Q I have seen some people have really great pictures on their windows desktop. Where can I get some of these?

A Desktop wallpapers are a growing fashion accessory for PC owners. There are a number of sites dedicated to offering desktop wallpapers you can download and install on your PC. Two of the best I have found are http://www.yourwallpaper. com and http://www.digitalblas-phemy.com. Both provide instructions on how to install the wallpapers you are interested in.

Q When I turn on my computer, the monitor seems to turn purple. What could be causing this?

A The problem could be one of two things, either the monitor is faulty in which case if it is under warranty you should contact the supplier with a view to getting it replaced. The other possibility is that your graphics card has a fault. To find out which is the cause of the problem, try borrowing a monitor from someone else and see if the problem still occurs. If it does then it is the graphics card, otherwise it must be your monitor.

Q I have heard of packages that let you dictate into the computer, do these really work?

A The technology for dictating into your computer has improved a great deal over the last few years. I must admit to being a little sceptical about just how useful this is, since most people have difficulty dictating fluently what they want to say, although perhaps that is just me! Many people have an impression that the software is installed and they can then dictate flawlessly into their word package. The reality is that most packages require a fair amount of "training", particularly if you have a heavy accent. This involves speaking a predefined vocabulary into the computer until it adapts to the way you speak. There is a good discussion of the relative merits of different systems at: http://www. dyslexic.com/dictcomp.htm Q Can you tell me what is an internet cache and what does it do?

A Internet caching helps speed up downloading web pages with graphics. When a web page is viewed, your browser (usually Internet Explorer or Netscape) will often have to get an image from the site you are looking at. As images usually represent most of the time taken to download a web page, someone reasoned that if revisiting a page, why download the image again? Instead, a local copy of the image is stored on your machine so when you do visit a page again the web browser can load it from local storage which is much quicker.