Subscriber Geraldine Astbury wrote from the U.K. to ask about some strange reliability problems she was having with her external hard drive.

Hi Terry, I wondered if you could help me with another problem. You’ve helped me before successfully so I thought I’d ask you again.

I purchased a Medion ‘Hard Drive To Go’ external 250 gig hard drive two years and four months ago. Although I didn’t use it very much it did work. Then all of a sudden it stopped working. I rang Medion and they very kindly replaced it. I had it only a few months and it stopped working again. Medion repaired it saying I had a Cypress driver problem and they had replaced the caddy. This lasted only a few days and then stopped working again. Medion repaired it again saying it was a Cypress drive error and replaced the PCB Board. It worked every day for seven weeks and now has suddenly stopped working again. …

Continue reading External Hard Drive Problems

I’ve found a great tool that examines my computer to make sure that it has the latest updates of the most common software packages — not all the updates, but the security updates for the versions I’m runninng.

It’s called Secunia Software Inspector, from the Danish security firm Secunia (www.secunia.com).

Secunia offers three versions of its software inspectors:

* Secunia Software Inspector — scan on-line (free)
* Secunia PSI — download version for personal use (free)
* Secunia Network Software Inspector — the full-featured product.

Quoting Secunia’s FAQ:

# What’s the difference between the Secunia PSI and the Secunia Software Inspector (the online version)?

The Secunia Software Inspector identifies about 40 of the most common applications, while the Secunia PSI can identify over 4,200.

Contine reading A Look Inside Secunia Software Inspector

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Subscriber and long-time reader Scott Adler wrote to me about his experiences with three of the various anti-spam programs. I’ve used Mailwasher Pro and PopFile and like both, but they are entirely different in their approach to spam. My current choice is PopFile.

Continue reading Anti-Spam Program Choices

Products:

• MailWasher Pro full-function 30-day trial
• iHateSpam full-function 30-day trial
• PopFile free