There’s no doubt that technology has made many areas of our lives simpler. We can now access files from any device, anywhere, and we can take full advantage of fast internet speeds to do things that weren’t possible just a few years ago. But as we use more technology, that simplicity can be eroded as our devices demand monthly, weekly, even daily updates. Our software applications add new features we didn’t ask for but have to learn and our documents move from one hard disk to multiple locations around the cloud, each with their own logins and capacity limits.
Technology can greatly improve our lives when it’s simple, but it can cause headaches when it’s not. Thankfully, there are plenty of software utilities out there that can automate the annoying legwork for you, and prevent unexpected issues from arising. Here, we look at three of the most useful.
Secure Your Identity
Passwords have been in the news recently, with the Heartbleed bug rendering even the biggest websites and social networks vulnerable, and prompting users to update their passwords to be totally safe. If you stick to the same few passwords for all of your sites and services, one compromise can cause havoc, so it’s always better to use a unique password on each site you use.
If that sounds impossible, you need a password manager. Norton Identity Safe is an online service that can generate a random password for each site you use, store it for you in its secure cloud vault, and automatically log you into sites so you don’t have to memorise anything. If a website is compromised, you can simply generate a new password for that site and know that all of your others remain unique and secure. Better still, Identity Safe works across all popular desktop browsers and on Android and iOS devices.
Safe Storage
The problem with computers is that they lull you into a false sense of security – then they pack in and take all your files with them. There’s no need to take that risk, and these days you don’t even need to buy extra hard disks to create backups: an online backup service takes care of the hard work for you.
A standard Norton Online Backup package gives you 25GB of online storage for a full year, and can protect up to five PCs and Macs – enough to cover the whole family. You choose which files and folders you couldn’t bear to lose, and Norton will monitor them for changes, automatically backing up any updated files so the latest version is always stored safely away from your PC. You can log in to your vault and access your files from any other computer, and choose to extract individual files or restore the whole lot. You can even access those files using the free Norton Connect app for iOS and Android.
Improve Performance
Over time, it’s inevitable that your PC will get more and more clogged up, as you install and uninstall programs, create, move and delete files, and perhaps even suffer from the effects of malware and other security issues. A well-used PC rarely runs as smoothly as it did out of the box, but you can recover some of that initial clean performance with Norton Utilities.
It performs a wide range of clean-up functions: it fixes freezes and Windows issues, defragments and optimises hard disks, rescues accidentally deleted files, frees up PC memory for smoother running, and lets you choose what automatically runs at startup – one of the main offenders when it comes to clogging up over time. It’s also a security tool: it can clean up your web tracks, and even permanently erase personal files you don’t want recovered. Whether you have an issue that needs fixing, or just want to keep a PC running smoothly, Norton Utilities has the tool for it.