InBox

Q. David wants to know why a DVD writer is better than a CD writer.

A. One huge advantage the DVD (digital video disk) has over the older CD (compact disk) technology is gigabytes of space. CD media commonly holds up to 700 megabytes. DVD holds upwards of 4700. The term digital video disk is a bit misleading - video is not the only data form that can be stored on it. Plain computer files, music files, video and almost anything that can sit on your hard drive can be stored on a DVD disk. DVD is far superior.

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Q. Further from last week: Gwen inadvertently blocked email from a sender in Outlook Express, but now cannot undo it. Messages from this sender still go straight to her deleted folder. She deleted the contact from her address book, then re-entered it, but it does not make any difference.

A. If only one sender is affected, go to Outlook's Tools/Message Rules/Blocked Senders List. Highlight the affected sender and hit remove.

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Q. Colin is one of many having issues with the Norton intelligent updater. He has been trying to get the latest updates but continually receives errors, and his downloads never complete. Should he trash his investment?

Where the updater's intelligence seems to have gone haywire, you can use the manual download at Symantec (see link below). Download the file, double click the completed download to start the full update, leave for 24 hours, then run Norton Live Update.