The conceptual genius of GoBack is that it requires no special knowledge of the way computers work..

You don’t have to know what went wrong or why; you simply order the machine to travel back in time to that golden age a couple of hours earlier when you knew things were working and that missing spreadsheet was still extant.

GoBack is particularly savvy about recovering files. Right-click on a file name, choose the newly added "show revisions" option, and you’ll be treated to a file’s entire recent history, even if it went by other names or lived in other folders. If you’ve resaved a file under the same name a dozen separate times in the past few days, you can usually retrieve any or all of the successive versions. And GoBack can even restore individual deleted e-mails.

How does it work? When you install the program, it grabs 10 percent (or more if you choose) of your hard drive for its own purposes. It also takes over the boot process of your hard drive, interposing itself between Windows and the hardware. When the computer sends information to the disk, GoBack diverts it to its own private cache. All this happens in the background as you work.

This puts heavy responsibility on the program to execute correctly. Unfortunately, GoBack’s brilliant conception is marred by execution just awkward enough to give you pause.

When I tried version 2.1, it refused to install completely. Upgrading to 2.1a solved that problem. The new version worked well until I tried some tests that involved a simulated power outage. Then the machine refused to boot until I contacted the company’s tech support line for help. This problem has since been fixed in an even newer release.

David Turner – husband, firefighter and father of three children – spent nearly a year addicted to life in an online world.

For up to eight hours a day, he played the Internet game Ultima Online, accumulating half a million dollars in virtual gold, three large virtual dragon ships and an allpowerful, sword-wielding virtual version of David Turner, whom he named Sir Turbohawk.

When Turner finally came to his senses a few weeks ago and decided to get back to real life, he couldn’t imagine that all that work amounted to just a bunch of worthless, invisible bits of data stored on some computer.

He was right. He put his virtual life up for sale on the online auction site eBay.com and quickly sold sir Turbohawk and all his precious magical equipment for $521. "I was wondering if the guy was actually going to pay me," Turner said. "He sent the check to me the next morning."

While real life is priceless, virtual life is worth at least a few hundred dollars. Last week, eBay had at least two dozen Ultima accounts being offered for more than $200.

Scrap objects are Windows OLE/2 files that are essentially packages that can contain almost anything. They could easily include code that will delete files, directories or execute any program. While downloading scarp objects is not dangerous, you must make sure you don’t click on the file. Windows will automatically unpack and attempt to open or execute whatever is contained in the scarp file if you click on this object.

If you receive an unsolicited email with an attachment of a file with the extension, SHS, you should simply delete it.
 
 

Don’t use bus-powered or under-powered hubs, which can significantly restrict the number of supported peripherals. Instead, use self-powered USB hubs with at least 500 milliamps per channel. Hubs should also feature per-port switching, so one bad peripheral won’t shut down all devices on a hub, and LED indicators for device status.

Don’t use cables longer than 5 meters, and don’t use extension cables or connectors, including passive pass-through connectors on monitors or keyboards. While extension cables and connectors are available, significant signal degradation is a risk if you use them.

Do check that previously installed components still work after you install a new USB peripheral. Testing has shown that rebooting the system after installing a new USB peripheral often suffices to get everything working again, but it is common for individual devices to stop working during installation of a new peripheral.

USB isn’t the only new PC connection standard. IEEE 1394 (FireWire) is designed for much faster throughput than USB, however, supporting speeds of 100, 200 and 400 Mbps. Like USB, FireWire uses a tiered star topology, but it also supports peer-to-peer connections without hubs, allowing up to 63 same-speed devices to be connected to the same bus and up to 1,023 buses to be interconnected.

While 1394 chip, BIOS, and operating system support trails that for USB, FireWire isn’t a replacement for USB. USB connections will likely be used for lower speed peripherals, such as input devices and controllers, while FireWire will be more appropriate for high-bandwidth applications, such as cable modems, LAN connections, digital video and consumer AV devices.
 
 

Performance problems during the log-on process are often the result of incorrect settings in the Dial-Up Networking properties for your connection. For example, if you have the Log on to network property enabled when it shouldn’t be, that can slow down your Internet log-on process. This setting tells the Dial-Up Networking to log on automatically to the remote server using the user name and password you entered when you started up the computer.

Also, make sure only the TCP/IP is checked under Allowed Network Protocols.

To check these properties, double-click on MY COMPUTER – then double-click on DIAL-UP NETWORKING – then right click on the icon for your internet connection and choose PROPERTIES. Then select the SERVER TYPES tab.