fix

When it comes to software, the desktop is the best neighborhood, and nearly every piece of software tries to move in there. Some merely set a shortcut, but others "do things," often things you don't want and, worse, can't undo.

You have several options for restoring your desktop settings when software hijacks them, most of which aren't difficult but nevertheless often prove challenging to those users who really don't care what's "under the hood" of their computer any more than they do their car or their washing machine. For them, Random … Read more

Sprint and Apple are said to be working on a possible software fix for slower-than-expected wireless networking speeds affecting some users of Apple's latest iPhone.

The issue has been the topic of a now 60-page support discussion thread on Sprint's site that began the day the phone was launched. There, users have been complaining of slow 3G speeds and posting photos of speed tests, including ones showing differing handsets to suggest the problem is limited to Apple's recently launched iPhone 4S hardware.

The Next Web today points to an alleged internal memo making the rounds to Sprint representatives saying that both Sprint and Apple are both aware of, and working on, a fix, suggesting the problem could be software-related. … Read more

As freeware system cleaners go, Magix PC Check & Tuning Free offers a good balance. Some such tools are designed to be as easy to use as possible and give you few options and not enough information about what they're doing to your system. Others overwhelm beginners with options and detailed scan reports, and they often make it too easy to delete the wrong things. The freeware version of PC Check is designed to be easy to use yet useful to people with widely varying skills, yet it also lets you perform cleaning and tune-up operations separately as well … Read more

When some of the files in a zipped archive become corrupted, it often makes the entire archive inaccessible. ZIP2Ffix is a free tool that can recover many of the uncorrupted files in a corrupted ZIP or SFX archive. The program attempts to extract good files from a corrupted archive and save them to the same destination with the same file name, only with _ZFX.zip added. It's totally portable and small in size, so you can save it to a USB thumbdrive and run it on any Windows machine from Windows 2000 to Windows 7.

ZIP2Fix has a simple … Read more

When it comes to performing do-it-yourself fixes or upgrades on your Mac, one of the main resources to use is the online take-apart guides from iFixIt.

The company has detailed how to open and access internal components of many Mac models, and has gained a reputation for quickly tearing down newly released Apple hardware and outlining what's inside.

The manuals and high-quality detailed images offered by iFixIt can be invaluable, but if for some reason your Mac is not working and you need to use one of the manuals to replace a component, then you will need to access … Read more

When new Mac systems and devices come out, expect the do-it-yourself repair guide iFixIt to be one of the first to rip it apart and show you what's inside. When Thunderbolt was issued iFixIt disassembled the first MacBook systems to show the Thunderbolt controller chips, and also took apart the Thunderbolt cable to show the signal conditioning electronics in them. Only days after Apple released its Thunderbolt Display, iFixIt is at it again and has fully disassembled the monitor to show a surprising amount of circuitry.

Apple's Thunderbolt Display is in essence a Thunderbolt hub, and as iFixIt … Read more

The rap on AOL used to be that it was "the Internet on training wheels," yet many solid Netizens cut their i-teeth on its superfriendly apps. AOL Computer Checkup Lite continues AOL's tradition of making things as easy as possible for inexperienced users, with an ultrasimple interface asking simple questions about your PC experience. Not to worry; it doesn't actually do anything but make recommendations about your system's health. That's when you should start to worry.

AOL's interface consists of four check boxes and a Scan button. The boxes are associated with questions, … Read more

Apple and a group of book publishers were accused in a lawsuit today of illegally fixing e-book prices to "boost profits and force e-book rival Amazon to abandon its pro-consumer discount pricing."

The lawsuit (PDF), which was filed today in U.S. District Court in Northern California, alleges Apple, HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster "colluded to increase prices" on popular books. (Simon & Schuster is owned by CBS. CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.)

The lawsuit alleges Apple and the book publishers employed … Read more

Apple rolled out a minor security update to iOS this morning that fixes a vulnerability with the software's PDF-reading capabilities.

iOS 4.3.4 (and 4.2.9 for those on Verizon) is available as a free update to iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad users. A description of the update says it "fixes (a) security vulnerability associated with viewing malicious PDF files." That's the same one used by JailbreakMe.com, a site that re-launched earlier this month to allow users to jailbreak their phones without using a computer or any special software, giving the owners a … Read more