A new Outlook has dawned and it’s bringing some of us to tears

I ’ m not having much luck with

The A-List

The best products on the market, as picked by our editors

Jon Honeyball takes a trip down optical memory lane

@PCPRO FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO T h e news

The growing threat of the cable cutters

Background and analysis on all the important news stories

Adobe’s video AI is all filler

Firefly now generates short videos from text or images

The road to 50Gbits/sec broadband Trevor Linney, Openreach

Openreach’s director of network technology reveals Britain’s broadband future

A short reading list for tech bros

It’s time our quasi-leaders put down their science fiction and started educating themselves with something a little more meaningful instead

We should have seen DeepSeek coming

Regulators and ethicists warned that AI needed to consider efficiency, so how odd that China is the country that listened

Full fibre, half the speed

Under-par routers aren’t keeping pace with Britain’s ever-faster broadband lines, which is choking back speeds and progress

Readers’ comments

Your views and feedback from email and the web

Readers’ poll

With so many AI services out there, we were wondering: which is your favourite and why?

MASTER AI IN MICROSOFT 365

Is it worth paying for AI in Microsoft 365? Barry Collins finds out what Copilot can and can’t do in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook to help you decide

WORD

Microsoft clearly has ambitions for Copilot in Word to become far more than a glorified Clippy, but much work is yet to be done

EXCEL

Excel is where Copilot can make a genuine difference to your workflow, and we recommend you take advantage

POWERPOINT

Used wisely, Copilot not only saves you time when creating PowerPoint presentations but also gives them greater impact

OUTLOOK

A missed opportunity in many ways, not least due to its lack of support for non-Microsoft services, but some people will find it a handy tool

Microsoft 365 Family for £79.99

Why pay Microsoft a recurring fee of £104.99 per year when you can enjoy the same advantages for £69.99 and avoid ongoing subscriptions?

Microsoft Office Home 2024 for £109.99 or Home & Business 2024 for £229.99

The best choice if you want a version of Office that doesn’t need a subscription

INSTANT EXPERT AFFINITY PHOTO

Bring your pictures to life with this powerful image editor – no subscription needed. Nik Rawlinson introduces the best features

Why PCI Express rules the world

Expansion cards may seem an old concept, but Darien Graham-Smith finds out how PCI Express remains on the cutting edge of interconnect technology

Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series

The biggest, best, most exciting products in technology – reviewed and rated

Scan 3XS Edge iCue

Silent but deadly fast, this is a high-class gaming PC that also has plenty to offer creative workers

Wired2Fire R7X3D RTX 5080 Beast Gaming PC

This truly is a beast, being the best-specified and fastest RTX 5080 PC on test, but also the noisiest

CyberPowerPC Infinity Z890 Elite PC

A fast performer and excellent choice if you’ll take advantage of the Core Ultra 9 285K processor

Geekom A6 Mini PC

This high-quality mini PC offers excellent value versus the Geekom A8 and pushes our A List choice close

Asus Zenbook A14

If you’re happy with Qualcomm inside, this sub-1kg laptop delivers for battery life, style and everyday power

Acer Swift 14 AI (Snapdragon)

A perfectly respectable Copilot+ PC, but it needs more class to stand out at this price

Acer Aspire 14 AI

Not the best screen, but if Acer can get the price right on release then it has a Copilot+ PC hit on its hands

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 (AMD)

A great choice for a large-scale rollout of Copilot+ PCs thanks to its speed, build quality and portability

PCSpecialist Fusion 16

The first British-assembled Copilot+ PC lacks polish in places but is great value if you’re after a 16in system

Bag a software bargain

Don’t pay full price for software when we can offer you huge reductions on genuine products

Netgear Nighthawk RS200

It doesn’t fully deliver the Wi-Fi 7 dream, but this mid-price router is surprisingly fast and capable

Your bonus software

We scour the globe to negotiate the best software deals for our readers, from extended licences to full programs you don’t need to pay a penny for. Here’s this month’s lineup

Oppo Pad 3 Pro

A premium Android tablet that takes the fight to Apple’s iPad, but it’s not worth the list price

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra

Samsung’s slick AI integration coupled with unbeatable hardware make this the best high-end phone around

Samsung Galaxy S25

The cheapest route to Galaxy AI isn’t a huge upgrade on last year’s models but is still a great mid-range choice

Honor Magic7 Pro

A superb phone thanks to its exceptional camera, speed and battery life – but the software won’t suit everyone

Lenovo Legion GoS

This 8in Windows 11 gaming handheld feels great in the hand, but it’s too sluggish and expensive to recommend

Dell EcoLoop Premier Backpack 14-16

A high-quality offering with excellent cushioning for laptops, but you may find its capacity limiting

What is a Linux distribution anyway?

Linux works in a quite different way to Windows, so to make an informed choice you need to understand how all the components of a distribution fit together

How to install Linux

Whether this is the first time you’ve installed a Linux distro or you’re a veteran, our step-by-step guide provides all the information you need

Portable distributions

One of the great things about Linux is that you can carry it with you on a USB thumb drive. Here’s how

ELEMENTARY OS 8

A good-looking distro designed with security in mind, but we’d be tempted to run with Pop!_OS instead

FEDORA WORKSTATION 41

This Red Hat-sponsored distribution is now over 20 years old, making it a rock solid choice

LINUX MINT 22.1

This is a popular choice for Windows switchers for good reason, but don’t ignore the alternatives

Moving from Windows: what you need to know

Whether you’re looking for an upgrade from Windows 10, a second operating system or are simply interested in Linux, here’s some handy advice

MANJARO

Rolling updates mean it will stay current, but while a solid choice for Windows escapees it needs tweaking

MX LINUX 23.5

This lightweight distro is a great choice for squeezing life out of older PCs, but it’s not the slickest option

OPENSUSE TUMBLEWEED 20250120

Windows 10 EOLers should definitely give Tumbleweed a try, with a familiar interface and constant updates

POP!_OS

A great choice for advanced users who love keyboard shortcuts and it runs quickly on older PCs too

UBUNTU 24.10

Like Fedora, a fine choice for Windows switchers and everyone else thanks to great support and features

View from the Labs

Five years into his Linux switch, Nik Rawlinson explains why he will never go back – and why he thinks PC Pro readers should follow his lead

Best business cloud file-sharing services

If you want to share files seamlessly and securely across your business, a dedicated service is ideal. We review four of the strongest contenders

Dropbox Business Plus

An incredible range of file-sharing tools for the price, with good security and support for huge file uploads

Egnyte Enterprise Lite

A smart cloud collaboration platform with plenty of app integrations and data governance services

Progress ShareFile Premium

Affordable cloud collaboration with a wealth of features and a sharp focus on data security

Tresorit Business

The ideal cloud file-sharing platform for SMBs that won’t compromise on data security

Amazon WorkSpaces Thin Client

Affordable and secure virtual desktop services in a box with great remote management features

Netgear WBE710

An easily deployed Wi-Fi 7AP with top cloud management, but its performance doesn’t justify the price

Choose the right software development model

Waterfall, spiral or agile? Nik Rawlinson picks through the most popular approaches to development – and asks which you should be using for your next project

What is AGI?

It’s the holy grail of AI – but as Steve Cassidy explains, businesses shouldn’t wait for artificial general intelligence

“Wouldn’t it be nice if someone produced a properly designed, rack-mountable NAS that just did file storage?”

Continuing his flirtation with Ubiquiti devices, Jon welcomes its NAS solution into the lab – but is less impressed by Microsoft bundling Copilot into Office 365 Family with a bump in price

“HP thinks it’s okay to kick everyone off the train at Derby when we’re meant to be in Truro”

This week’s Any Questions asks: is half a service better than no service? Can a printer use a potty? And what was wrong with that mouse?

“My colleague and I spent three days in Paris visiting the sights and drinking bouteilles de vin”

If you aren’t au fait with governing law, you may be giving carte blanche to the foreign company you’re working with – and that would be a faux pas

“It appears almost comical, but that would be to underplay the seriousness of the risks”

Davey ponders the problems that occur when a secure sign-in for third-party services turns out to be not so secure after all

“The rule seems to be that the better the image, the less you’re told about its creator”

A misty-eyed Steve asks why, in this era of supposed personalisation, the services we all use make us feel depersonalised?

Computing’s shareware revolution

Inspirational stories from computing’s long-distant past

Can liquid cooling help data centres avoid water wars?

Thanks to the AI boom, we need to build new data centres. But we also need better ways to cool them, says Nicole Kobie