Google Calendar is a fantastically useful tool as it makes it possible to maintain a calendar of appointments and access it from any computer with an internet connection. But the online service does have its limitations, and many people prefer to use a dedicated personal information manager such as Outlook to edit calendars. Google Calendars can be imported into Outlook, but there is no way to make edits and keep the two in sync. This is where SyncMyCal can help.

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If you regularly use two or more PCs then you’ll know that sometimes it’s necessary to transfer files between them. Occasionally this is easy, and you’ll just need to copy some documents from your laptop to your PC, for instance. But often it’s much more complicated, requiring you to transfer files in both directions to get each system up-to-date, a time-consuming business where it’s easy to make mistakes.

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Keeping a PC running at peak performance can seem a time-consuming and complicated process. There are endless junk files to clean up, services to be tweaked, startup programs to eliminate, and hundreds of Windows settings to optimise: it’s hard to know where to begin. Unless, that is, you get a little expert help from SpeedUpMyPC 2010.

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Malware, a power surge, hardware failure, buggy software, even human error – there are many ways to trash your hard drive, and in that fraction of a second all your valuable data could be gone forever. It’s a very good idea to run a backup occasionally, then, and there are few more capable ways to do that than with Acronis True Image Home 2010.

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Backing up data is something that many computer users are bad at remembering; there always seems to be something more important to do, but postponing backups is something that it is easy to live to regret. A quick and easy way to secure your valuable files is to use PureSync to create backup copies in another location – ideally this should be on a separate hard drive.

PureSync is a folder synchronisation tool that makes it possible to keep the contents of two or more folder in sync with each other in a variety of ways. There are numerous uses for such a tool, but using it as backup software is an excellent option as any changes you make to files in their original location can be automatically replicated in the backup folder.

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The more applications you install on your PC, the more its Registry will become cluttered with broken, corrupt or redundant entries. Over time this will waste system resources, slow you down, maybe even lead to crashes or other odd behaviour. RegistryBooster 2010 can scan your system for problems, though, then fix everything it finds at a click, and so restoring your Registry health.

The program is certainly eager to get started: launch RegistryBooster 2010 and it fires off a Registry scan immediately, without waiting to be asked (potentially annoying behaviour, but fortunately easy to change in the settings). The scan speed itself is average, but you won’t be kept waiting long: a thorough scan of our test PC picked up more errors than many of the competition (over 1,100), yet was still completed in well under two minutes.

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You may think by using Windows’ Control Panel to uninstall programs you no longer need is the best way to free up hard drive space and remove registry reference to unwanted software. In reality, many uninstallation routines do not successfully reverse the installation process and over time this not only leads to wasted disk space, but also a bloated registry which can reduce overall system performance.

Ashampoo Uninstaller 4 is a dedicated uninstallation tool that monitors your computer as new software is installed so there is a precise record of any changes that have been made to your system. When the time comes to remove a program, this information can then be used to completely remove all traces of the software. After running through the installation of Ashampoo Uninstaller 4 select the option to launch the Install Monitor utility – this tool will automatically detect installation routines started by files called setup.exe or install.exe, but installers with other names can be monitored manually.

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In previous versions of Firefox, when opening a new tab – whether by right clicking an existing tab and selecting the New Tab option, pressing the Ctrl+T keyboard shortcut, or opening a link in a new tab – it would always open at the far right of the tab bar. With the release of Firefox 3.6 this behaviour has changed to mimic that of Internet Explorer.

Now when a new tab is opened, it appears immediately to the right of the currently selected tab. To many people this will make a degree of sense as it means that when opening links from one page in new tabs, they are grouped together in a fairly logical fashion. But the new method of handling tabs is not to everyone’s tastes and it can be changed by adjusting a hidden setting.

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Have you just bought a new computer and dreading the prospect of installing all of your favourite programs and configuring Windows to your liking? Laplink PCmover can help to make the transition as easy as possible enabling you to quickly and simply transfer not only your files from one computer to another, but also software and settings.

To make the migration as painless as possible, a few preparatory steps are needed. Data can be transferred using a special USB cable, removal media, or a network connection. Making use of a network connection is by far the quickest option (and this is how we will proceed), so it is worth networking your new computer before getting started. PCmover will need to be installed on both your old computer and your new one, but it needs to be run on the new machine first.

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Installing a regularly-updated antivirus tool will ensure you’re protected against most malware, but no security suite is 100% effective, and of course they’re all vulnerable to the very latest threats. So if your PC is behaving strangely and you think you might have been infected by something nasty, but your antivirus tool says otherwise, then you need another way to explore what’s going on. And we’ve the perfect candidate.

Launch Process Hacker and at first it looks like a more colourful version of Task Manager, with details on all the processes running on your PC. And you can use it in much the same way. Click Hacker > Show Details for All Processes, then scroll down the list, looking for any process name that seems unfamiliar.

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Tired of your dull desktop? New wallpaper could make all the difference, but first you’ll have to locate the best sources, find images in the right aspect ratio, download them somewhere and remember to change the background occasionally. If all that seems like too much hassle then you’ll probably carry on just as you are.

There is a simpler way, though, and it’s called Wallpaper Juggler. Just download and unzip the tiny executable (226KB), and it’ll add an icon to your system tray. Right-click that, choose the Download Wallpaper option and in a click you can start downloading wallpapers from InterfaceLIFT or Wallpaperstock. Well, that’s the theory – in practice InterfaceLIFT now blocks the downloads, apparently. We had more luck with Wallpaperstock, though, and the program downloaded more than 150 wallpapers with the correct resolution for our screen, in less than 60 seconds.

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