TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPICS: SPAM WARS / CLEAN HARD DRIVE / ONLINE MAPS

In today's TOURBUS, you'll find out who's winning the spam wars, and learn about the hidden collateral damage. I've also got tips for cleaning up your hard drive, a review of my awesome new printer, and a roundup of the best online maps and map-base mashups. Read on!

Are The Spammers Winning?

Back in 2004, Bill Gates predicted the death of spam by 2006. But studies show that 80-90% of emails worldwide are still junk, and the tide is rising. What about the fancy Bayesian filters, blacklists, and software that was supposed to eradicate spam? What happened to CAN-SPAM, the legislation that was supposed to take a McGruffian bite out of spam?

So are the spammers winning? Find out what anti-spam expert Anne Mitchell thinks is happening, and which ISP is doing the best job at differentiating between spam and the email you really WANT to get. You'll be surprised at the answers...

SPAM WAR- http://askbobrankin.com/are_the_spammers_winning.html

Clean Your Hard Drive

If your system is running low on hard drive space, and you've been seeing the "Low Disk Space" warning message, you should take action to clean up the drive right away. Of course it's a problem if you have no room to store your music or photos on your hard drive, but low disk space can also adversely affect the performance of your computer.

And if you plan on getting rid of your old computer system, you'll want to scrub off any sensitive information before you get rid of it. The good news is, you can clean up your hard drive for free. I've got helpful hard drive cleanup tips for Windows, Mac and Linux users here:

CLEANUP - http://askbobrankin.com/clean_hard_drive.html

Review: The HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 All-In-One

I'll start by saying this: the HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 All-In-One looks good on my desk. With the black and silver motif, the curved lines, and 47 buttons on the front control panel, it's an impressive desk ornament for about $400. But it does more than look pretty.

In addition to printing, faxing, scanning and copying, the L7780 has some unique features that I really like. This printer is networkable, but it's also wireless... which means you can put it almost anywhere and send print jobs from your desktop or laptop. I love the automatic sheet feeder, and especially the Digital Filing feature, which turns paper documents into searchable PDFs. See the full review here:

Online Maps and Driving Directions

MAPS - http://askbobrankin.com/maps_and_driving_directions.html

That's all for now, see you next time! -- Bob Rankin