It isn’t every day that a new version of Microsoft Office comes along, but it is a suite of productivity applications that many users have become accustomed to over the years, either at work or at home. Even if you’re unable to purchase the full suite, there are stripped down alternatives, such as the mobile version on Windows Phone and the browser-based Microsoft Office Web Apps that are free to use for Microsoft account holders.

It is becoming an increasingly popular pastime to add a new element to cars, a new hub for entertainment, GPS and communications. The carputer seems to have been inspired partly by TV shows such as Knight Rider and movies from the James Bond series as well as the progress of technology in the modern age. But now, anyone can build a car computer!

If you have damaged the screen of your mobile phone – perhaps you dropped it or sat down while the device was in your pocket – you’ve immediately given yourself a headache. Can the phone be repaired, and if so, what are the costs? There are many services available online that will repair your mobile phone, but if you have access to the parts and they’re inexpensive, why not perform the procedure yourself?

How many times have you installed copies of Windows on a computer following a major hardware change? A case in point is probably Windows XP – although flexible, popular and easy to use, the operating system wasn’t great at dealing with hardware changes, in particular new motherboards. This shouldn’t come as any surprise, really.

How big is your hard disk drive? 80 GB? 300 GB? 5 TB? You might well have more than enough space, but if you own a device with a small SSD – perhaps a netbook, for instance – there is very little to worry about. There are several tools and tricks that you can use to make sure that the OS runs efficiently and without filling your SSD (or indeed any other small storage device).

Due to a severe spam issue (and to take the storage load away from my PC) I decided to migrate my email accounts to Google Mail. This has had an interesting effect on my ability to collect messages on my Windows Phone. While it isn’t a problem to set up a Gmail account if your email address ends in @gmail.com, the situation is a little different for Windows Phone users if they’re trying to access an email service that uses Google Mail but has its own domain name.

Four weeks on and I’ve been playing with my Raspberry Pi in various ways, from using it to browse the web and standard day-to-day computing tasks to playing around with the various configurations that are possible for networking (Ethernet vs USB wireless). But is there an ultimate point to this device, or will it remain a curiosity on my shelf, to be switched on whenever a useful purpose rears its head?

Given that some of these employees were among the most intelligent people in the country, the way in which they misused their devices was astonishing, from general irresponsible behaviour concerning the devices (drops, scratches, broken screens, etc.) to leaving material saved or even open on the desktop that you certainly wouldn’t show to your grandmother. As for the confidential information that sat open an ALT+TAB away…

You hate Windows 8, don’t you? You’ve never used it, you haven’t even seen it in action (other than via a few YouTube videos) but you hate it. It’s pointless, it’s ugly, it’s unwieldy… you know all of these things, yet you haven’t used it. Perhaps, just perhaps, you’ve been misinformed. I’ve been running Windows 8 for several months now in its various pre-release versions and I can tell you right here, right now, that it really isn’t all that bad.

Gaming for Windows Phone is an interesting experience. While there are a whole host of great independent titles that don’t have Xbox Live integration, those that do are the ones that tend to be the most popular – for obvious reasons. One game that remains fascinating despite the lack of Xbox Live integration, however, is Armed!, a sci-fi themed RTS with three modes of play and an armada of futuristic weaponry.

Thanks to the release of successive versions that take advantage of improvements in computing technology, Civilization has been a part of my life for years, so to finally get the chance to play it wherever I happened to be was something I was hardly going to pass up. As a result, I’ve had the mobile version of the game, Civilization Revolution, on my Windows Phone since April 4th, 2012 – the day of release.

If you’ve ever played a videogame that you really enjoyed, chances are you haven’t noticed the characters or any speech in the game – or if you have, you probably won’t have considered that they’ve been created, fleshed out and given dialogue by a videogame scriptwriter. One such writer whose stock is pretty high right now is Dean Wilkinson, responsible for the wonderful instructional dialogue spoken by Stephen Fry in LittleBigPlanet and more recently the pen behind the words of Matt Berry’s Don Keystone in the forthcoming Worms: Revolution. We went out to meet Dean at his office, and see what it’s really like to write scripts and content for high-profile videogames.

Windows Update is one of the key elements of Microsoft’s operating system for keeping your computer working and up to date. Without it, your computer would freely collect malware, unpatched security holes would be exploited and generally things would run pretty slowly. Fortunately, your computer does have Windows Update, capable of adding new functionality, fixes, service packs and device drivers to your Windows 7 PC or laptop. But what happens when Windows Update goes wrong?

I’ve got bad news for you. Dropping your phone in a puddle of water, bath, sink, toilet – even getting caught in a heavy shower – will leave it irreparably damaged. The same goes for tablet computers. No more apps, games, Facebook, phonecalls or browsing. All gone. That is, if you leave it switched on. Switching it off right away is probably the best solution, but it’s not all bad news. In fact, there are a number of ways in which you can stop your phone or tablet computer from being left as nothing more than an expensive brick following prolonged contact with water.

In a society where energy costs are rising, brownouts and blackouts are more common and the urge to stay connected is ever-greater, knowing how to manage your mobile phone’s battery as effectively as possible is increasingly important. This isn’t only to keep costs down – it’s also about staying in communication with emails and social networking services as well as text messaging and phone calls.