View news and blogs through GreatNews
What do we use the Internet for, exactly? One of the key uses is to extract the latest news and information, either through news pages or by following a blog. However, there are so many news pages and blogs, it's hard to keep up. One answer is to use a RSS news reader that will enable you to subscribe to your favourite news sites and blogs and then browse the headlines, when required.
GreatNews 1.0 build 379 is a fantastic freeware news reader. Subscribe to your favourite news and blogs and keep up to date. It will also allow you to read the news within GreatNews, so if you want to read more than just the headline, click the headline and you'll find the news page appears within the application, so you don't need to worry about opening a web browser.
Most Linux distributions are supplied as an ISO image, and for good reason. An ISO image is effectively a 1:1 copy of a CD and it enables you to burn the ISO image to a CD-R, with the software supplier assured that the end-user will receive a CD as supplied. However, there's no reason why you can't create your own ISO images if you need to distribute files across the Internet. For instance, if you create your own fancy slideshow of your vacation, don't send the slideshow, create an auto-booting CD and then supply your friends and family with the ISO image, which they can burn to their own CD.
There are a wide range of commercial and free image and photo viewers. Indeed, if you want a simple viewer, you an simply use the Windows Explorer image viewer to view an image, on your desktop. Converting the image to another format is a lot more difficult. If you have a range of images supplied in a TIF format, you might want to quickly convert to JPEG for your website.
We often have to use Internet Explorer, although we don't always use this as our favourite browser. If this is the case, install the new version of 
We all have a fairly extensive DVD, CD and digital audio collection, but most of our media isn't categorised or catalogued. We simply stack them on the shelves, generally in the order they've been purchased. If we lend a DVD to a friend, we don't always keep track of the DVDs on our shelves and those that have been borrowed.
The Internet could be regarded as one large newspaper. We browse the web for our favourite news, discussion pages and blogs and print the information we require. This is a waste of resources. Another alternative would be to store the pages offline, on your computer. This would enable you to quickly revert to pages or snippets of information you've found, but not had chance to read through properly.
When we install applications on our system, files are located in some obscure locations and entries written to our Registry. When we use the standard Windows Add/Remove programs tool, these applications aren't completely removed from our computer. The main files are deleted, but libraries, some Registry keys and other files remain.
When we're used to using a particular email client, we find it hard to move across to another. If you're like the majority, you'll probably have more than one POP3 account and have forgotten your password or the relevant account info. Worse, the new email client may not properly import your old email, so you can't move across your old data.
Windows Vista is due at the end of January and has some new features that require a powerful PC. For instance, the fantastic new Aero theme requires a fairly hefty graphics card. Mind you, that's all you might need. You might be surprised. To get the best from Vista, your PC might only need a better graphics card and some more memory - a cost that may be under £100. Far cheaper than having to purchase a brand new computer.
Although most of us still use Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera provide excellent alternatives. Opera is well-designed, fast and, best of all, free. Once you get started with the browser, you won't want to go back to Internet Explorer and you're likely to install Opera across your various computers, at work and home. Fantastic, but how do you share your bookmarks across these computers?
Only a few years ago, most archive managers were designed to handle a particular kind of archive. Stuffit primarily managed the Mac .SIT format, WinZip was designed for ZIP archives and WinRAR specialised in managing RAR files. Fantastic tools, but how many of us want a different archive manager to handle multiple archives? We want a tool that's going to handle more than one archive, including all the most popular formats.
Outlook is a fairly decent tool for organising your meetings, tasks and 'to do' items. You can share and invite other users and track your forthcoming events, by arranging reminders that will make sure you do not forget your meeting. However, the primary use of Outlook is to handle your email and we don't always refer to the calendar option. What would be more useful if there was a tool that previewed our 'to do' items on our desktop, so we didn't need to keep referring to Outlook.
It's easy to use paper to write down our forthcoming tasks and contact details, but these can easily get lost on our work computer. The cleaners come in after hours, attempt to clean your computer and accidentally knock a few sticky notes on the floor. They might be lost forever. A better option would be to use your system to store your notes and post these details on your desktop screen, then shut off your PC at the end of every working day.
We're always looking for the best possible security software. Our ideal application will be well designed, lightweight so it uses minimum system resources, but also effectively searches for and removes all known virus, Trojan and malicious software. As we're never entirely happy with our current security tool, we keep on searching for and installing new apps. However, how do you always know that the security application is actually a valid tool? It might search through your system and state that no malicious software was found, but whilst it's performing the search, it's actually installing its own Trojan.
These days there's a fine line between shareware and commercial software. What defines commercial software if you can purchase both on the Internet? The clear difference between the two is that commercial software often ships in a box and is available through retail. However, shareware authors can give the impression that their software is available commercially by designing a box image.
When we're given the task of managing a project, we often forget that we need to sort out a start date, make sure the raw materials are in place to complete the various tasks, assign the relevant people needed to work on the project and then manage every stage so that it is completed on time. If it doesn't complete on time, it might cost our employer additional revenue.
When we travel on holiday, we take our digital camera with us and take photos of just about everything, attempting to capture the feelings we experienced. We get home and load the photos in to our computer and realise that it's difficult to show off the various buildings and landscapes with standard 4:3 photos. One answer is to to take a few photos and then stitch them together, creating a panoramic wide photo.
Not long ago you had to have specialist skills to produce any kind of 3D graphics content. To be fair, you still do, but with some of the older apps available free of charge, there's no reason why you can't experiment with the software and see if you can produce your own 3D objects. This could be a useful skill within your portfolio if you want to draft and design your own home extension, a loft conversion, a new garage or similar. If you can produce a visual design and give it to your architect, they'll find it much easier to interpret your thoughts.
When we install software on our computer, the installer leaves files all over your hard drive. Often files are included within our Registry so they start when we boot our computer. This slows the boot up procedure and can also affect your machine if a startup application isn't removed from your Registry when you uninstall the software (as your computer will attempt to launch the application and fail to find its location).
Setting up your own home network is relatively easy. Many of us have more than one computer in our home, with a PC in the sitting room, in the kids room and our laptop, in the study. Why don't you use one email domain such as yourname.co.uk and then route your email through your own network? You can then manage how you access your own email (internally or remotely), how spam is filtered and you can setup multiple mailboxes for each family member.
Skype is a fantastic tool for chatting or communicating over the Internet. With fast broadband, you can make almost free phone calls to other Skype users. You can also use the traditional method, by writing messages through the builtin chat tool, much like MSN Messenger or similar. However, what happens if someone tries to call you and you're away from your computer? Not particular professional.
During the day, sitting in the office, our flat or house remains unguarded. Many flat owners do not have a burglar alarm and are easy targets. Why not put your webcam to use and use it as a security device to record activity within your apartment? Using a motion detector would enable you to turn on the camera when and if someone enters your flat. It's worked - there was someone on the news recently who recorded someone breaking in to his flat when he was away on holiday.
If we need to backup our drive, most of us simply back up the files we need most. That's fine if you only want to backup your important key data, but we forget that we often have important fonts and other system files that we've installed over the last few months or years. These don't get backed up if you just back up certain files and folders.
Blogs and particularly news-related blogs are becoming more popular. However, some of these blogs aren't always written in English and many of us are still interested in the information. Does the blog tell us about a new product launch? If so, we want to know the answers as soon as possible. If we're surfing eBay, some of the foreign items are written-up in their local language, so it would be useful to be able to translate the text.
After browsing the web, downloading software, installing apps on your computer, you might not realise but your hard drive is bursting at the seams with temporary files. More often than not, these temporary files stay on your computer until you remove them. They're also there for anyone to see, so if someone has access to your user account, they can see the sites you've been browsing and the software you've been installing.
We're always looking to speed up our computer, but most of us turn to new hardware to make the difference. Perhaps an upgraded graphics card would make the difference? Will a faster hard drive make a difference to our system? Well, yes, but you can speed up your computer for free, using software enhancements. For instance, cleansing your Registry or defragging your hard drive.
Your trashcan enables you to quickly move files for deletion, either immediately or at a later date. However, these files aren't completely eliminated and you (or anyone else) can use a tool to salvage files that have been deleted through emptying your trash. Even files that have been deleted months ago are often recoverable by file salvage software.
Quite a day for new and updated software. 
Everyone should use a firewall, indeed there's no reason why you can't use a hardware-based firewall on your modem and then a software firewall on your PC. There are a wide number of free and commercial firewalls available, including the popular ZoneAlarm.
Browsing the web can be tricky if you're visually impaired. There are things you can to help, such as enlargen the fonts on a particular page or zoom in to images with Internet Explorer. However, pages that use Flash or fixed fonts make it tricky to enlargen fonts. The other option is to use a tool such as a magnifying glass to zoom in to areas of your web page.
Although most of us use broadband in the UK, there are still ways you can accelerate and manage your downloads. By utilising a download manager, you can attempt to resume downloads, accelerate the speed that downloads arrive on your computer (by taking advantage of multiple download locations) and you can quickly re-download software that you've deleted from your computer. There are downsides too such as FTP sites that do not allow you to connect more than once - that can affect your download manager and stop you downloading files.
There are a number of tools within Windows XP that are somewhat under-utilised. One of them is Remote Desktop Connection, which enables you to connect to a remote PC and both control and manage that PC. If you have a very fast broadband connection, you might find you're able to connect and work on that remote machine. Ideal if you're situated outside of the office and forgot to bring some work documents with you.
If you simply want to touch-up a photo, cut a section from an image or simply convert to another format, loading and waiting for the 'big' image editors, such as Adobe Photoshop, could be overkill. These tools start loading various plugins, addons and other tools before you can even start to edit your image. The ideal solution would be a lightweight, free image and photo editor that would enable you to do the basics, then quit the application.
Although it's not available to the general public, tools for tweaking and enhancing Windows Vista are being released. Windows XP was shipped to OEM PC manufacturers with a customisable install CD, so OEM manufacturers can add their own logo, localisation and configure the CD so that it installs with the minimum of fuss for the end-user.
Most of use the same browser whether we use the web at work or at home, but it's not always easy to make sure our bookmarks are synchronised between these browsers. For instance, if you add a bookmark to Opera at home, you'll want to access the same bookmark at work. You could always email yourself with your new bookmarks, but this is a long-winded process.
Although the free disc burning tools you receive with your new PC enable you to many things with your disc burner, they are often a little cumbersome and full of options you don't really require to simply burn audio or data CDs. If you just want to burn a disc quickly, one of the many free alternatives might be a better option.
When you work with multiple files, with different applications, those files can easily become locked within your operating system. For instance, if you've edited an image within an image editor, part of that application may be loaded in to memory, so even if you close the application, files you've opened can still be locked. You can't then move the file(s) to another location on your computer.
There are a few alternative office suites available and probably the most popular is the free OpenOffice suite, which is a cross-platform Microsoft Office compatible suite of software. You can open Word documents within the OpenOffice 'writer' application. However, there are other options too. For instance, Corel Wordperfect is a good popular alternative, whilst Ability Office is another.
Love or hate it, Norton Internet Security 2007 is a popular product. It's a complete security suite offering you most of the security requirements to browse the Internet and stay safe and secure. You get a desktop firewall, protection against malware, Trojans and virus attack and also spyware prevention. However, there are still more functions that could be included, especially parental control.
PDF documents can be huge if they're embedded with print-quality images and the PDF document is designed for commercial printing. Although Adobe Reader 8 is faster than previous versions, it can still take a while to open...and that's before you open your PDF document.
Mostly the PC we order on the Internet or from a magazine advert is the machine specified. Things can go wrong, however. You might have specified a custom-ordered 256MB-based graphics card, but the installers included the standard 128MB card instead. How do you know which card you've received? One option is to run a system analysis tool to check the components shipped with your computer.
Many of us believe that a full system crash