New laptop, a Toshiba A505 with Windows Vista Home (ugg) but a free upgrade to Windows 7 is pending.  This one replaces my five year old HP Pavillion, retired now.

Now, I’m a newbie to Vista, but not to laptops. I regularly hibernated the old HP without any major issues (until it died after hibernating with a completely blown partition table, but that’s another story).

Imagine my surprise when I put the Toshiba away at night (in its’ laptop case) and wake the next day to find a very hot laptop in that case with a dead battery.

Seems that something comes on in the wee hours of the morning and wakes up the hardware, even though it is on battery power, and proceeds to run things like Windows update!  The verdict is out on exactly what is causing this (prime candidate is Windows Update itself) , but clearly in my case either Toshiba or Microsoft has dropped the ball in configuring these laptops.

No way should this behavior happen out of the box and no way any normal user should be expected to figure this one out. Poor quality control on someone’s part for sure. Since more than the Toshiba brand seem to be impacted (see article linked to above), my money is on Microsoft as the culprit. Aarrghh!

Dropbox lets you put your important files in a folder on your computer and those files will be automatically backed up and synced with all other computers you share the dropbox folder with. The free account permits up to 2 gb of storage, paid accounts allow higher storage levels.

The free account works great for important files, like your Keepass wallet and things like tax returns or other important documents. The service works seamlessly in the background and supports Windows, Mac, iPad and Linux! Recommended.

File Shredder is a handy and free utility you can use to both wipe the free portions of your drive and permanently wipe individual files. Comes in real handy when you are cleaning up a computer to give to someone else (gets rid of any personally identifying information or sensitive things like passwords and logins).