Backup, Backup, Backup

Posted by ndavison1 on January 9, 2010

You sit at your laptop to finish a project that had taken 90 hours to complete. Once the project is complete you will have made $100,000 for your new business. Excited to think that you made the deadline, then you notice you cant find the project folder on your laptop. Feeling the heart start pumping you dig for the trash bin on the corner of your screen and run searches, the verdict its gone! The day before you were in a office store looking at a external drive wondering if you really needed it but it was money you did not want to spend and denial that nothing can happen.

Being in IT I see files that get corrupted, crashes, mistakenly deleted, and other factors all the time that’s why we use different methods of backup from tapes to networks.

It amazes me how many homebased and small businesses do not keep any time of backups. Just one surge can cause data loss. These tips are directed to the Home and small business owners

1. External Hard Drives: Great for larger storage most of the one touch model usually include backup software (Dont solely rely putting your data on the external drive, have copy of your data on both your computer and external drive.

2. USB Thumb drive: One of my personal favorites. Nice small, no moving parts most. If you dont have large amount of data these are good. Depending on the size you can run you whole operating system from a thumb drive.

3. Online Backup services or FTP to your hosting service:
A. Online Backup services like MOZY.com offers space at a small fee and are managed at an offsite data server warehouse. These facilities are usually temp controlled and backed up daily.
B. FTP – If you have hosting service/Web site you can create a folder on the hosting service and place files there.

If dont backup start backing up now. You don’t know when something can happen to your computer!

Category Categories: Computer Tips-PC or Apple  |  Tag Tags: , , , , , ,

2010: Informative YouTube Shows – Tech

Posted by ndavison1 on January 3, 2010


There is lot of entertainment and great featured videos on YouTube. There is so many channels on YouTube its hard to keep up where the tech shows are at. Everyone knows Chis Pirillo, AppleSolder or his old name Emeek77, and TechBuffalo(jon4lakers) but there so much more out there. Geekbrief.TV I noticed this last year has been experimenting putting there show on Youtube under her stage name “calilewis”, I can name others that are know in the podcast world that is on YouTube that does not get the traffic. For Air Conditioning techs there is DrZarkloff. My goals this year is try inform you of the different online tech/educational channels. Have a Great New Year.

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Finally a Decent Contender to take on the iPhone! “Motorola Droid”

Posted by ndavison1 on November 3, 2009

Jon from Technobuffalo does a great side by side comparison iPhone vs Motorola Droid. Verizon finally gets a cool phone the Motorola Droid. The Droid is going to help Motorola get in the main stream again with using the Android 2.0 major improvement from the first version. From every review I have read there is draw between both phones. Both have there pros and cons. It will come down to which cell service you want to go with and what phone will work best for you. I would recommend reading Ben Patterson’s Article “The Motorola Droid or the iPhone: Which one’s right for you?” .

Many have tried and failed to take on the iPhone. Motorola is going to be like the Phoenix coming out of the ashes with the Droid to bring a choice to the table that is comparable to the iPhone. Lets hope that the Droid phone shoes promise on stability and works well as a phone.

Category Categories: Gadgets  |  Tag Tags: , , , , , , , ,

iPhone Apps Test: ReelDirector by Nexvio Inc.

Posted by admin on October 29, 2009

One of the main reasons I decided to go with the iPhone 3GS was the video recording for Youtube uploads for my show when I am on the road. The editor with the iPhone is nice if you want to do quick basic video blog or record something quick. What if you want to do more like putting different clips onto a single video and don’t have your computer to edit. ReelDirector helps solve that problem.

ReelDirector is a movie editor that allow to add credits, transitions and add clips from the camera roll on the iphone. I almost felt like I was working with a basic iMovie. Once you put the video together and render it you can share via email or save to camera roll from there you can upload to Youtube.

After I rendered the video clip I noticed my sound was slightly off and was back on sync on second scene. overall I was impressed. This is a nice edition to the Iphone 3GS camera. To check other products by Nexvio check out there site. http://www.nexvio.com/

Category Categories: Applications

Is Windows 7 improved and worth the hype!

Posted by admin on October 24, 2009

3 weeks ago I was in Memphis with my boss and noticed his laptop had Windows 7. He told me we had the Windows 7 enterprise for IT to install on our laptops. Finally got around on installing on this week. Pleasantly surprised Windows 7 installed with no issues. All I needed to do was install 3 drivers including my scanner. Most of the apps was able to install without any updates. There was roughly been 38 updates since I updated my Laptop on Wednesday. Windows 7 removed a lot of headaches that Windows Vista had.

Windows 7 Feel:
You will need to learn Windows 7 format from Windows XP (Just like Windows 2000 to XP, 98 to XP Home). Compared to Vista I found Windows 7 was easier to move around in. Windows 7 felt like a combined mix with XP, Vista and Mac OS X. Customizing the Windows 7 to your needs is easy.

Link to Compare Windows

Will it work with the apps I have:
Like any new OS there will be apps you will need to update or will not work. If this is concern I would wait. I just needed to update two applications.

Will I need to upgrade hardware?
Depends how new your PC is. If you have older workstation it might be cheaper to replace it with newer model.
Windows 7 does not use as many resources as Vista did but it does require at least 2gb of ram but would recommend 3gb. Below is image of my work laptop specs and performance meter with nothing really running this will give an idea.

Link to Windows 7 Requirements

Laptop_specs

Performance_Meter

Truthfully I think this is the best Windows that Microsoft has come out with The test will show in time if there will be compatibility issues, security, viruses and so on. We will see!

Category Categories: Applications  |  Tag Tags: , , , , , ,