Question: I have had miserable luck with phones this summer. My husband bought me an atrix and it got soaked on our boat along with my Ipod touch. Both the phone and ipod never worked again.

Then my husband bought a second hand iphone 3 and I wanted to make sure that all of my I tunes and pictures would transfer to this used iphone.

Please help, your advise would be appreciated.

Answer: Sorry to hear about your bad luck with water and electronics!

All of the music and photos from your old iPod should still be in iTunes on your computer, so you should be able to sync your iPhone to iTunes and get all the music and photos transferred over.

Question: Can you configure an iphone 4 so that it always uses a wireless internet connection for web access when one is available, as opposed to using the iphone's built-in 3g internet access (and being charged for it on your mobile plan)?

Answer: iPhones are already set up to automatically connect to "known" wireless networks when one is available. This means that once you've connected to (joined) a wifi network then your iPhone will remember that network in the future, and will automatically use the wifi network instead of 3g.

You can also set your iphone to ask you to join any networks it sees, giving you the choice to join or ignore those networks. This can be a little annoying if you're roaming around in an area where there are a lot of wifi access points, so I usually turn that off.

To configure your wifi settings, tap "Settings" and then "Wi-Fi". You'll see an option to "Ask to Join Networks" at the bottom. Turn this setting on and you'll have full control - you'll get notified when there's a wireless network available, and you'll get to choose whether you want to join it or not.

Last year I bought a Gateway laptop on the cheap at Best Buy, and it's been giving me a ton of grief lately. It's been running slower and slower, and has decided to randomly restart itself for no apparent reason.

I've ran a virus scan and tweaked every system setting I know of, but nothing seems to help. I think it's time for a fresh start, which means restoring it to the original factory settings.

To make matters worse, Gateway and other manufacturers no longer ship recovery discs with new computers or laptops, so you'll have to create one first and I'll show you how to do that.

How to create a Windows 7 System Restore Disc

First, open the built-in windows backup utility by clicking the Windows Start button, selecting Control Panel, and then choosing "Back up your computer".

You'll see options for creating a system image and also a system repair disc. Choose the first option for "Create a system image". This will create a system restore disc that you can use later to restore your computer to it's current settings.