Blocking malware before it manages to infect your PC is relatively easy. Your antivirus package scans the file, email attachment or whatever it might be, recognises the threat, and deletes it before any damage can be done: simple.

Should the malware bypass your protection, though, and manage to install itself, then it’s a very different story. Now the threat may be able to hide from your security software, prevent you running particular programs, reaching certain sites -- and that can make removing it a very real challenge. Unless you’ve a copy of RKill on hand to help.

This doesn't happen every day. Microsoft, which serves as both my daily computing platform and bane of my existence, does something I completely agree with. It is not the first time -- I am an unashamed Windows 8 lover. I also love Office, and the product has steadily improved and become easier to use with each iteration. But desktop software is quickly becoming old-school. I find myself using more and more web apps and storing more data in the cloud.

Today, Microsoft officially launched Office 2013...sort of. Yes, the software suite is out there, available to everyone, as we knew it would be. What we didn't realize was that the actual software suite would be downplayed. A lot.

In the United States, Google Play has both Nexus 4 models available for sale -- after nearly two months stocked out. The bumper is available, too. If you're one of the gadget geeks looking for this smartphone, get it while you can, and that might not be for long.

Google launched Nexus 4 on November 13, but sold out in just hours. The phone reappeared on November 27. A day later, Google Play redefined "sold out" by listing shipment date as 8-9 weeks. From a retail distribution perspective, Nexus 4 is pure disaster. It's anyone's guess how many could have sold over the holidays, but greedy gadget geeks couldn't get the phone short of paying extortion-like prices.

They're here! Today Microsoft released new versions of the flagship productivity suite alongside cloud companions. But if you look closely, all the chatter is about Office 365. The software giant wants your head in the cloud, and tidy, easy-to-account subscription revenue with it. CEO Steve Ballmer and team endlessly blather about "reimagining" Windows, but Office gets the bigger makeover -- not just how people work, but how they pay to do it.

Subscription revenue is Microsoft's Holy Grail, and one sought since the mid 1990s, because it smooths out revenue and locks in customers. New Office releases come about once every three years. Office 2007 launched six years ago tomorrow and its successor in May 2010. The company can't depend on consistent sales, which tend to spike around new releases. Subscription -- how Microsoft sells Office 365 -- is smoother.

Although the Raspberry Pi was originally aimed at encouraging school children to learn to program as they did in 1980s and 90s, the affordable credit card-sized ARM GNU/Linux computer has actually ended up appealing to a broad range of ages.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has never lost sight of its initial purpose though, and thanks to the generosity of Google, it’s about to make some serious headway into British schools.

Oracle has had no shortage of headaches recently, thanks to Java. The exploits have been running wild lately, making attempts to fix the problems resemble a game of whack-a-mole. In fact, the troubles even resulted in the United States Department of Homeland Security being forced to post a warning against using the platform.

In a post to the government website, the DHS warned that "by convincing a user to load a malicious Java applet or Java Network Launching Protocol (JNLP) file, an attacker could execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system with the privileges of the Java plug-in process".

Apple attracts rumors like no other tech company. In the past week alone we’ve heard about what to expect from the iPad 5, suggestions that Apple is working on a budget iPhone that may or may not feature plenty of plastic in its design, and there’s even been talk of a larger capacity iPad 4.

It turns out this last rumor was right on the money, as Apple has just announced a 128GB version of the fourth generation iPad with Retina display.

Right after Kim Dotcom launched Mega on January 19 I succumbed to temptation and registered for a new account. My initial foray was, however, short lived as no confirmation email arrived in my Outlook.com inbox. Clearly, Microsoft's service and Mega did not play well together.

Dotcom shed some light on the matter when he posted the following on Twitter: "Don't use Hotmail to register on Mega. They have mysteriously black holed emails from our domain. Gmail works fine", He shortly followed this up with: "We are working on the 'confirmation email' issue. Some mail services react allergic to an unknown domain sending millions of confirmations". Intrigued by the issue I asked Microsoft for a statement concerning the confirmation email issue with Outlook.com accounts.

Another day, another Galaxy smartphone. On Tuesday, Samsung unveiled a new handset as part of the company's ever expanding Galaxy lineup, this one dubbed the Galaxy Express.

The new device slots in-between the Galaxy S III Mini and the Galaxy S III, with similar design characteristics including the traditional rounded corners. Samsung could have named the new device the Galaxy S III Average, as the handset features a 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display with a resolution of 800 by 480 and a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, both of which are in-between the specs of the two S-branded smartphones.

Shutting down your PC is often simple and straightforward. You finish what you’re doing, save your work, close any applications and hit the shutdown button: done.

Sometimes, though, life is more complicated. Maybe you want to leave your PC running and have it automatically close at a particular time, say; when a program has finished running, or on some similar event. And that can be more difficult to organize -- unless you get a little help from Shutter.

Red seems to be the in color for mobile devices at the moment. First Verizon gave the world a red edition of Nokia's mid-range Lumia 822 smartphone, and now Samsung has introduced a Garnet Red version of its popular Galaxy Tab 2 slate. This isn't the first Samsung device to come in the bloody hue -- AT&T offered a Garnet Red edition of the Galaxy S III last summer.

Currently only available for the US market, the striking tablet comes with a matching case and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean onboard, in place of Ice Cream Sandwich. All the other specs remain the same, such as the 7 inch 1024 by 600 screen, 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, and 8GB of internal storage.

Social networks are great, in theory. But then you run into problems with other users, advertising, spam, unexpected and unnecessary interface redesigns, security issues, privacy problems and the list goes on.

If you’re in the mood to try something different, then, you might be interested in RetroShare. It’s a cross-platform, open source tool which provides a rich set of features -- instant messaging, voice chat, forums, channels, file sharing and more -- but in a peer-to-peer form, so you only get to connect to people that you’ve specifically invited.

Budapest developer FinalWire Ltd has released AIDA64 Extreme Edition 2.80.2300 and AIDA64 Business Edition 2.80.2300, new versions of its streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking tools. The Extreme Edition is aimed at home users, while the Business Edition is designed to work with small and medium scale enterprises.

Version 2.80 is a relatively minor upgrade, refreshing and improving the benchmarking and diagnostic tool’s support for newer technologies, including the Intel Atom Z2760 and OCZ Vector SSD.

After teasers and tweets, it's really no secret that today is the big day when Microsoft launches Office 2013. The suite has already been available for TechNet users since mid-November, but in typical Microsoft fashion the consumers are the last to get their hands on the goodies.

Office 2013 Home and Student, Home and Business, and Professional, as well as Office 365, are currently available for purchase in different markets, including United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Australia, with pricing adjusted depending on the region.

Panic in Cupertino: Headless chickens run around smacking into one another, because they don't know they're dead.

That's the fundamental problem with Apple, and this situation is largely independent of recent stock price declines that analysts, bloggers, reporters and other writers can't opine enough about. Falling shares are part of a necessary correction, as reality displaces perception. To understand what's happening now, you need to look into the past -- three years, which by Internet counting is like a lifetime.