Remember the old days, when you needed a scanner and pricey OCR software if you wanted to convert a page of text into editable text?

The old days are gone, man! Free OCR is a free Web-based OCR service that turns any uploaded image file into a text file you can load into Word or your document editor of choice.

Reader Randy is suffering from a vexing problem. Each time he boots his PC, he gets a pop-up Internet Explorer window with this message:

"Cannot find 'File:///'. Make sure the path or internet address is correct."

Raise your hand if this has happened to you: After filling in (filling out?) a lengthy Web form, you click Next or Save or whatever, and poof: your browser crashes, the server times out, your Internet connection dies--in other words, all your hard work is gone.

As someone who blogs for living (a task that relies heavily on Web forms), I can't count how many times I've experienced this particular nightmare. Too many times, let's put it that way.

Most modern desktops and laptops have power to spare, but netbooks are notoriously pokey. Consequently, you should turn off any operating-system features that can make your Lilliputian PC even slower.

If your system runs Windows XP, as most netbooks do, here's an easy way to squeeze some extra speed out of it:

In case you're unfamiliar with the term, a "screencast" is a recording of your desktop. It's an ideal way to demonstrate something, like how to use a complicated feature in Microsoft Office (or how to do file attachments so you don't have to explain it to your mom a 78th time, ahem).

All you do is start your recording, perform the activity one step at a time (narrating along the way if you wish), then stop the recording. The end result is a video you can e-mail to others, post to YouTube, and so on.

Evern wonder what the folks in your town are tweeting about? Head to Happn.in, which shows the popular Twitter topics for dozens of major cities worldwide.

Just to clarify, this isn't a city-specific search engine. If you merely want to find all tweets pertaining to, say, Las Vegas, any number of Twitter search tools (including Twittter's own) can reveal that information.

Reader Karl needs help with his spelling. Specifically, he needs a spell-checker for Outlook Express, because the method he's using now is the very definition of "hassle."

Karl says he composes new messages in WordPerfect, spell-checks them there, then exports the text for import into Outlook Express. That's insane! (Seriously, Karl, ever heard of copy and paste?)

Whenever I try to buy something from iTunes or redeem a gift code, I invariably get this message: Session Timeout. Then I have to "try again," which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

What's particularly annoying is that this error occurs even when I've just fired up iTunes. How can there be a "timeout" when I just started the program?!

Ever wish you could take a yellow highlighter to a Web page--say, a particularly noteworthy passage in, say, a really witty and helpful blog post--so you could easily retrieve the information later on?

That's the idea behind WebNotes, which adds a virtual highlighter and sticky-notes to your browsing experience.

You know the routine: Some game or application changes your screen resolution, and when it changes back again, your carefully crafted icon layout is totally messed up. Not cool, Windows. Not cool.

Fortunately, I've discovered a little gem of a utility: DesktopOK. This nifty bit of freeware lets you save and restore icon layouts. Set your icons the way you like them, save the layout, then just restore it later when the need arises.

Reader Bill has a number of really old (circa 1991) PowerPoint files that he wants to open in Office 2007. Unfortunately, Microsoft neglected to include support for the "really old" format in its latest version of PowerPoint, so Bill's stuck.

I have a couple suggestions, but to be honest, I'm not positive any of them will work. Thus, I'm going to open this up to you, the real geniuses. If you know of a way to open or batch-convert old PowerPoint files, hit the comments and share your wisdom. In the meantime:

Widescreen monitors are great for watching movies and organizing windows side-by-side, but a lot of time the space goes to waste. Consequently, I'm going to suggest a radical idea, one that's particuarly applicable to laptop and netbook users: Move the Windows Taskbar to the side of the screen.

If you've been a Windows user as long as I have, I promise you'll hate this--at first. But think about it: Web pages, Word documents, and the like run top-to-bottom, so the more vertical space you can give them, the better.