Imagine that you start up your pc just to find yourself staring at a blue screen with white writing, termed "the blue screen of death" by those at Microsoft.

So you push power button to shut it down, and when you bring it back up it just crawls. Within a few minutes it goes back to blue screen of death.

This happened to a friend of mine. When she asked me what she could do, I asked her if she had ever defragmented her pc.

She got that "deer in headlight" look, so I knew she hadn't. Defragmenting her pc, after 3 years of never doing so, took about 14 hours to complete.

One of main reasons that computers slow down is poor maintenance practices.

Unfortunately, when you buy a new computer you don't usually get much instruction on how to maintain it. Poor or no maintenance allows your hard drive to become more and more fragmented which will slow it down over time.

To best explain hard drive fragmentation think of your hard drive as a file cabinet. In this cabinet there are folders with documents (files) in them.

We all know that drugs have side effects. How can it cure one part of your body without affecting other parts? Drugs that are swallowed do not target only part they are intended to cure. They are transported by our blood so they can go anywhere inside our body. We should be more aware of drugs that relieve us of certain ailments but can cause us a more complicated disease in future.

Are you familiar with Vioxx? It has been on headlines for days. This controversial drug was used by about two million people worldwide.

Vioxx is prescribed to relieve osteoarthritis, rheumatic arthritis and acute pain. Produced by Merck & Co., it comes in a liquid and pill form. It is a non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). NSAIDs refer to drugs with analgesic, antipyretic and anti-inflammatory effects, which reduce pain, fever and inflammation, such as muscle strain or sprain. They are sometimes called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents or NSAIAs. Examples of which are aspirin and ibuprofen.