Image via Wikipedia

The gHacks blog points out a great, but lesser-known feature in Microsoft Outlook: You can sort by multiple columns at the same time with an easy trick.

All you need to do is hold down the Shift key while clicking on the column header for one column, and continue to hold the key down while you click on another column. This can be very handy for more advanced sorting on the fly—for instance, you could sort by sender, and then by message size to find the biggest file from a particular sender. It’s one of those tiny, but very useful tricks that we love to find.

For more, check out how to color code messages addressed only to you, pin Outlook templates to the taskbar for quick access, or read through our top 10 Outlook boosters for lots of great tips that streamline your email handling.

Sort Email by Multiple Columns in Outlook - Outlook 2007 - Lifehacker

By Appointment Only:

I am offering to fix all computers from my residence for a flat labor rate of $99, plus any parts and/or software if necessary. Minimum diagnostic fee of $49. Pick up and drop off service available for additional fee.

Call 314-375-6167 to get your computer fixed.

• Location: Oakville (South St. Louis County)

With the availability of free movie downloads online increasing drastically, there’s more people than ever downloading and watching movies on their PCs.  It can be annoying watching movies on a small PC screen while sitting on a crappy PC chair so here’s a guide on how to connect your PC to your TV and watch movies just like you would watch a DVD.

How To Connect Your PC To Your TV | Dave Discovers

BOSTON —  A malicious software program known as Conficker that many feared would wreak havoc on April 1 is slowly being activated, weeks after being dismissed as a false alarm, security experts said.

Conficker, also known as Downadup or Kido, is quietly turning an unknown number of personal computers into servers of e-mail spam, they added.

Conficker installs a second virus, known as Waledac, that sends out e-mail spam without knowledge of the PC’s owner, along with a fake anti-spyware program, Weafer said.

The Waledac virus recruits the PCs into a second botnet that has existed for several years and specializes in distributing e-mail spam.

Conficker also carries a third virus that warns users their PCs are infected and offers them a fake anti-virus program, Spyware Protect 2009 for $49.95, according to Russian-based security researcher Kaspersky Lab.

FOXNews.com - Conficker Worm Finally Begins Attacking PCs - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News

Six Things You’re Yet To Back Up and How To Back Them Up

What to Backup?

Question:

How much is 1 byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, etc.?

Answer:

Below is a listing of each of the commonly accepted disk drive space values. It is important to realize that not all manufacturers and developers use these values. For example, a manufacturer may consider a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 and not 1,073,741,824 bytes, we’ve listed the commonly accepted values in their binary base 2 values.

Note: All values expressed below are whole numbers. This means that a GB may show that it can only contain one 650MB CD but in reality 1GB could hold 1.5753… of a 650MB CD. Since we’ve created this document to illustrate how much each value can contain in whole, no decimal values are shown. In other words you can only fit one complete 650MB CD on a 1GB drive since two 650MB complete discs would exceed 1GB.

How much is 1 byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, etc.?

I will probably have to get me a pair of these; you know, since what I really do for a living is work on computers.  But, it is nice to know that if I ever slid in to the law enforcement industry, I would already have the required casual attire. 

I believe this.  Many of my customers, as well some family members and friends have fallen victim to this type of bug.  If something pops up warning you of viruses or spyware on your system, make sure that it is the software that you put on your computer to tell you such things…

By Bill Rigby

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Computer users’ growing fear of worms and viruses could be behind a recent spike in attacks on PCs via bogus security software, according to a Microsoft Corp report published on Wednesday.

As the Conficker worm and other malicious software — known as malware — have grabbed headlines, more computer users have been looking for security programs online, some of which turn out to be agents for viruses themselves.

Out of hundreds of millions of PCs monitored by the world’s largest software maker for its twice yearly Security Intelligence Report, seven of the 25 top security threats came in the form of fake security programs.

In the last six months of 2008, Microsoft said it cleared 4.4 million PCs of the most successful bogus security program, which goes under the name of Win32/Renos.

Read on…

…but we still apparently don’t know what it is going to do…

Experts believe that the mystery update will record users’ keystrokes

The Conficker worm has started to update infected machines with a mystery package of data.

Computer security firms watching the malicious program noticed that it sprang into life late on 8 April.

The activity on its update system delivered encrypted software to compromised machines. It is not yet clear what the payload contains.

The Conficker virus variants are thought to be present on millions of PCs around the world.

The virus is such a concern for Microsoft that they are offering a $250,000 bounty for information.

Like many items in the news, perhaps this will be a non-news item.  Also, keep in mind that Wednesday just happens to be April Fool’s Day.  Regardless, the steps below are recommended in all cases and at all times.

What does it do?

1.  The worm is programmed to modify itself on Wednesday to become harder to stop.

2.  It can infect machines from the Internet or by hiding on USB memory sticks carrying data from one computer to another. Once in a computer it digs deep, setting up defenses that make it hard to extract.

3.  Malware could be triggered to steal data or turn control of infected computers over to hackers amassing “zombie” machines into “botnet” armies.

4.  A troubling aspect of Conficker is that it harnesses computing power of a botnet to crack passwords.

So, what can you do?

1. Always make sure important data is backed up on your computer.  Hard drives crash all of the time and viruses add an extra threat.
2. Open Internet Explorer and visit http://www.windowsupdate.com and download all available critical and security updates.  Including all of the Service Packs.  Note: While these updates are certainly necessary and highly recommended, they have been known to cause temporary problems of their own on a case by case basis.  While the updates are usually seemless, be prepared for possible update challenges.
3. Step number 2. should download the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, which includes the cleaner for the Conficker virus, but for good measure, download the software directly here.  Open it and run a full scan.
4. Be sure to have a good Internet Security program.  The top rated Internet Security software according to PC Magazine is Norton Internet Security 2009, and I concur.  You can download NIS2009 from here.  If you have another antivirus program running, be sure to uninstall it first.
5. (4. a.)  - There is a couple of free antivirus programs out there if you do not want to purchase NIS2009.  One is AVG, which can be found here, and the other one, which I am starting to use more than AVG is AntiVir (Available Here) because it now includes a pretty good spyware detection and removal tool.
6. Click on the links of your virus software to run updates and then run a full system scan.

It may sound overwhelming, but if you take it one step at a time, you should be alright.