CHRISdotTODD

I figured that I could find all the lithium-ion battery recalls by looking at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Council website -- I was wrong. Here is what I found, but it is missing quite a few. Dell, December 2005 and August 2006 Apple, May 2005 and August 2006 Lenovo / IBM, September 2006 HP, October 2005 and April 2006 Battery-Biz, June 2005 It is unfortunate that this website is incomplete. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Council also released tips on notebook computer usage in September of this year. Interestingly enough, I found a laptop battery recall as far back as 1994 . For those of you who are interested, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Council has new recalls announced each week. You can sign up for an email or even subscribe to a podcast to listen to the recalls.

Do you have some old DOS games that no longer play on your system? I found a way to resurrect these old classics and play them again. As you may recall a while back, I introduced the VM Player as a way to run Firefox in an effort to provide total protection on the Internet. You can use this same idea to run DOS. I have found three solutions: Download Microsoft's Virtual PC and load FreeDOS or another DOS. (Virtual PCs only provide the hardware visualization , you still need to provide the OS.) Use the VM Player and run the Nostalgia appliance . This appliance comes pre -installed with OpenDOS and 8 old DOS games. Use the VM Player and run the FreeDOS appliance (beta). On a related note, apparently there are some hacks you can make to the VM Player environment to create new environments without purchasing the client.

My wife and I bought the same model computer this past summer (HP Compaq Presario, Win XP Media Center), and while I have had no problems, she seemed to have many. The first problems was that her computer seemed to lock up when accessing the Internet. After several different tries, I ended up re-imaging her computer, and that seemed to do the trick. Within a month though, she started having memory problems: "Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service." After doing a bit a research, I concluded that the problem stemmed from the new multi-function HP printer we bought . HP kindly [grrr...] installs a java-based server and application to monitor the device. And because it is so important, HP installed it in the system tray upon startup, so it is always available. Come to find out, HP has know memory leak issues with this application. And worse, it is a very difficult application to uninstall. This led me to Bleeping Computers and Startup Inspector . S

EWeek reports a new trojan virus that removes other viruses from your computer. The creators of the trojan virus want to use your computer to send spam email, and do not want to share your computer with other malware programs. This is accomplished through downloading Kaspersky AntiVirus for WinGate and modifying it to skip over itself.

Remember a few weeks back when Apple released iTunes 7 and Windows users had several problems? My advise at the time was to never be the first to download a new product version; wait for others to give it a try first. BTW: Apple has already release iTunes 7.1 , but I still have not updated, as there are still some issues for listening to podcasts. Well, Microsoft just released Internet Explorer 7, and a bug has already been reported . Apparently the problem manifests itself in Outlook Express , but because the two are closely integrated the cause was from IE 7. Let's review: Never be the first to try a new version of a product (if you really must, test it in a sandbox first) Use Firefox , not Internet Explorer Use Thunderbird , not Outlook Express Any questions?

Apple reported today that some versions of iPods (and here ) manufactured on September 12th inadvertently went out with a Windows virus. From the sounds of it, you should be fine if your virus definition files are up-to-date.

After many months, Sony has finally issued a recall of their batteries in their Vaio laptops . The list of companies who have recalled Sony batteries now include Dell, Apple, Toshiba, Sharp , Fujitsu, Lenovo , Hitachi, and Sony. The only major manufacture that has not recalled Sony batteries is HP, which is a bit odd considering all the other manufacturers eventually placing a recall. As you may recall, Sony originally said the problem was limited to Dell, and then Dell and Apple . Seem just a matter of time before HP is part of the crowd too. U.S. Today posted on article on October 2nd that indicated Sony will end up replacing 10 million batteries.