Archive for December, 2009

Sunday Morning Coffee – Understanding Backup/External Hard Drives

Monday, December 21st, 2009

Good morning,

This week in the ads I see external hard drives abound.  A conversation with a customer this week I want to share some information and understanding about “Backup” or what we in the industry call “Disaster Recovery”.

What is a backup?  A backup is having 2 or more copies of a file on 2 or more devices. These devices can be an external hard drive, making a copy on a CD or DVD, by burning it, or using a service like www.carbonite.com.  Understand one thing the hard drive in your computer and the external hard drive you buy WILL fail at some point.  It could be years off, months off or days off, but at some point it will fail.  The question is when it does, did you make a copy of it somewhere, not on the failed device?

If you purchase an external hard drive for more room to store files, understand if that is your only copy then you will lose it when the drive fails.

Not everyone is a IT person, but with our lives tied to the digital lifeline we have to be conscious of it so it does not ruin memories.

Merry Christmas to All.

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Sunday morning coffee – December 13, 2009

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

Good morning, today’s sales theme are about the same as other weeks, digital cameras and computers, so let me help with some confusion.

On digital cameras check out CNET’s Digital Camera Buying guide, just published this month.  The ads contain many options.

A unique gift: How about a personal GPS device to get you back to your car?  Look at the Bushnell Back Track Personal Location Finder GPS. Best Buy is advertising this for $44.99.  How does it work?  Let’s say you go to the mall, when you park your car you set the way point of your location.  After an hour of walking the mall and getting confused inside, you need to remember where you parked.  When you walk outside, you select your way point and it directs you to the location.  Hikers or campers, when you leave your campsite or car set the way point.  You will always know which direction to go to get back to the car or campsite.

If you have questions about a technical product you are considering send them to mark@usacomputersolutions.com.

Make it a great Sunday, only 10 days til Christmas.

http://www.noradsanta.org/

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Backing Up a Windows Mobile Smart Phone

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

This week is I found a Microsoft utility for my HTC Touch Pro Sprint phone.  The phone runs Windows Mobile 6.0, there was a software update that needed to be done.  However, the upgrade would have wiped out all of my contacts and text messages and other information.  Since I am not using the Outlook feature on the phone Active Sync would not work.  I found this website Http://myphone.microsoft.com.  A quick download, install and SYNC and all of my contacts and text messages were saved on line.  You do need a hotmail, live or msn account, which is free.

Other features I like are the sync can be immediate or scheduled, I have scheduled my for an evening sync.  It also has the ability to erase your contacts and such if you lose your phone or if it is stolen.  It will also give you a GPS location of where your phone last sync’d if you turn that feature on.

After my sync, I checked the website and saw my information.  I upgraded my phone and then did a restore sync for my contacts. Back in business.  I did lose the logs of previous calls, but the contacts were more important at the time.

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Posted in I use/own this, Software | No Comments »