For years, I have been recommending the book The Secret Guide to Computers to my computer students but only now have I come across its website. It promotes "the world's top-rated computer book", but in such an appealing way that I've no hesitation in including it among the few commercial sites that can be found in David's Links. It's in its 28th edition, which speaks for itself. You can also get free phone advice on your computer problem from the author, Russ Walter, any time day or night; it works, I know, I've tried it. (David Henry)  In 2008 I  visited this website once more, and it is as interesting as ever. The Secret Guide is now in its 30^th edition, and you can read great chunks of it online for free. Just take a look at its Table of Contents for a taste of the depth of material covered here, now including Vista. It’s the only reference book you’ll need.

We all do what we can to get rid of email spam, right? What do you think would happen if you disabled all the spam blocking tools? That’s exactly what McAfee set out to find out with their S.P.A.M. experiment—Spam PersistentlyAll Month. Fifty volunteers (or suckers?) each got a brand new PC certified as free of anti spam tools, and went about their business. Visit the site to find out what happened to them (it’s pretty ugly.)  (SNUG OK)

One Laptop Per Child or OLPC is the vision of Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Media lab at MIT. The idea is that every underprivileged child in the developing world should have access to a computer, as education is the way out of poverty. After several years of development the vision of the $100 computer has become a reality as the now $200 XO laptops began to roll off a production line in China in November 2007. You can support this terrific initiative and technical miracle by paying for two and donating one of them. (Tourbus)

Many of us have received an e-mail from a friend with an attachment that can’t be opened. That’s usually because we don’t have the right program to open it with. You can probably solve the problem by scratching around to find out what program is needed, locate it on the Internet if you are lucky, download it, install it and try again; this is quite a chore. Or you can go to Zamzar, where they will do the conversion for you, for free. They can convert to and from multiple formats including documents, images, music and videos. (Kim Komando)

Microsoft has finally joined with several others, such as Spybot, to offer a free tool to search your PC for spyware. They call it Windows Defender and you can download it from there, provided your copy of Windows is legitimate. Incidentally, it also includes a new tool called Software Defender that allows you to easily control or remove programs that start up whenever you boot your PC, plus those that are currently running. (Smart Computing)

Another goodie is the set of Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP. These are clever functions that have been developed by Microsoft people but are not officially supported by the company. Don’t let that worry you; they have a pretty good reputation. Several that caught my eye include the HTML Slide Show Wizard, the Image Resizer and the Tweak UI collection. (Kim Komando)

To find in one clean page the latest version of free programs you can use, go to File Hippo to download them. One of the freebies is their update file checker (Beta, 6/07) that scans your computer and finds out and notifies you if there is an update available for any of your programs. Pretty neat. (Gary Stanley)

I have always been amazed at the speed and relevance of the results to a Google query and wondered how they did it. Well, now I’ve stumbled across the explanation, posted on April Fool’s Day by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin—so it must be right. The technology is called PigeonRank™ and is thoroughly and amusingly explained at Google’s own Technology site. (Kim Komando)

I’m impressed with the range of online technical courses you can take at C|Net, all at your own pace. The time commitment per course is perhaps an hour or two; all it takes is a free registration. You can even interact with the instructor. Some examples of these courses are Create a Budget in Excel; Digital Photo Basics; HDTV 101 and Wireless Security. (David Henry)

Everybody has had to call on the services of a technical guru to fix some nasty computer problem. There’s nothing new about this as you’ll soon find out by watching the hilarious video clip at Medieval Tech Support.  The fact that the complaint and the help are in Dutch—or is it Double-Dutch?—makes it that much funnier. (Nancy Sjoberg)

When was the last time you had a horrible error message from Windows? Don’t worry, you can create your very own at Atom Smasher’s Error Message Generator or visit the Gallery of Errors to see what aggravations others have expressed. Quite humorous. (Netsurfer Digest)

I have followed Dr Bob Rankin’s Tourbus newsletter for many years, and have always found his articles and advice helpful and not “geeky”.  He has moved some of the most useful articles to his website at Ask Bob Rankin; many are oriented to the Internet. His Tourbus co-author is Patrick Crispen whose website at NetSquirrel  is replete with PC articles and power-point presentations including tutorials. Both recommended. (Tourbus)

There are quite a few websites where you can download shareware and freeware, too. One of the best freeware sites is the no-nonsense one-page 100 Downloads that makes it easy to find what you want by color coding. Some of the better known ones include Open Office, Eudora, Firefox, Winamp, IrfanView, AdAware and Spybot. (Donna Gilbert)

If you surf the Web a lot, or have done so for a long time, it’s probable that you have accumulated quite a few Favorites, and sometimes it can be a bit tricky searching through them to find what you want. Try using the freeware AM-Deadlink to help clean up your Favorites by identifying duplicates—links that no longer work—and links and their folders that are clearly in the wrong place, or poorly named. Worth doing if you have more than a hundred Favorites. (SeniorNet HQ)

Anyone who has more than a passing interest in computers, as well as those who are just merely curious, will enjoy a visit to The History of Computing Project, a Dutch effort. The comprehensive list and biographies of computing pioneers like Howard Aiken, Paul Allen, and Gene Amdahl includes others who may be said to have contributed to the foundations, like DaVinci, Copernicus, and Newton; so it's a great resource. There's a major section on the companies involved and a slide show that follows a timeline of key events. If you are into video games, you can look up their history. You can also read about software that set a trend and hardware developments that made an impact on the development of computers. (David Henry)

If you like to sort out your own Windows problems, you may want to take a look at Annoyances, a noncommercial site dedicated to solving problems with any version of Windows. This site is very active; I noted over 70 new postings halfway through the day I viewed it, and its Windows XP forum has over 10,000 postings. Fortunately, there is a powerful search tool to help you zero in on your problem area. Plus a lot of no-nonsense step-by-steps under areas like Customizing, Annoyances, Performance, and Applications; and there's a Humor section. (Natalie Holley)

Published in 1984, Digital Deli is now available online. It's a fun book on the story of computers, with articles by pioneers and pundits on how it all came about and what the future holds as seen from back then. Homebrew and How The Apple Came To Be, by Steve Wozniak; Who Needs Personal Computers, by J. Presper Eckert; Think: The IBM Story; The Conservative Computer, by Wm. F. Buckley, Jr., On Softer Software, by Bill Gates are a few of the many mostly provocative pieces here. (Netsurfer Digest)

A scanner, a twenty-dollar bill, a PC, and a color printer could make you rich, right? Not so fast. It seems that software and hardware manufacturers, encouraged by governments and banks, have quietly been slipping anti-counterfeiting code into their products. Read all about it at CNet's News.Com And don't we all have a sneaky, sinking feeling that anti-anti-counterfeiting code is already being busily developed in dingy workshops in Bulgaria and China? (Netsurfer Digest)

There is required reading for all home computer users in the Home Users Security Checklist for Windows.  It covers security issues that you should be aware of about Windows, Anti-Virus, E-Mail, The Web, Anti-Spyware, Personal Firewalls, and Routers.  For each checklist item there is a brief description plus a link to more detail. For example: � I've tested my Web browser's security, followed by a link to How do I test my Web browser's security? (Netsurfer Digest)

It seems that Real Player commonly has some kind of spyware imbedded in it, so if you are using it to play audio and video media you might want to do something about it. First uninstall the version you have and then go to the BBC Radio site and click Launch BBC Radio Player. This lets you download and install a clean version without the spyware. You might use it to enjoy listening in the background to the streaming versions of BBC programs, especially the great variety of music to satisfy all tastes. (Tourbus)

One of the best general-interest PC magazines around is Smart Computing, especially if you don't think of yourself as a PC guru. Their website has a Q&A board you can visit as a guest and see the wide variety of questions submitted that mostly get answered. If you subscribe to the excellent magazine, you can submit your question; furthermore you can now get automatic e-mail notification when anyone answers your question. (Smart Computing)