Windows

Shrin was looking to buy a laptop but discovered that they no longer offer recovery discs. Leo says that's true and he recommends not buying a laptop without a recovery option. It either has to come with recovery discs or give him a way to make them himself. Windows 8 has a great restore feature, but Leo says he shouldn't just rely on that because what if the hard drive dies? He needs to make sure he has an external recovery option.

Kyle is looking to get a tough tablet and wants to know which is best. Leo says that it largely depends on what Kyle is going to use it for. Leo has a hunch that because of Kyle's work, a Windows Surface Pro tablet would be ideal.

Ultimately, Leo recommends looking at the software he'd want to use on it, and then determine which platform it would run on. Choose the tablet based on the software it would be able to run.

Savon needs to get new servers and a system at work and he's considering whether to stay with Windows or go with an Apple iMac. They're so clean and easy to use, a lot less cables, etc. Leo says that's a great feature of the iMac, and it can actually be used as a Windows machine. That said, there are now plenty of iMac-like all-in-one Windows machines out there too. Even though Walt Mossberg thinks the best Windows Machine ever is a Mac, Leo believes that running Windows natively works best on a machine built for Windows.

Mike has an old XP Windows desktop, and the hard drive is getting a bit noisy. Leo says that's the first sign of hard drive failure. Being proactive and replacing it now before it goes down permanently is a good idea. He should back up his data and then replace it. Hard drives are cheap. Should he upgrade to a newer version of Windows? Leo says yes, if for no other reason because Microsoft will end of life XP next April. There will be no updates or security patches.

Greg keeps getting viruses on his computer, and wonders if there's a PC cleaner that would take care of this. Leo says no, there's no cleaner that will successfully remove all malware. Greg says he has a computer guy that cleans the viruses off, but they keep coming back. That raises concerns that the technician isn't getting them all. Once the wall has been breached, viruses can be inviting others in. Greg says that his technician has been reformatting and reinstalling the operating system, which is good.

Jim has built his own Windows Computer. He likes that the new Windows 8 just requires a 4 digit pin to log in, but he's lost the password and didn't choose the PIN. Leo says that worst case scenario, he can reinstall Windows and start over. Leo also says that LastPass is great for things like this because he can have both on his smartphone as well and look it up if he forgets it. He'd also get a real strong password in the process.

Mike's friend has a Compaq Presario that no longer will boot up since installing Windows Updates. He was able to get it to boot up into a Linux boot CD, however. Leo says that the hard drive has likely failed, and that it was just coincidental with the Windows Update.

Steve has been using a text-to-speech program, but the latest version of it doesn't work as well. Leo says that Windows has one built-in, but it only will read what he runs the cursor over. Leo says that the built-in Windows Narrator should be able to select the text and then read the entire thing. He can go into Accessibility options and turn on Narrator. It's quite good, and competitive with other programs out there.

Cameron has a 2TB Western Digital hard drive, but his computer isn't able to use it. Leo says that since Cameron had Windows XP, unless he has the Service Packs installed, Windows won't be able to see that much space. He moved to Vista, which should be able to see that however.