 25 servers, for instance, and a $9.99 per month (around £8, AU$13) Pro plan claims 50 servers – but it doesn’t say where these are. 

The Network page mentions 35+ servers in 24 countries, and provides a list of ‘our server locations’. But this is only 22 items long, includes one location twice (London) and covers just 15 countries.

This page also displays a ‘load’ value for each server, reassuringly low at 5% to 47%. Except these figures seem to be hard-coded into the page. They didn’t change during testing, ever, and checking the page in Google’s cache showed exactly the same figures.

We gave up on the servers and started to look elsewhere, but the confusion continued. We tried clicking the ‘Download on the App Store’ and ‘Get it on Google Play’ buttons to check out the mobile apps, but neither of them took us to those respective app stores. A Google search helped us locate the Android client, but the service doesn’t actually have its own iOS app (you must use OpenVPN).

None of this was inspiring much confidence in VROIS, and as customers we’d be running away at this point. But this is a review – so onward we pressed…

Privacy

VROIS is very clear about its logging policy: ‘No logs ever’. The service doesn’t log your online activity, so has nothing to hand over to the authorities even if it’s asked.

Just about every VPN service makes the same claim, so we also look for information on session logging. Some companies record your connect and disconnect times, bandwidth used, incoming and outgoing IP addresses and more. Often they’ll spell out some details on this in the small print, but VROIS doesn’t mention the issue at all.

What the privacy policy does include is a lengthy list of personal information VROIS might collect: “Your name, address, telephone number, fax number, email address, dates of service provided, types of service provided, payment history, manner of payment, amount of payments, date of payments, and credit card or other payment information.”

This sounded unusual, so we checked for the same list on Google and found this and some other clauses in the VROIS privacy policy were identical to a policy page from PSEUDiO – the company behind TotalVPN.

Was the company borrowing its small print from other web pages? We quickly found another example. The VROIS terms of service page has an unusual typo in a reference to an ‘acceptable user policy’, and Googling for the surrounding text found just one identical match: the terms of service for Incognito VPN.

Looking more closely, we found the PSEUDiO and Incognito pages contained working links to an email opt-out page, a contact email address, an ‘acceptable use policy’, but the VROIS versions were all broken (web links pointed at vrois.com, the contact email address was legal@.com). It looks like VROIS has built at least some of its policy pages by copying and pasting text from elsewhere, but never finished the job.

Whatever the explanation for all this, it wasn’t inspiring any confidence. So far, VROIS was giving us far more reasons to run away than sign up.

Performance

Creating a VROIS account looked like it should be a simple matter. Choose a plan, a payment provider, enter our name and email address – it’s a completely standard procedure we’ve done thousands of times before.

But as ever with VROIS, there were unexpected issues. We chose PayPal, approved the purchase, but the VROIS site displayed a ‘payment cancelled’ message. An email arrived from PayPal moments later detailing the purchase, so this simply wasn’t true, but our VROIS account didn’t recognise the payment.

Time to test the support system. VROIS supports live chat, but it would take any agent time to check our payment details, so we created a new support ticket with our PayPal references. At least, VROIS claims to have a ‘ticket’ system, but we weren’t given a number, or emailed a copy, and there was no way to view our ticket’s status later. Whatever the truth, the company seemed not to care that they’d taken our money without providing anything, and 12 hours later nothing had happened.

VROIS provides a limited free service anyway, so we decided to try this out. The service offers one Android app of its own, and very basic setup instructions for Windows, iOS, OS X and DD-WRT routers.

We clicked the Windows button and followed the directions to download and set up the standard OpenVPN client. It was good to finally have a list of 30 servers, even if they were named in just about the most jumbled and confusing way possible: there were cities, countries, places (Silicon Valley, Lake Elsinore), and Texas appeared four times (Texas, Texas 3, Dallas, Houston). Throw in an assortment of typos (Sweeden, Morroco) and the company somehow lowered the professionalism bar even further.

Surprisingly, once we got connected, performance was better than average in our tests*. We connected from the UK to various European servers and our download speeds were almost always above 30Mbps. Chicago wasn’t as impressive at 18Mbps, but even Singapore gave us 10-15Mbps.

And yet, even here there were complications, as we found some servers didn’t appear to be in their ‘official’ location. The Vietnam server was reportedly in Singapore, for instance. We could live with that – geolocation isn’t always exact – but when the Russian server gave us a French IP, and logging on to Ohio and Morocco both gave us a Dutch address, we realised something was wrong. Again…

Final verdict

VROIS just might have a reasonable core network, but the service around it is so poor, so inept, and so unprofessional that we’re struggling to care. Try the free Android app, maybe, but please don’t give VROIS your money.

*Our testing included evaluating general performance (browsing, streaming video). We also used speedtest.net to measure latency, upload and download speeds, and then tested immediately again with the VPN turned off, to check for any difference (over several rounds of testing). We then compared these results to other VPN services we’ve reviewed. Of course, do note that VPN performance is difficult to measure as there are so many variables.

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Google has released details of a bug in Microsoft’s browsing programs that would allow attackers to build websites that make the software crash.

Google researcher Ivan Fratric said the bug could, in some cases, allow attackers to hijack a victim’s browser.

The bug was found in November, but details are only now being released after the expiry of the 90-day deadline Google gave Microsoft to find a fix.

Microsoft has yet to say when it will produce a patch that removes the bug.

Quick fix

In an explanation of how the bug arose, Mr Fratric said he was reluctant to reveal more details until it was patched.

He said he had expected Microsoft to address the bug before the 90-day deadline had expired.

The problem is found in Internet Explorer 11 as well as the Edge browser and arises because of the way both programs handle instructions to format some parts of web pages.

In a statement, Microsoft did not comment directly on the bug and its significance but said it had a “customer commitment to investigate reported security issues and proactively update impacted devices as soon as possible”.

It added it was involved in “an ongoing conversation with Google about extending their deadline since the disclosure could potentially put customers at risk”.

So far, there is no evidence that malicious attackers are exploiting the problem unearthed by Mr Fratric.

The publication of information about the browser bug caps a difficult period for Microsoft and the security of its software.

Earlier this month, it cancelled a regularly monthly security update without explaining why.

The update was expected to include fixes for several significant vulnerabilities.

In the same month, other security researchers released information about a way to exploit a vulnerability in some Microsoft server code.

No fix has yet been released for this vulnerability.

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The owner of an aerial photography business has been sentenced to 30 days in jail after a drone he was operating knocked a woman unconscious.

Paul Skinner was found guilty of reckless endangerment, by a judge at the Seattle Municipal Court.

It is believed to be the first time a drone pilot has been given a jail sentence.

The incident happened during Seattle’s 2015 Pride Parade.

According to the police, the 18in (45cm) by 18in drone crashed into a building and fell into the crowd, injuring two people.

Judge Willie Gregory said he acknowledged that the incident was an accident but added that the pilot had “engaged in conduct that put people in danger of being injured”.

Close calls

Prosecutor Pete Holmes said the faulty operation of drones was a “serious public-safety issue that will only get worse” and more prosecutions could follow.

Ravi Vaidyanathan, a drone expert from Imperial College London, said he was “not aware of anything previously resulting in jail time”.

He said it was inevitable more accidents would follow and called on the regulatory bodies that governed drone use to provide “a consistent set of guidelines on usage”.

“In the US, there are rules for commercial use but different ones for hobbyists,” he said.

“In the UK, rules are governed by the size of aircraft, so in my understanding anything under 20kg [3st 2lb] can be flown without regulation.

“We are in uncharted territory, but the guidelines have to be consistent.”

He added the inconvenience to the public was also “non-trivial”.

“Having a drone buzzing around does not add to most people’s beach experience, for example, and we need to think about this too.”

During the past fiscal year, more than 1,200 possible collisions between an aircraft and a drone were reported to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The FAA was unable to confirm any strikes, but it has reported several close calls, including a Lufthansa jet approaching Los Angeles that passed within 200ft (60m) of a drone.

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iPad Pro 2 price, release date and specs UK | New iPad Pro rumours

Three iPads are expected in 2017, but what can we expect from the new iPad Pro? We round up the iPad Pro 2 UK release date, price and specification rumours.

We round up the latest news and rumours on the iPad Pro 2

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By Chris Martin | 16 mins ago

The word on the street is that Apple will unveil three new iPads in 2017: an entry-level 9.7in iPad that will replace the iPad Air 2, and two iPad Pros with screen sizes of 10.5- and 12.9in. Here we round up all the rumours about what to expect from the second-generation iPad Pro, including its UK release date, price and specs. See: Best new tablets coming 2017.

Here’s a summary of what to expect at a 2017 iPad launch:

• New 12.9in iPad Pro with new A10X processor (plus other upgrades) and updated Apple Pencil 2
• New 10.1-10.5in iPad Pro with the new A10X processor, ultra-thin bezels (and possibly no physical home button) and updated Apple Pencil 2
• New ‘low-cost’ 9.7in iPad with A9 or A9X processor (the iPad Air 3 maybe)

Update 28 February: Japanese site Mac Otakara reports that a source has said Apple is indeed launching new iPads – including the 12.9in Pro 2 – in March. And a new iPhone SE (if only with increased storage) and new iPhone 7 models (if only new colour options) will also be launched at the special event. DigiTimes, quoting sources in the supply chain, says the iPad Pro 2, and the new 10.5in tablet, won’t go on sale until May because of manufacturing delays.

Other slightly older rumours claim the trio of new iPads for 2017 probably won’t be announced until the second half of the year. If that is true, they’ll probably share stage time with the new iPhones. One reason for the delays is said to be poor yields of the new 10nm processors. Read more.

iPad Pro 2 release date

Expected launch date: March 2017 OR September 2017

The original iPad Pro, reviewed, launched in September 2015 and the 9.7in arrived in March 2016. We suspected an iPad Pro 2 reveal (and maybe a new iPad mini or an iPad Air 3) in September 2016, but it didn’t happen. 

Some rumours say the new generation of processors aren’t ready and will cause the iPads to be delayed until the second half of the year. The current A9X chip – which is used by both iPad Pro models – is based on the 16nm FinFET process. This is the same used by the latest generation of graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD. In order to produce a chip with significantly faster performance without high power consumption, Apple is having to move to a 10nm process. Rumours say that very poor yields of the new chips mean that the vast quantities Apple needs to launch new iPads are simply not going to be available until later in the year. Update: DigiTimes has reported that the delays aren’t so bad and that the new iPads will go on sale in May, following their March launch.

If this is incorrect and the delays are significant, Apple may choose to combine the launch of the iPads with the new iPhones (which could also use 10nm processors) and hold an event at it’s usual time in September. However, this is speculation at this point and we’ll have to wait and see.

A new piece of information that indicates Apple is working on a new iPad Pro is the below patent for a new Smart Keyboard. It shows new features such as search and share buttons – via Patently Apple.

iPad Pro 2 new features

A new concept video shows what the iPad Pro 2 might look like with a 10.5in screen and features from the iPhone 7 Plus such as the dual-camera. 

Well-known industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has predicted there will be three new iPads launching in 2017. He says there will be a new 12.9in iPad Pro – the iPad Pro 2 – and also a new model with a 10.5in screen, no bezels and no home button on the front, which should appeal to, well, everyone. The new tablets (as you’d expect) will have a faster processor, probably called the A10X. Recently he slightly revised his predictions, specifically to say that delays in manufacturing the new CPUs could mean we won’t see any new iPads until the second half of the year.

The report also talks about “revolutionary” changes to the iPad range in 2018, which some are taking to mean radical changes such as a flexible AMOLED display. The latest from Barclays Research analysts, as reported by MacRumours, is that the middle-size iPad will have a 10.9in screen, not 10.5. Many seem to suggest the larger display will fit in a chassis no bigger than the current 9.7in iPad.

Another rumour about the Pad Pro 2 says Apple is working on adding better support into iOS for the Apple Pencil, the optional stylus which works with only select apps on the iPad Pro models. Apple might add the enhanced support when it launches the new iPads in 2017 as an update to iOS 10. However, it may wait and introduce them in iOS 11. The improvements are unclear, but it could be possible to use the Pencil to annotate in many more stock apps including Mail, Messages, Safari and others. The Pencil should work with the upcoming 10.5in iPad Pro and this would leave only the iPad mini with no stylus support. 

The Pencil itself should also receive an update, according to rumours on (not always credible) Weibo, and the Apple Pencil 2 is expected to attach to the iPad’s body using magnets and feature a pocket clip. Mac Observer points out that Apple does not currently hold a patent for a magnetic attachment to the iPad, however.

The rumours also say that the iPad Pro 2 “will include faster display technology that allows for smoother zooming, panning and scrolling”.

iPad poll

iPad Pro 2 specs

When it launched, the original iPad Pro didn’t come in a 256GB storage capacity but Apple add it to the line-up at the same time as the introduction of the iPad Pro 9.7. We expect the iPad Pro 2 to come in the same storage options which are currently available.

The iPad Pro 2 is sure to come in Rose Gold which is now available in most of Apple’s other products including the iPhone and MacBook.

It’s fairly easy to predict that Apple will bring the specs of the iPad Pro 2 to at least match the 9.7in model. That means adding the True Tone display which automatically adjusts the white balance for a more realistic experience, the 12Mp iSight camera with Live Photos and 4K video recording and the 5Mp front FaceTime HD camera with a Retina Flash.

Those changes would make the iPad Pro 2 level with the current 2016 iPad Pro but it wouldn’t be Apple if there weren’t some features not seen before on an iPad. This could simply come in the form of a new processor but we hope for more since the current A9X is more than dependable.

iPad Pro 2 price

We expect that Apple will keep prices the same as for the current iPad Pro 12.9: 

• 32GB: £679; $799
• 128GB: £799; $949
• 256GB: £919; $1099

If you’re after Wi-Fi + Cellular prices, the current prices are as follows:

• 128GB: £899; $1079
• 256GB: £1019; $1229

It would be nice, though, if the base model came with 64GB rather than 32GB.

This is all speculation on our part, but as rumours emerge we’ll add them here. We are perhaps a little too far away from the launch for anything juicy so check back soon.    

iPad Pro 2 leaks

There have been very few leaks. AppleInsider posted an image which supposedly shows a prototype of the iPad Pro 2. 

In the image, the Settings app is open and reveals the model number of the device – “MH1C2CD/F“. This doesn’t match any existing models of iPad and, although it follows Apple’s numbering covention, it is fairly easy to spoof this information.

It’s also interesting to note that both iPads apparently have only 12GB of storage – this could be due to the prototype status, as Apple may not want to use 128GB of storage for a prototype.

Either way, these iPads are definitely not existing iPad Pro units. However with that being said, it’s not confirmation that these are photos of prototype second-generation iPad Pros, as the images could still have been doctored. Unfortunately, there are no images of the sides or rear of the device so there’s no hint at what hardware the iPad Pro 2 could feature, but we imagine the iPad Pro 2 leaks will become more common as time goes on and we’ll be updating this article regularly.

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