Three answers for the price of one, as Gavin asks about Sophos on his iMac, Norman wants to use an external screen on his Dell Inspiron, and Joseph wants to read some old Windows 3.1's Clipboard files
I have an iMac. Just for interest, I downloaded three different anti-virus programs. The first two found nothing, but the last one, Sophos, found eight "threats", which appear to be spyware. I wonder if it was a more effective anti-virus, or are they trying to sign me up for something?
Gavin
There's often some discussion as to what constitutes a threat, and whether an anti-virus program should deal with it, and this is particularly true on the Mac. At the minimum, a Mac anti-virus program should identify any viruses that might be a threat to Mac OS X. At the maximum, an anti-virus program could also identify and clean up any Windows malware that it finds (which might be in the web cache or attached to emails, for example), and also any tracking cookies that could compromise your privacy. Sophos is a well known and highly regarded supplier of anti-virus programs for Windows, and tends to deal with the Windows stuff as well. This is not a bad thing, because you might unwittingly send malware to friends who have Windows machines.
Note that if you want Sophos to remove malware, Mac OS X will ask for your password where a Windows PC would probably let you hit Continue. Rich Baldry from Sophos says: "This ensures that only authenticated users of the computer can perform these actions, which potentially involve removing or modifying areas of the system to which they wouldn't usually have access."
Sophos is free and not asking you to sign up for anything, but I assume the company is looking forward to future business when the Mac has a big enough market share to attract lots of malware.
Second screen for a laptop
How can I connect a monitor to my Dell Inspiron 4000 and still see the laptop screen?
Norman Lewell
Your laptop has a standard 15-pin VGA port so it should just be a question of plugging in a VGA cable. Most monitors will work using Plug and Play, though in some cases, you might be prompted for a driver disk or .inf file to provide support for extra features. Once the monitor is plugged in, hold down the Function (Fn) key and press whichever numbered function key controls the displays: it might be F3 or F8, for example. The correct function key may well have two images of screens separated by a slash. Press this key a few times while holding down Fn (ie press Fn+F8, or whatever) and the Inspiron should cycle through the options. These will include having only the laptop screen on, having only the external display on, and having both screens on. There should also be the option to use one screen as an extension to the other, so you can use the mouse to pick up a program running on one screen and drag it to the other screen, or have it straddle both. If you plan to use this mode, right-click on the Windows desktop, select Properties, and click the tab for Settings. This will show the two screens numbered 1 and 2. If the second screen is on the left of your primary display, drag the box marked 2 to the left of the box marked 1, and so on.
Reading old clipboard images
I have some .clp image files, made by Windows 3.1's Clipboard application. I have been trying to find a way to open them on XP.
Joseph Gatt
Although the Clipboard application is obsolete, Microsoft still shipped it with Windows XP, just in case people needed it. If you go to the Windows directory and open the System32 folder, you should find a 101K file called clipbrd.exe. Double-clicking this will enable you to read your old clipboard files.
However, it would be a better idea to download the free image viewer, IrfanView, or its somewhat slicker but larger rival, XnView. You can use either of these to view the old clipboard files and save them in a more useful format such as JPeg (.jpg) or as Windows Bitmaps (.bmp). Once you have converted them, you won't need Clipboard again.
Microsoft didn't ship the Clipboard application with Vista or Windows 7, so with these operating systems, conversion is the best policy.
Kelly Rowland Danica Patrick Josie Maran Leighton Meester Dominique Swain
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