Riverbank It management

We recently completed another round of PC health checks for Riverbank clients. They know that the occasional check-up does their computers a power of good.

People often complain that their PC is getting slower, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Your computer gradually accumulates temporary files that have been left behind, more programs are automatically loaded during startup, and the files on the disk become more fragmented. Outlook also becomes slower as e-mails accumulate and the underlying data store becomes more bloated. All this makes your PC slower, and you spend longer waiting while the disk rattles away and the computer takes time to catch up with you.

The Palm Pre, due to be launched this summer, could become the next must-have gadget and a rival to the iPhone. It's a very attractive touch-screen phone, but unlike the iPhone it also features a Qwerty keyboard.

It's much better to see it than talk about it, so take a look the PC Pro video, then decide it's something you simply must have. 

In a bid to improve credit card and banking security, Visa is trialling a new credit card that incorporates a keypad and LCD screen. The owner enters their PIN number and the card generates a one-time code that can be used to verify online purchases and access to online banking facilities.

The card also has a second purpose because the one-time code could also be used to control remote access to company computer networks, providing companies with a corporate card and security device, all rolled into one.

PC Pro magazine is reporting that Windows 7 will be out in August, with a general release in October. No confirmation yet from Microsoft.

For most of us there is little excitement in an operating system; all it does is run the computer. But the operating system is the thing that a lot of us use almost all day every day - you probably spend more time with your operating system than you do with your family. So it's vital that it works well and provides rock-solid reliability. This is the promise of Windows 7. It will almost certainly be a nice product, but I still wouldn't rush to have version 1.0.