Ivan wrote me a while back and asked, “I change screen backgrounds often. What happens to the one that’s replaced?”  His question is a good one and it made me match it up with questions from several other readers.

You may change your desktop wallpaper many different ways but I suggest an easy way.  Open the folder that your picture is in, view or open the picture, then right click on it, next choose “Set as Desktop Wallpaper”, “Set as Desktop Background” or whatever slogan your system has that means the same thing.  The choice varies between operating systems.  After a few seconds of waiting your desktop wallpaper will now be the picture you chose.

From this point you can adjust the graphic by going to the desktop and right clicking anywhere it is empty.  In Windows Vista choose “Personalize/Desktop Background” and play with the settings.  For XP, use the same right click but then choose “Properties/Desktop” and adjust from there.

For Ivan, if you change the desktop wallpaper picture nothing will happen to it.  It remains located where it was and the new picture becomes the wallpaper.  Unless (don’t you hate the exceptions?) you have gotten the wallpaper from a picture on the internet.  Let’s say you were browsing my website and saw a picture of me.  You really wanted me to be your wallpaper so you right clicked on my face and chose it to be the new wallpaper.  A generic filename is created for that picture (which you don’t see unless you go searching).  If you change that background again, using the same procedure the new picture will be named the same filename and the first picture will be overwritten and lost.

Now I will respond to some other writers who want to know if there is a way to change wallpapers automatically.  Windows 7, supposedly arriving late this summer has this feature called, “Wallpaper Slideshow“.  This feature could change or disappear by the time “W7″ hits the market. 

Until then there are many free applications that allow you to automatically change wallpapers at an interval of your choosing.  I have used “Auto Wallpaper Changer 1.1″ (Google to find it) successfully for quite some time.  Note that it doesn’t work very well on Vista systems.  For Vista, “WallPaper Changer” (wallpaperchanger.de) is suggested which also seems to work well although I haven’t used it that often.

Try them out and let me know if you like them.  As always, you are responsible for any installations on your computer.  If I mention it that means that they have worked well for me without any problems.

I have had many emails over time about security of thumb drives.  For instance, am I worried about leaving my thumb drive lying on a desk somewhere and having someone take it.  They are then able to open my private files on that drive.

That used to be a concern but for the past five or six years I have been using a great free application called TrueCrypt.

Before I start telling you what this application will do I will warn you of a few things up front.  It is very, very good at what it does.  It is not as easy to set up as many programs I have mentioned here before.  You will have to read a bit to learn how to use and install it; however, it will be worth the work if you need something like this.

TC will make it so your entire thumb drive, a portion of it or even a folder on your hard drive cannot be opened and accessed unless TrueCrypt is running.  Not only does the TC application have to be running on the computer but the proper password is needs to be entered.

One interesting feature is that you can create a “container”.  The container is set up on a drive somewhere and when opened you may place as many files as will fit in it.  The size of a container is determined by you when it is created.  Then as all other TrueCrypts you need to open it to access the files later.  The neat thing is that you may copy this container to any other location and use it as a container there.  For instance, you could copy your important files to this container (it actually acts like a folder when opened) and transport it to another computer via email, thumb drive, etc.  When you take it to the new computer you copy it to that system, open the container and presto-chango there are your files in a new place.  If you encrypt the entire thumb drive or a portion of your hard drive you can’t move it from place to place.

Also, I told you to use this on a portable drive you must have TC running on that computer.  Hmm, what do you do if TrueCrypt is not on the computer you are trying to use?  They take care of that too.  When you set up the drive you can install TC on that portable device so you may run it from there when using someone else’s computer.

If you have a need to encrypt your files I highly recommend TrueCrypt.  If you give it a try let me know what you think.

Well as all of you regular readers know I am a Google fan.  Also, I haven’t written a column just about Google for a while, so here we go.

Now before I start talking another Google item I want to mention something that I am not such a fan of; internet browser toolbars.  Yes, they make about a zillion of them and they all have things that they do well.  The thing I don’t like about them is that they take up more screen “real estate”.  If you have a notebook or netbook computer this extra space can make a big deal in reading a long article and having to scroll more.  Sometimes another quarter inch used for a toolbar at the top of the screen could limit your ability to see an entire photograph.

For the past several weeks I have been experimenting with the Google Toolbar.  I have to announce that I have now come over to the dark side of using up screen real estate.  In my opinion, I think this is worth the space that it takes up, even on my 8.9 inch netbook.

Before I get into Google’s toolbar I thought I would let you know of a few others.  There are Alexa, AOL, Ask, Compete, Dictionary.com, Dogpile, eBay, MSN, Yahoo and on and on for about forever (search for others).  There is also one that does a fair job of combining many of the above and more.  An all-in-one toolbar at Groowe.com; however, it lacks a lot of the details that the others provide.

Google’s toolbar offers the standard search criteria for the web, images, videos, etc.  However, it also has your Google Documents, Calendar and many more.  Google allows you to add more “buttons”.  Right click on the Google toolbar and choose, “Get more buttons” and you will see a remarkable amount of additional items (buttons) to add to your toolbar.  I added Facebook and IMDB buttons to my toolbar.

It comes with a Bookmarks button which can be very valuable.  It makes it so any website you add to this button will be available on any computer you log into.  By using bookmarks you always have your favorite sites with you.  I know there are other ways to perform this task but this is really convenient.

The list goes on so take a look at all the features while you are on the site.  I am sure you will find a feature of interest to you…actually hundreds.