Turn off information sharing with XP-AntiSpy 3.96-6
Windows XP includes a background service that will examine your system and check against a Microsoft database. It enables you to receive updates, automatically. The snag is, how do you know what information is being transferred regarding your system contents. Nothing sinister, but people are never really assured about the information stored on their computer usage.
XP-AntiSpy 3.96-6 is a small but handy utility that enables users to disable some of the built-in update and authentication features within Windows XP. It will enable you to turn off anything that requires you to share information (personal or regarding your system), over the Internet. To turn off these features, simply click off the supplied checkbox and quit the application.
Many of us have used download managers to help try and increase download speeds. It can be frustrating when downloading, and the file stops downloading correctly sometimes halfway through or even at the end of the download, having to start all over again to obtain a particular file. 
For a many years, Symantec have been developing Internet security software, made popular by the number of pre-installed installations, found on new PCs. 
What would you describe as the life-span of a typical sticky note that you'd attach to your monitor? Not finite, that's for sure. Your monitor can get rather warm, we have a bad habit of leaving our machine turned on overnight, which can affect the stickiness of our notes. If the office gets a clean each morning and your note has fallen on the office floor, you might find that it's disappeared after a long weekend. The old-fashioned sticky paper notes are perhaps not the way forward.
When you browse the net, all sorts of information is stored on your computer. You'll probably be surprised. Most websites result in cookie and other tracking information being stored through your browser. They can establish where you've originated from and what you like to do on the website. All very personal information. Your web history is logged, the files you've downloaded and there are all sorts of temporary files stored on your machine. You could be embarrassed if someone had access to your PC.
Whilst we work through the day we’re always thinking of ideas, whether they are business related, future plans, ideas for a project or tasks we need to complete over the rest of the day or week. Either way, we try and remember the ideas, plans and thoughts, or we jot them on paper or a post-it note and stick it to the front of our computer.
Despite upgrading to a fast 8MB/s broadband connection, download bottlenecks are not your system, your broadband nor your router, they are at the server you're downloading from. For instance, try downloading the latest 1GB game demo and you might actually be downloading from a server in Japan. Leave it running overnight and you might find that the download stops and cannot be restarted. Such a pain in the backside. This can be solved using a download manager.
Burning packages have evolved in to 'media suites', that have become complicated and difficult to use, if you simply want to perform a simple task. Sometimes we’d just like to burn CD’s quickly, perhaps a customised audio CD for our personal CD player or for a car journey.
Many of us have music or media libraries on our home computers, sourced from our CDs or old LPs, purchased from a online music store or from alternative sources. Quite often these audio tracks are lacking artwork and other information required for your library.
How many times have you worked with personal information, data or photos and simply dragged them to your trashcan, thinking that the files have been deleted from your system? They haven't and it could be embarrassing for you. Anyone who has access to your computer could quite easily use an undeletion tool to recover the files after deletion.
The most frustrating part of surfing the Internet is that there are website that still insist on using Internet Explorer, particular financial institutions and sites that require Active X. You've probably tried using Opera and Firefox, but ended up back with Internet Explorer, missing some of the enhanced features you experienced with the alternative browsers.
When we look back, there are tools and functions that should have been integrated in to Windows a few revisions prior to the current edition. One of these functions is the facility to search and locate files on your PC, without delay. Well, without serious delay. Mac OS X has had the Spotlight facility for a couple of years and now Vista contains similar functionality. Third party developers have introduced their own versions of instant desktop tools, such as Copernic Desktop Search.
With an extensive DVD, video, CD and book collection, are you really aware of what you own or have lent out to your friends? It's so easy to get excited in a sale and purchase a duplicate copy of a DVD that you already own. We've all done it.
Ad-Aware has been long-regarded as highly-rated tool for combating both spyware and adware. It’s a versatile anti-spyware tool designed to minimise system resources. The latest version includes enhanced adware and malware detection along with a brand new interface. All three versions of Ad-Aware 2007 have been updated, Free, Plus, and Pro. We have the free version available to download.
Although the Vista Start Menu does differ slightly from the previous XP revision, there aren't too many new enhancements and it's just organised differently, rather than anything radical. However, those ingenious third party developers have been working updates to the Vista Start Menu that add further customisation.
You open a tab and then another, and your open tabs all look the same. It's easy to get confused and you spend your time browsing between open tabs to find the site you previously visited. There surely must be an easier way to preview open tabs. On the Mac, there's a browser called 
It's all too easy to open new browser windows, particularly if we want to keep a website open for reference purposes. If you're using a laptop, you only need eight tabs to be open on screen and you'll soon find that you're scrolling across your tabs to find the tab relevant to your chosen website. Wouldn't it be so much easier if you could simply reduce the size of the tabs, perhaps down to the website icon, so you can quickly refer to each open tab by icon-only.
If you have a long-term goal, there are various ways and means that you can attempt to reach this goal. There are always going to be obstacles along the way, hazards and tasks that you need to achieve and tick-off. You could create various notes, but then over time, you might find that your notes are rather scrappy in nature and certainly difficult to understand. You could re-write them again from scratch, but that can take time. The other alternative is project management software, but that's not always appropriate for mapping out your goals, thoughts and plans.
Are you at that stage where you're envious of some of the new technologies released with Windows Vista, but aren't quite at the stage where you can justify the upgrade? There are many reasons for this, possibly due to compatibility with existing software and partly due to your boss being reluctant to shell out the upgrade required, particular when it is such a new operating system. There are ways to add some of the Vista technology to your existing XP-based operating system.
From time to time, we'll want to move up to a larger hard drive. For instance, install Vista and grab audio from your CDs and you'll soon be running out of drive space. What do you do with your old drive once you've copied across the contents to your new drive? You could just give it another computer user or you could dispose of the drive. The snag is, even if you've formatted the drive, the contents are still accessible through a dedicated unformatting tool such as O&O FormatRecovery.
When our second most popular download receives a much-needed upgrade, albeit a beta release, we needed to make this available to vnunet.com users. Why? 
When you upgrade your old PC or hard drive, it's difficult to know what to do with the contents. You could wipe and format the drive, but there are specialist software tools that will enable someone to attempt to salvage the formatted data, which means your data, work and other files might fall in to the wrong hands. The only other option is to manually erase your files, but can you be assured that the tool of choice will really erase the data?
There are a number of applications that, once installed, simply cannot be removed from your system. Whatever you do, they seem to try and start with your computer, leave Registry entries and more. This can apply to Vista where it's easy to install software, but when you find they are not truly Vista compatible, removing them can be a real pain. The automated Windows Add/Remove uninstall function is reasonably successful, but you have limited control over the procedure.
There are many handy tools available, although some will only be used occasionally. It's good to have a decent screen grabbing tool, which will enable you to take screen capture and to grab text where it wouldn’t normally be possible.
There are times when you just need to make the occasional alteration to some CSS code, provided to you by another web developer. You don't really need to wheel out a commercial CSS editor for this purpose, when you simply need to make a couple of minor changes. A text editor isn't the best solution as you'll be lacking the correct formatting and colour coding.
Many of us have various picture albums or videos we’d like to share with or download from our friends or family which have been uploaded to our homepage or a picture-sharing site such as Flickr. Downloading more than one or many of these files can be tricky and can be time consuming.
It’s becoming more and more difficult to protect your data from the danger posed by computer viruses. Malicious software has evolved and you can end up infected in a number of ways, from opening attachments, clicking on a phishing email or by simply visiting corrupt websites.
Trying to uninstall problematic software isn't always the solution to system-related issues. If you find that when you boot your computer, it takes ages to start or another application fails, this might be down the way in which they start on your computer. For instance, some applications may require Internet access and your firewall will not allow this until it has started on your machine. This means your system has to wait until the firewall has started and the system slows on bootup.
Some Windows-related applications are rather confusing. Whereas Microsoft reacted to the competition and added new functionality to Internet Explorer, including tabbed windows and more, they've never really felt compelled to enhance the old Notepad. It's essentially the same tool with the same look and feel that was around in the 90s. That's fine for pasting and copying basic text, but for anything more extensive, you'll nearly always need to look for a rival product.
Although Vista was released back in January 2007, there are still a small number of applications that are not yet fully Vista compatible. If you're an Outpost Security Suite 2007 user, you're stuck with a version that may prevent you from upgrading your operating system. All is not lost, however, as the brand new 
When you first bought your computer it was clutter-free, ran smoothly, booted quickly and seemed like a wise purchase. For this reason alone, we're keen to get to grips with the new system, test and install new software, remove applications we do not require and spend a while browsing the web. The more we use our computer, the more likely files and other unwanted data is left all over our system. The computer is full of temporary files, personal info and more.
Downloading large files from the Internet is always problematic. Leave the download unattended and there's a chance you'll lose the connection and need to start again from scratch. You may forget where you've saved the download or the incoming files may be downloading at such a painfully slow speed that it will be days before the download is complete.
If you want to administer your own homepage, put files online or access content from an FTP server, most Internet users will need to use an FTP client. 
Remembering your various Internet passwords and other online information can be tricky, as many of us have multiple passwords for online accounts. Worse, if you use a tool that cleanses your Internet activity after you've surfed the web, most of your personal information isn't available the next time you log on to the same website. Frustrating, but often necessary to protect your personal info.
A frustrating aspect of being a non-Window user is that some of the latest technologies are not always available for the Mac operating system. For instance, take VoIP technology. Skype for Windows users could use video conferencing long before Skype for Mac users. Whereas the Skype for Windows version is at v3.5, the Mac version is still on release v2.6.
Install Vista on your computer and your initial desire will be to install your other software and get on with using your new operating system. What you don't realise is that the operating system you've just installed is a vanilla-installation and ships with drivers that were included on the original Vista installation CD, along with few operating system optimisations. The very first thing you should do is to install something such as 
Security developers are becoming so competitive that they are giving away their software to home users, on the pretext that they can sell multi-user licenses to corporate users. Their train of thought must be that the more they can get their name out in to the market and spread awareness, the more likely they are to be regarded as a strong brand, for consumers and corporations. With this in mind, you can now pick up a free firewall (see 
We're told that you need to securely wipe your data when you sell or give away your old computer. However, if you do this and then find that you forgot to migrate some important files to your new hard drive, you can't simply use an unerase tool to locate and extract the contents. What you'll need is a dedicated application that will go through the entire drive and salvage the entire contents.
Having to protect your computer from outside threats is something which is a constant battle for most computer users, especially those of us who
use the net on a daily basis.
When you browse the Internet or use third-party applications, all sorts of information is stored and kept on your computer. If anyone has access to this computer, it's really easy to find where you've been and what you've been doing on this machine. Borrow a laptop from work, bored in a hotel room, and you might find that your IT helpdesk reports your activity to your boss. The solution is to install some cleansing software that will remove traces of your activity from your computer as you use the machine.
It is so refreshing to find developers who pro-actively improve their web browser, almost on a daily basis, keeping us informed of development through their 
When you install Windows Vista or XP, you're installing vanilla operating system that has been designed to work across a range of different hardware configurations. It's not particularly optimised for your specific machine. You might not even realise that there are a number options within your operating system that are hidden as default. You can access these hidden options by using a tweaking or optimisation tool.
Do you really have time to look through various eBay categories searching for the items you want to bid? It's easier to use a third-party tool to do the hard work for you. When you finally find the items you require, how many of us have the time to keep checking the status of the auction, whether anyone has outbid you and be there when the auction is close to ending (and when most bids are entered).
We often receive emails in our magazine department asking why their machine is performing erratically, boots more slowly than before or keeps creating a false-positive on various files they've downloaded from the Internet. The conclusion is that they've installed multiple anti-spyware tools, alongside an anti-virus application, for 'maximum protection'. The snag is that multiple installations of similar tools can cause more harm than good, so it's better to have one tool that offers protection against as many threats as possible.
Whatever operating system you're using, it's always a wise idea to backup your important data, work and other information. Although most of us won't ever lose our data nor suffer from hard drive failure, you never really know what's around the corner and, if you do suffer from hard drive failure, you'll have to start all over again, from scratch.
When a new employee starts within your organisation, they need to be offered a selection of notes and company information so they can get started as quickly as possible. This should include an organisation chart, so they understand who is their immediate manager, their superior and how they are linked to various department managers. Without this information, it can take months before you realise who manages who and which department.
There are certain tasks that every one of us does when we surf the Internet. One of these tasks is seeking out the latest applications, game demos and other downloadable files. The snag is, some of these applications can take an age to download, often stop before completely downloading and can be downloaded to various locations on your computer, so you lose track of where they are located.
There are all sorts of threats that can affect your computer whilst you surf the Internet. The scariest scenario can occur when you trust a particular anti-spyware tool and that turns out to be the culprit that resulted in a possible infection. It's all too easy to install innocent-looking software for it to turn out to be malicious software and, as a results, infects your computer.
There are times when you're busy working around the house, want to listen to your favourite music, but are not likely to stick in a particular room. There's one solution: you could stream the audio to various locations around the house and listen to the same track whichever room you're located. Another advantage of streaming audio is that more than one person can listen to the same track, same Internet radio station or other audio source.
How many of us have an extensive CD, book and DVD collection? I'd bet that most of us do not even know the DVDs in our collection, often leading to us purchasing another copy of a previously-stocked DVD, when it becomes available in sale. Can you remember if you've lent a DVD to a friend or whether someone has borrowed a CD? Either way, you could do with a media manager. A tool that will enable you to catalogue, track and manage your extensive media collection.
We all have old movies we’d like to store and archive, whether they are old VHS cassettes or simply videos we've downloaded from the net and would like to store and watch offline. Life would be so much easier if we could save and edit these movies and then convert into interactive video discs. We could then delete the old movies and store on disc.
We all like to keep in regular touch with our families, friends and, in some cases, work colleagues. The trouble is, phoning long distance can leave a large dent in your bank balance and can leave you in shock when your quarterly phone bill arrives. Sending an e-mail is always an option for staying in touch, but can be arduous, is not that ‘instant’, can be a difficult way of communicating quickly, often leading to the recipient hanging around waiting for a reply.
Using the net is a cornerstone of everyday home activity. We use the net as much or more than we watch the TV. The more we access Internet content, the likelihood that we’ll encounter a virus, Trojan or malicious software, increases. We need to make sure our important work, information and other data is kept secure at all times.
Many of us have some kind of access to free web space, but the whole process of understanding, designing and creating your own homepage can seem daunting to any novice Internet user. To achieve a basic site, you may need to learn new skills such as the code that makes up your pages, but even something as basic as deciding on the software you should use to develop your site, can be your first hurdle. Make the wrong choice and you'll spend hours trying to figure the basics. Make the right choice and you'll find most of the web development work is automated.
Panda have managed to release the first major update to their complete security suite, stealing a march on their competitors. As a suite of security software, it contains protection against spyware, virus, Trojan horse attack as well as malicious software.
With numerous online portals offering
film trailers, movie clips and documentary’s we inevitably come across videos which we'd like to keep and browse offline. Unfortunately many of these online portals offer
a view-only policy, which is frustrating as this prevents the video from being
downloaded.
Everyone is aware that security software is a necessity. With spyware and malware becoming an ever increasing problem facing computer users, we need to keep on top of all aspects of computer security. With a home computer or laptop, behind an unprotected network, you could become the next victim of a spyware or malware attack. Even installing what you think is legitimate software, you can never be assured that it isn't a rogue application attempting to get behind your firewall.
Most of us have free web space as part of our broadband connection, but hardly any of us want to set up a homepage. Fear not, you could use this space to store your work, data, music and to share files between various computers. The remote server is always accessible, providing you have an Internet connection. You could be in New York or London, each way it's always available. The only snag is that the files you store on your laptop need to be synchronised with the remote server and vice versa.