Whenever an application stops responding, there are usually three options to get things back on track again. But first, how would you know if an application has hung? The three cardinal symptoms are the spinning beach ball, increased CPU usage and systemic unresponsiveness. If you’re experiencing any one of these, especially the infamous spinning beach ball of death (SBBOD), you’ve definitely got an application that isn’t working the way it should.

So the first option when faced with a frozen or unresponsive application is to kill it. Not literally, of course! We can try to kill or “terminate” the program. The easiest way to do this is to simply right-click the application in the Dock and select ‘Force Quit’.

What is your nastiest experience with viruses and/or other malware? The other day just before presentations my friend came to me with his laptop and showed me the havoc that had reigned on it! He had burnt some discs for others, using data from their USB drive and in the process got infected. Now he was unable to run Powerpoint, nor was he able to scan with the anti-virus as it won’t start a scan due to the infections (see the irony). Just the splash screens and boom - nothing seemed to run.

Remote desktop access is nothing new - Windows has had it for years - but as with everything else, Microsoft is rapidly losing the monopoly by smaller companies determined to bring out their own alternatives. One such alternative is Crossloop.

I have been watching Crossloop for a while and so far I have been extremely impressed. Now that they have brought out a new version, I am now totally blown away. Profiles and details of your remote sessions makes this a serious tool in the remote access market.