Washington - If you decide to move to Windows Vista, be sure to visit the Windows Update site soon after completing installation. Just open the Vista start menu, and type Windows Update. Windows Update will scan your computer and offer to deliver important patches and updates to the software - including Vista's first service pack, which improves the overall performance of the operating system. Schedule Windows Update to run automatically to get incremental security fixes.

--------

Washington - Looking for a long-lost e-mail message in Outlook? Use Outlook's Advanced Find dialog box to power your way to better searches. Available from the Tools menu in the Find submenu, Advanced Find lets you conduct searches based upon a number of criteria, including how old the message is, the recipient, whether it contained attachments, to name just a few. You can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-F to access Advanced Find, as well.

--------

Washington - Before you upgrade to Vista, make sure your computer - and all of your software - is compatible with the operating system. Fire up Microsoft's Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT), which you can find in the download centre on Microsoft's website or by conducting a standard Google search. The ACT tool will run a test on your machine and tell you about any upgrades you might need to make before running Vista.

--------

Washington -Thinking of upgrading your graphics card in order to play the latest PC games? Before you pay out the cash, check the power requirements of the card you intend to purchase. The latest graphics cards are more power-hungry than previous generations, and not all computers can supply the juice that it takes to run them.

--------

Washington - Need to create a PDF but can't afford the full-blown Acrobat Professional program? Try SourceForge. net's PDF Creator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator), which acts just like a printer driver and can turn any standard document into a fully compatible PDF file. After you install PDF Creator, you simply select File... Print, and then choose the PDF Creator as your printer. Select a drive and folder to hold the file, and click Save. (dpa)