How to backup and restore your netbook

Hands-on Having a small-capacity solid-state drive in your netbook may be limitation but it has one advantage: it's easy to back up. We don't mean copying a few files over to a safe place, but duplicating the entire drive, operating system and all, ready to drop it all back on if the worst comes to the worst.

PCs often come with recovery disks that you can use to place a fresh copy of the OS and pre-loaded apps back onto a freshly formatted drive. With some free, open source tools, you make one of your own, for your netbook. It'll work whether you use Linux or Windows XP, and whether your machine has a hard disk or a solid-state drive.

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Chinese crackers create counterfeit iTunes racket

Chinese crackers have reportedly cracked the iTunes gift card system.

The hack has spawned an active trade in counterfeit but functional iTunes vouchers on Chinese auction sites, such as Taobao.com.

The fake gift card codes are reportedly created using key generators, an approach previously applied to Windows activation hacks.

"All the seller actually sells is the gift voucher code which they send you directly through Taobao’s IM software. You can then redeem the card in your iTunes account," Outdustry reports.

The market research agency notes that thousands of cards are up for sale at any time.

Apple is yet to comment on the issue. A fix for the problem might prove problematic because adjusting the key generation algorithm might invalidate genuine gift cards. It's unclear if the illegitimate trade has surfaced outside the PRC - John Leyden