Your PC is unstable, behaving very strangely, and you think there's a good chance that it's been infected by malware. Yet your antivirus software hasn't noticed anything at all. So what do you do now?

ESET SysInspector provides an easy way to begin the detection process. It's portable, so there's no need to install anything -- just download the executable, run it, and SysInspector will examine your system files, startup programs, running processes, network connections and other details, before issuing a report highlighting anything it thinks is suspicious.

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The Mozilla Foundation has announced the release of Firefox 4 RC1, earlier this week. This is a feature-complete release, and could even morph into a final release with no further changes, particularly if Mozilla is keen to steal some thunder from the imminent arrival of Internet Explorer 9, which Microsoft has just confirmed will be available from Monday.

Firefox 4 will, like its rivals, be much lighter in weight than the current version (3.6), which will ensure better performance. Like Chrome and IE9, the user interface has been redesigned to maximise screen real-estate for viewing web pages. It will be available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

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The ability to print documents from iOS is something that huge numbers of iPhone and iPad owners have been waiting for -- it was a feature implemented by Apple when AirPrint was added, but this proved to be less than ideal for many users. Using Printopia for Mac, it is possible to share the printer that you have connected to your Mac so it can be used by your iPad or iPhone.

Unlike AirPrint, which has been found to be very fussy about which printers it will work with, Printopia for Mac can be used with virtually any printer regardless of make or model.

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Whether you want to post a picture on a web forum, show a diagram to work colleagues, or just let family and friends everywhere see your holiday snaps, an online image sharing service can help.

And it doesn't have to take long to set up. In fact, if you download and run Hyperdesktop then it won't take any time at all, as the program will upload your screen grabs or images to the popular Imgur service without requiring any other configuration whatsoever.

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After four months of intensive testing, WinRAR 4.00 finally gets to drop the "beta" tag, with its first full public release appearing today.

The new build benefits from significantly improved RAR decompression speeds, although this does depend on data type. Text unpacking is unchanged, but more complex file types will see decompression performance improve by up to 30 percent.

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David Kocher has announced the final release of CyberDuck 4.0 for Mac and Windows. CyberDuck is a FTP client that is also capable of providing access to various cloud-based storage providers, including Google Docs, Amazon S3, WebDAV and Windows Azure (but not Windows Live SkyDrive) through a desktop application.

Version 4.0 represents the first official release for Windows users -- the version number has jumped straight to 4.0 to provide synchronicity with the Mac client, which was developed first.

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There was a murmur of excitement when an official Twitter client was released for iOS and it quickly gathered a loyal following despite the huge number of alternative tools that are available. A recent update to the app, however, annoyed many users due to the inclusion of the Quick Bar that displays trending topics in a ticker at the top of the app interface. TeeWee is a replacement client that closely mimics the official app but does not feature the Quick bar.

As there is no easy way to downgrade apps in iOS, the recent update annoyed many Twitter users to the point of looking for an alternative client. TeeWee fits the bill perfectly. The app includes support for multiple Twitter accounts, URL shortening and features such as geotagging of tweets.

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Lee Whittington has released version 2.0 of his Services-tweaking utility, SMART Windows Services Tweaker. SMART, an acronym for Services Management And Realeasy Tweaking, offers a number of preset options for tweaking Windows Services to boost both startup time and overall performance.

Version 2.0 features a redesigned interface, a new custom settings option, plus the ability to find out more about selected Services via a Microsoft Bing web search or by visiting the relevant page on the BlackViper website, which is used by SMART to determine the settings for each of the three available preset options.

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Online backup providers are ten-a-penny these days, so finding your own unique selling point in an increasingly crowded market takes a little bit of thought. SpiderOak has been selling online backup space for around 18 months now -- it's not the cheapest option, but it does boast a user-friendly client that makes the whole backup process that little bit easier. It works across Windows, Mac and Linux, and it's capable of syncing folders between different computers to ensure you always have access to the latest versions of your files, whatever computer you're sitting at. SpiderOak also offers a free iPhone app, recently updated to version 1.2 with full iPad support, which allows you to access and use your backup files directly from your mobile device.

The great thing about SpiderOak is that it offers a free lifetime's 2GB worth of storage, believing that when you use that up you'll want to upgrade to a subscription offering more storage. That's all well and good, but SpiderOak charges $100 a year (or $10 a month) for 100GB storage space. That's off-putting to many, and it's a shame it doesn't follow Wuala's example in offering smaller packages for less (such as its extremely competitive entry level 10GB package for just €19 a year).

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Launch the typical Windows program and by default it'll be able to take advantage of any, or if it's multi-threaded all of your CPU's cores. But it doesn't have to be this way. RunWithAffinity allows you to create shortcuts that will run certain programs on a defined processor core only, and there are situations where that can be very useful.

Some very old games can have problems running on multi-core CPUs, for instance. If you're having problems getting some old favorite to run as it should, then it's worth trying to launch it using one core only -- this just might help.

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The revelation that Google has pulled 58 malicious applications from the Android Market after they infected over a quarter of a million devices brings the promise, potential and future of the Android platform into question. The threat of mobile malware is no longer theoretical or a way for iOS users to bash Android. It's a very real concern.

Before I criticize Android, I'd like to say that Android does a lot of things very well. This article is not about that. I must also perform the obligatory smartphone disclosure, so that all my biases can be addressed in advance. In the last five years I have owned a Sidekick, smartphones running Windows Mobile 5 through 6.5, a few Nokia mobiles, a Blackberry, several Android devices and most recently a Windows Phone 7 smartphone.

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Bruce Schneier and other very respectable experts think we should be talking treaties with China and others about cyberattacks, even if the treaties are unenforceable. But they're not just unenforceable, they're unverifiable.

Go watch the excellent interview on searchsecurity.com with Bruce Schneier. It's less than 7 minutes. Schneier is a top guy in cryptography and has broader interests and expertise. In his blog he often takes on the real world security measures we all deal with, like surveillance cameras and ID card standards.

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OK, maybe Steve Jobs' reality distortion field is wearing off a bit, and I might feel differently in a week when I get my iPad 2, but after playing with my Motorola XOOM a lot more tonight and seeing just what "no apps" looks like, I got something to say to developers:

You should build for Android. Before you build for iPad. Here's why.

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Updates to stand-alone antivirus tools generally aren't anything to get excited about. The interface might have changed color, or maybe relocated a few buttons, and of course you'll get the standard promises about improved accuracy, or better performance, but otherwise it's often business as usual.

Avast! Free Antivirus 6.0 is an exception, though, thanks to a host of interesting and highly visible new features: automatic sandboxing, website reputation reporting, improved real-time protection, and many more. And so the end result is a package that looks rather more like a security suite than a simple antivirus engine. But is the new functionality really as effective as it looks? We put the program through some real-life tests in an effort to find out.

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German multimedia specialist MAGIX has released two free photo management and editing packages, each designed to help you get more from your digital images.

MAGIX Photo Manager 10 lets you navigate your photo collection with its thumbnail browser. Automated tools allow you to quickly organise your images into categories, while a "find similar photos" option can search your entire hard drive to locate shots from the same photo session.

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