Sorting out new technologies is difficult enough without having to figure out what name they're going under. But that's exactly what users of Pocket PC devices have had to do. These hand-helds started out using Windows CE as their operating system, but then the name became Handheld PC. Then the user interface was renamed Pocket PC, as in Pocket PC 2002. And now there's Windows Mobile 2003. No wonder the market is confused. When I decided my Jornada 548 needed an upgrade, I opted for an iPaq 2210 that shipped with Pocket PC 2003. I was puzzled until I learned that Pocket PC 2003 and Windows Mobile 2003 are the same thing. But that's OK: the iPaq 2210 I ordered actually arrived as an iPaq 2215. Turns out HP sells identical units with different numbers as a way to track sales channels.

XP's default settings are not necessarily optimum for performance.

What a week! Something slipped through my defenses -- I think it was the Blaster worm -- that made loading Windows XP impossible. Fortunately, I keep everything backed up and I decided, while I tried to diagnose exactly what infested my main machine, to switch to a backup unit I hadn't run for many months. That meant bringing it back to life and inoculating it against Blaster, Sobig and all the rest. The reason Blaster, if that is what it was, got through is that I have been lax about doing the Windows updates. My main machine is a dual-boot PC that gives me either XP or Red Hat Linux on startup. Because I do most of my work inside Linux and use XP largely for software testing, I've been preoccupied with keeping Red Hat upgraded, forgetting how tempting XP is for hackers.

Audible.com offers a wide variety of books in a digital format.

Digital video recorder loses commercial skipping feature because of lawsuits.