Just inherited a computer from my Dad and it's very nice, except it has a generic WINPC computer name. I want to change it to something a bit more memorable. How can I easily change the name of my Windows 7 laptop PC?

I'm writing a research report on Microsoft Windows and need to be able to take screen captures or grabs and include them in the document. I know that "print screen" is supposed to accomplish that, but I'm just not sure how it works. Can you explain how to take a screen capture in MS Windows 7, please?

I'm working with a group of software developers and recently had a problem where my copy of Windows 7 automatically updated to change something and the app we're building stopped working on my computer. After we figured out what had happened they told me to disable the automatic system update feature in Windows 7. But how do I turn the autoupdate feature off, it seems like it's built-in to Microsoft Windows now??

I keep running low on space on my PC hard drive and am wondering if there's any sort of trick for freeing up all my wasted space, especially with temp files and such? I'm running Windows 7 if that makes a difference?

This may seem obvious, but I'm used to "Update Windows" as an option in my Start menu and it's not there any more in Windows 7. How do I update my Windows 7 installation to ensure it stays up-to-date on patches, etc?

I have my Windows Live account set up but keep getting an error message that I need to verify my address. Since my address is part of the Windows Live network (hotmail) I'm a bit confused: how do I verify my addr?

One of my favorite features of Mac OS X is how PDF (portable document format) tools are tightly integrated into the operating system. Want to save something as a PDF document? Any app that can send a document to the printer, be it a Web page, a screen capture, or a nicely formatted report, can just as easily do a "Save As PDF", and even specify what image quality should be used. Sure, Adobe sells its Distiller program, but on a Mac I would estimate that 95%+ of your document to PDF requirements are already included in the operating system.

This capability is completely missing from the Windows world, whether you're running Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7. It's just not the same. This means that if you want to work with PDF files, you're going to need to spend some money getting a commercial application that adds this set of features to your PC.

That's why I was interested in learning more about Smart PDF Converter Pro when the company contacted me. I switch back and forth and quite often find that it's very useful to send an unmodifiable document to a client or customer, a PDF rather than a Word file or HTML page. Testing Smart PDF Converter Pro? Sure!

I move around quite a bit as a road warrior and though I don't often need to print, sometimes being able to produce a hard copy is definitely helpful. Problem is, I don't want to bother people in different temporary offices with configuration details: I'm running Mac OS X Snow Leopard on my MacBook Pro, is there some easy way to add printers on the go?

Whether you realize it or not, an enemy of your computer's performance is dust. Over time, your fans will pick up dust which collects on the components, the heat sink and on the fan blades themselves. Eventually, this impedes cooling and can cause your machine to run hot, reducing efficiency. It can also gum up the working mechanism of the fans, causing them to overheat or seize.

The issue? One you probably think about every day: how do I speed up my PC?

I read your explanation of how to password protect individual files or folders on a Mac (see How to encrypt folders on your Mac), but is there a way to do that easily in Windows? Thanks!

My computer desktop is driving me crazy, Dave! Whatever I do to organize things, I find that I have so many icons and files that I lose track of important documents on a daily basis. Surely there's some way to tame this chaos?

I have no idea what happened, but I had Microsoft Windows XP running just fine within the VMWare Fusion application, as you documented (see installing Vista in VMWare Fusion) and now it crashes without an error when I try to run it. Help! I need to get this working!

I read through your splendid tutorial on installing Windows XP with Apple's Boot Camp product (see boot camp help) but that's not for me. I don't want to have to reboot each time I want to try something out with a Windows app on my Mac. I've read about something called the Parallels Desktop and am hoping you can explain how to install it and how to use it so I can run Windows in parallel with Mac OS X? Thanks.

This has been bothering me for quite some time, and noone else has been able to give me a good answer:

How do you retrieve RAM lost to memory leaks?

I have one gig of RAM my computer, but I can only use 550MB of it... I just recently got into programming, and I am sure that memory leaks are the cause of this RAM loss. Is there a program I can use, is my RAM now useless, or did I miss something?