A quick trip to our backyard to quaff a drink with my friends, an open window, and my laptop was gone by the time I returned. I confess I did not heed the advice I have often handed out with relish on these pages. Backup, backup and backup. Vast amounts of ready-to-write stories and many family photographs have been lost unless I catch the lousy thief who must have passed by our house, saw opportunity, jumped in, and left in a hurry. It was daylight robbery! I'm looking and waiting for the person, who must be somewhat agile, as our windows are a bit high up from the road. I know full well that it is a useless task. But I must say I feel more angry at myself than anyone else for ignoring the basic law of computing. Backup.

I have been working at home for these past few weeks and just kept putting the task off. Blame that oversight on the World Cup, since I've just wanted to go from computer screen to TV screen. There, I told me so. I've learnt my lesson. As an aside, thank goodness I keep a lot of my work stored on the Internet, in various e-mail accounts.

However did you know that in many cases your relatives or loved ones will not get access to your e-mail if you die? E-mail accounts are not inherited as some families have found. My e-mail providers, including Yahoo. Perhaps you do not want your next-of-kin to have access to your e-mail. That's fine.

I myself believe in the privacy policies of Yahoo! The e-mail provider was involved in a difficult issue in 2004, when it denied the family of a US Marine killed in Iraq access to his account. When his father tried to recover his e-mail account, he was barred due to Yahoo's policy of not giving e-mail passwords to anyone besides the account holder.

That is in the terms of service you sign up to when creating an account with Yahoo. The company will turnover the account only when the next-of-kin goes through the courts to verify their identity and relationship with the deceased. Yahoo will delete an account after 90 days of inactivity.

Other e-mail providers have variants on the policy.

The best advice is to will the account, along with the password if you have important documents stored online. Microsoft's June 2006 security bulletin has 12 updates, eight of which the company flags as 'critical'. The eight critical patches fix 21 individual flaws within Windows and Office. Four of them fix all versions of Windows. This includes accumulative update for Internet Explorer.

One of the critical updates fixes Windows 98, 98 SE,and Me editions. Two patch Microsoft Office. Two are listed as 'moderate' security risks, and last are rated 'important'. Go get them at Microsoft.com.

In other security news, Microsoft has launched a security product, Live OneCare, promising a one-stop-shop for looking after your home computer. It marks the company's entry into the consumer security arena.

The product, accessed through www.windowsonecare.com, provides security and maintenance packages for home computers. This site will provide products for a price. Some analysts believe the competition will help drive down prices for security software. That will be a good trend.

However, given Microsoft's attempt to dominate every segment of the industry it enters, it could turn out to kill off some of the lesser known competitors in the market. About $1.95 billion in consumer anti-virus software was sold last year, a rise of 17 per cent year-over-year,according to Gartner, a research firm. At least Microsoft will provide some competition to Symantec, which has an estimated 70 per cent piece of the pie. Interesting, the service not only provides anti-virus protection, but it also regularly backs up all important files, cleans up the system and tunes your computer to keep it running at top speed.I could have used such automation this week.

Contact Ahmed at Elamin.ahmedGmail.com.