An excellent feature which Google introduced last year for account security is 2-step verification. This is designed to combat the rising incidents of user’s email accounts being hacked and hijacked. With 2-step verification enabled on your Gmail account, once you have submitted your username and password you need to enter a one use code which is either SMSed to your phone or generated using an app on your phone. Only then can you gain access to the account. This means that for someone to hack your account they would need both your username and password, plus your phone. For more information on 2-step verification visit: googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/advanced-sign-in-security-for-your.html .

A subtle improvement in Windows 7 is the ability to drag a maximised window. In previous versions of Windows if you had an application window maximised (such as a Microsoft Word window maximised) you would need to restore (or un-maximise) the window prior to attempting to drag the window to a different place on the screen. However, in Windows 7 you can click and drag on the title bar of a maximised window and it will automatically un-maximise the window when you start dragging. A small change, but something which could potentially make life easier for you.

If you need to quickly type a single number on your iPhone, then tapping the number key (to switch from the alphabetic keyboard to the numeric keyboard), followed by tapping the number, then tapping the alphabetic keyboard key (to return to the alpha keyboard) is a long-winded process involving three taps. However, this can be shorted to one tap and drag. Tap and hold the number key (you will notice the numeric keyboard appears without needing to lift your finger from the screen) and then without lifting your finger drag across to the number you wish to insert and then release your finger. That number will be typed/inserted and the keyboard will then flick back to the alphabetic keyboard without any further taps.

A little known feature of Microsoft Outlook is the ability to change the subject line for received email messages. This is very handy, particularly if you would like to change the subject to ease identification of the email in the future. Alternatively, if the sender did not provide a particularly clear subject then you can modify the subject to be more descriptive. To change the subject, double-click on the email message that you wish to modify so that it opens in a new window (you cannot do this procedure through the preview pane in Outlook). Once the email message is open in a new window, click within the current subject of the email message. It won’t look like anything has changed, but you will now see a flashing cursor within the subject. Start typing and you will see that you are able to modify the subject. Be aware, this only modifies your copy of that email message and will not affect the copy residing on the sender’s computer (in their Sent Items folder). Additionally, it does not matter what email client the sender used to send the email message – you will be able to modify the subject on your computer regardless.

Solid-state drives in computers are becoming much more common and provide a substantial performance increase. Traditional hard drives consist of a series of spinning magnetic drive platters, whereas solid-state drives have no moving parts and consist entirely of non-volatile memory chips. While solid-state drives are still relatively expensive compared with traditional hard drives, some new computers are coming with options for a solid-state system drive (containing the operating system and applications) together with a larger traditional secondary hard drive for storing user data such as documents. This allows you to get the advantages of solid-state, such as very fast system startup and application launching, together with the benefits of being able to store your documents on a large capacity hard drive.