Last year I stepped rather deeply into it when I forgot about Mother's Day. (That was bad, but not nearly as bad as forgetting her birthday a few years ago.) I'm not letting it happen again--nor do I want to see you in trouble. So how's about providing her with tech support no computer company would give her? I'll supply the ideas and products, and you'll work on her machine. [Note to Mom: This is only an illustration; we will take you out for dinner.]

Practical, Free Gifts

Chances are good that if your parents have a computer, you bought it for them. (I won't embarrass you by asking if it was a hand-me-down.) Well, kids, I can't tell you how many times I've heard from parents kvetching about maintaining their PCs. So how about tuning up their system for Mother's Day?

Do your homework first: Start out by reading Scott Dunn's "Windows Tips: Banish Windows Blowups Before They Occur." Scott irons out some of the kinks you'll experience upgrading your mom's software, getting her the best drivers, and helping her system avoid crashes.

If you want to bring along a few utilities when you visit, check out "20 Tools for Trouble-Free Computing." PCWorld.com utility guys Robert Luhn and Kirk Steers dug up, well, 20 utilities--including some privacy, tune-up, and file management tools.

Naturally, you don't want to skimp on utilities (this is for your mother!), so check out our "System Resources Tune-Up" collection. Max Green, our downloads guy, picked out the best of the bunch.

I'm betting your parents are on dial-up (my mom is; I'm too cheap to pick up the tab on cable for her). You might be able to boost mom's Internet connection (yours, too) by testing a few of the utilities in our "Speed Up Your Internet Connection" collection.

Dig This: Are you tired of wearing the same T-shirt to work every day? Listen, I found a bunch of O'Really T-shirts (yes, a parody of O'Reilly books) that are very cool. My favorites are "Tracing Spammers" and "Snooping Email." Check all the T-shirts at Copyleft.com (and no, I don't get a commission or even a free T-shirt).

Help Mom Year Round

Don't you dare try to wiggle out of helping the woman who raised you just because she lives across the country. If you both have Windows XP, use Remote Assistance to provide tech support.

I never paid much attention to this feature until I saw a demo at a recent user group meeting; Remote Assistance is a powerful tool built into XP that lets you connect to--and control--another PC. There's a convenient chat window, in case either of you are connected through dialup with access to another phone line. The only requirements are that both PCs have Windows Messenger or Outlook Express. Get to Remote Assistance from the Start Menu, choose Help and Support, click "Invite a friend to connect to your computer with Remote Assistance," and follow the prompts.

If you want to impress mom with your generosity, try out GoToMyPC, an online remote-access program. It's expensive--$20 per month--but you can try it free for an hour. For more details about GoToMyPC, read "20 Tools for Trouble-Free Computing."

Dig This: It's storming here at Bass Headquarters, lots of rain and lightening. If you want to get an idea how bad it is, check out a reasonable facsimile on the Storm site (be patient--it takes time to load, even with a broadband connection).

Next week: A few late gifts for mom just in case you really did forget.

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