Where is the cheapest and safest place to buy an Apple iPod nano? – Robert James
A: The short answer is something of a lame-sounding no-brainer: Buying any Apple product from the company’s online store (store.apple.com) is the safest because it’s easier to make a return or get prompt help in case you happen to get a dud or maybe push the wrong button.
As to finding bargains elsewhere, Apple continues with a hard-nosed policy to keep costs pretty much at the same level at non-company stores that are licensed to sell the popular mobile music players, so it’s difficult to find a dramatically better price.
And there’s also a bit of danger when shopping outside Apple’s orchard, because a lot of retailers with nice-sounding prices are able to sell out-of-date Apple products. Apple’s Web store always offers the latest models.
All that said, I often rely on the Mac
Insider website’s Best Deal search service. At appleinsider.com, click on any of the headlines about Apple product news; you will get a page that somewhere toward the middle includes a Best Deal search box for that particular item. In that search box, you can type in other product names such as “Nano” or “iPod 30” and get a rundown on asking prices at retail outlets across the country.
Q: Your suggestion about using the msconfig.exe program to find and remove startup items worked well with my laptop but not my desktop, which told me “cannot find file, make sure path and filename are correct and that all libraries are available.” Do I give up? -Jack Ryan
A: Your problem probably stems from a virus attack that has hidden your computer’s recovery tools such as msconfig.exe, which is the Microsoft Configuration utility built into Windows XP.
To recap, I often suggest readers click on Start and then Run and type in “msconfig” (without the quote marks) and then click OK to run this utility. It handles nearly all of the startup files that are activated when Windows boots up – including many virus types.
The msconfig utility is about the only way a non-programmer can track down and remove many of those intrusive bits of startup software that get installed by reputable and non-reputable software makers alike.
Unlike mainstream companies, virus writers sometimes try to keep users from erasing their startups. That’s why they erase or, more often, rename the msconfig.exe program file so that it can’t be used by victims.
So, scan your machine to find the malware. Many sellers of anti-virus software will run an online scan of potential customers’ computers to spot any malware. One such outfit is Panda Software, which offers Panda ActiveScan. This service gets high marks for this kind of virus.
After the scan-and-repair job is finished, consider making a copy of the msconfig.exe file. Give the copy an exotic name and change its ending to .com instead of the .exe used for executable software. Files with the .com ending also run like programs, so if you make up a new name for the copy of msconfig.exe, you can run it after any future attack.
