Your photos, music and data are just a virus or hard disk failure away from oblivion. Build a triple-layer defence using PC Authority's practical guide.

It's an accepted fact that most Microsoft Office users only ever use about 20 percent of the suite's capabilities, often because they don't have the time to learn about all of the goodies it contains. Excel, with its complicated interface and feature overload is notorious for baffling even experienced users. However, many of its features are very useful in their own right.

Content management systems promise to take the drudgery out of site maintenance. Angus Kidman looks under the hood.

Once you’ve read this article, your hard drive could be melted in 30 seconds. “Digital Shredding” technology is now available.

There are three proposed near-term fixes for this: GPRS, WAP and XML. GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) isnt a cure-all, but it will be of importance to the early adopters - people using mobile data

Welcome enhancements in all areas mean there’s something for everyone – even database novices

New effects enable richer design results, while a host of other improvements boost productivity.

With Flash media handling and integration with Acrobat.com the Acrobat platform embraces the Internet – at last

Protect your personal data with these essential downloads that offer spyware protection, data encryption and more

The booming interest in genealogy created by the Internet has provided a lucrative market for programs that help the home user research and create their family tree...

The buzzword in Excel 2003 is XML, best illustrated by the new mapping feature. This lets you map cells, columns and ranges to data held in XML data sources, so you can create Excel workbooks showing data from Web Services or other back-end data stores. The XML data is validated on input into Excel against a custom XML Schema under your control. Excel can also save your work in a native XML workbook format, which keeps any formatting but avoids the proprietary XLS file format. You may also, however, save data as a pure XML data file, leaving any formatting in the template. This XML data file can be put through BizTalk or imported into a back-end database.

Two packages on a chip will help AMD to regain chip lead.

Chief technology officer Maureen Govern steps down.

DRam and handset profits offset Flash and LCD slump.

Beware the enemy within.

After enjoying the Satellite 2800 (reviewed issue 42, p80) so much, the Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 is a disappointment. This is surprising in that the general belief would be that the more powerful machine would be more appealing to the technically inclined than the Celeron-based Satellite 2800.