Articles about Know Your PC

Irene's assault on the Eastern Seaboard earlier this week is just the beginning of what is expected to be another heavy season of hurricanes and tropical storms. What happens to your data if raging rains or flooding waters damage your computer? The electronics may be gone but your precious files are likely recoverable.

It’s tempting to turn that water-logged computer back on and see if anything can be saved. Don’t. The disk drives contain contaminants that can destroy the drive and all the data on it. You pose the greatest risk to your valuable data. Here's what you should or should not do instead:

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Windows 8 is just around the corner and it seems that almost every week there details emerge about just what can be expected from the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system. With every new Windows that is announced, there follows a rush to mimic the look and features long before the software hits the shelves, and things are no different with Windows 8.

There are a number of skins and customization packs available that can be used to get the Windows 8 look, including  Omnimo for Rainmeter, but if you prefer the idea of getting a little more hands on, there are a range of tools you can use to mimic the elements of Windows 8 you most like the look of.

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At first glance, DiskLED doesn’t exactly appear to be the most interesting of programs. Flashing a system tray icon to indicate hard drive activity can be useful, but it’s nothing new and there are plenty of other tools that do the same thing.

What makes DiskLED a little different, though, is that it’s not tied to highlighting hard drive accesses alone. The program can also monitor any Windows performance counter in the current PC, enabling you to keep a close eye on whatever activity you like.

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Most backup programs specialize in a particular form of data protection: file-based backups, continuous data protection, online backups, whatever it might be. Acronis True Image Home 2012, though, takes a different approach, cramming just about every backup type and feature there is into a single, straightforward interface.

The program can create images of partitions or entire hard drives, for instance. If this is more than you need then you can simply point True Image Home 2012 at the files or folders you’d like to protect. Alternatively, aim the program’s Nonstop Backup module at a key location – your Documents folder, say -- and it’ll monitor that folder for you, backing up new or modified files as they appear.

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Mortal Universe Software has updated its free email preview tool, POP Peeper, to version 3.8. The latest version, the first update for almost a year, includes a number of major new features as well as the expected slew of minor tweaks and bug fixes.

POP Peeper is designed to allow users to safely preview mail while it’s still on the mail server, allowing them to cut download time and improve security by deleting unwanted messages, including spam and virus-laden emails, before they’re downloaded to the user’s computer.

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Mozilla has released beta and alpha versions of Thunderbird for testing purposes, mirroring the release cycle of Thunderbird’s sister project, Firefox. Thunderbird 7 Beta, which will install over the top of any existing Thunderbird installation, has no major headline changes – the release notes mention support for printing a summary of selected email messages, but this functionality is already present in the current stable release, Thunderbird 6 Final.

Other reported changes are minor fixes and interface tweaks, including various fixes related to the way Thunderbird handles attachments. Also appearing on Mozilla’s download server is Thunderbird’s alpha build, which has a different name -- Earlybird 8.0a2 – and which installs alongside an existing beta or stable build.

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Piriform Inc has released version 3.10 of CCleaner, its popular free cleaning tool for Windows-based PCs. CCleaner 3.10, which is also available as a portable version, adds support for Internet Explorer 9.0.2, Firefox 6.0 Final and Firefox 7.0 Beta.

Version 3.10 also adds a number of new and improved cleaning options, plus promises better accuracy and reliability when wiping free disk space as well as entire drives.

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Wake-on-LAN (WOL) is, in theory, a very convenient technology, able to wake up a sleeping PC on your local (wired) network just by sending it an appropriately formed “magic packet”.

The reality can be rather different, though, as WOL only works if your PC, BIOS and network card all support the technology and have it enabled (and even then you may run into issues with your router). Still, if you’d like to give it a try then NirSoft’s latest, WakeMeOnLan, is an easy way to get started.

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