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In a perfect world you’d never have to worry about losing any of the important files on your computer. But in reality the chances of you losing everything on your computer are pretty high. Most people have pictures, tax files, resumes and a host of other important files on their computer but have never made a backup copy. A hard drive crash or a virus could wipe out everything tomorrow, so why haven’t you backed up your data yet?

I believe the reason most people haven’t backed up their files is that they’re not sure how to do it. So today, let’s look at some simple ways to give your data a second life and give you some peace of mind.

An important first consideration is to insure that all your files are in one place. By that, I mean that if you save all your files in your My Documents then it makes it easy to find all the files you need to back up. In fact you can simply backup that one folder, along with its contents, and you’re done. On the other hand if you commonly save files on your desktop or other places on your computer you have to remember where they are so you can back them up as well. Personally, I’d move everything into the My Documents folder.

If you don’t have a lot of media like music and pictures to backup the easiest thing to do is buy an inexpensive USB flash drive (click HERE for a 4GB Kingston flash drive  with great reviews and for only $22 at Amazon.com). If you do have a lot of media I’d suggest buying an external hard drive. You can find a great hard drive for around $100 at Amazon as well.

Once you have an external device to back up your files you could simply copy your important files by dragging your files from your My Documents to the external drive. For a one time backup that works great, but if you’re like most people, you’re constantly creating new files that should be backed up as well. If you’d like to easily schedule regular backups I’d suggest using a free program called SyncBack. Click HERE to get it at Download.com. Syncback allows you to choose what you want to back up and schedule it to run automatically. I’d suggest setting up a weekly or monthly backup of your files.

In case of a fire or natural disaster it may be a good idea to keep a copy of important files in another location. If you can’t afford to buy an external drive or would prefer having your files offsite I’d suggest using MediaMax.com. They allow you to store 25GBs of data online for free. They’ve even recently added a free backup & synchronization service. It’s secure and easy to use.

An article about data backups wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Acronis True Image. If your hard drive were to ever crash you’d have buy a new hard drive, then reinstall your Operating System, the drivers, all your programs and finally re-load all the files you backed up. Acronis True Image costs $50 but it allows you to make an exact image of your entire hard drive so, should yours fail, you would install a new hard drive and restore the Acronis image and your computer would be exactly like it was the last time you created the image. An Acronis image would save several hours of work so unless you were intending to just buy a new computer if yours ever crashed you may want to consider this option.

This article has given you several simple options to backup your computer files but the most important thing I can leave you with is to do something now. Knowledge without action is useless and you’ll appreciate the piece of mind you’ll have knowing your most important files are safely backed up.

Regards,

-Bert

Windows Vista has been plagued with problems from the time it was introduced. Although it has some nice display features and improved security it’s downsides are that it’s memory hungry, non-friendly with older hardware, and prone to bugs and crashing. The latest problem involves Vista SP1 rendering several applications inoperable, including popular antivirus programs (ZoneAlarm and Trend Micro to name just two of them). You can get more info here.

For those reasons I’ve still been advising people in the market for new PCs to stick with Windows XP. Because of that I wanted to let people know that the cutoff date for purchasing Windows XP is June 30th, 2008. I hope that date is extended but I wouldn’t count on it.

Also, Microsoft is stating a cutoff date for support of XP Home of April 14th, 2009. That’s when they intend to stop providing patches for consumer versions. My advice is that if you’re in the market for a new computer, try to get one with Windows XP Pro prior to June 30th.

Apparently NVIDIA (a popular video card) drivers are responsible for nearly 30% of Vista crashes in 2007. Microsoft claims responsibility for another 18%. Interesting article about that here: http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-drivers-responsible-for-nearly-30-of-vista-crashes-in-20/.

Regards,

-Bert

This is the 3rd and final part to my series on speeding up a slow computer. In Part 1 we checked to insure you have enough memory (RAM). In Part 2 we made better use of the RAM you have by turning off unnecessary programs.

By this point you should already see a big increase in the speed of your computer. In our final part we’re going to use a free program to clean up all the junk files that Windows likes to collect and check a couple of other things.

Remember back when your computer was new and it seemed so fast, but over time it just kept getting slower and slower? The main reason for that is because Windows likes to save a lot of files that are not only unnecessary but they slow down your computer.

The program I’ve been using and recommending for a few years is CCleaner. It’s a small program that doesn’t take long to download and install. You can download it at Download.com. I highly recommend Download.com whenever you’re looking for a free program to do some task on your computer. See my article, “Free Software, is it worth it?”. Click HERE to go to Download.com and download CCleaner.

CCleaner will clean up several areas, including the Temp files and Cookies from Internet Explorer or just about any other Internet Browser. If you have Cookies that store web-page settings and stored passwords you may want to go into Options in CCleaner, click on Cookies and select any Cookies from websites you want to save by moving them to the “Cookies to Keep” area.

CCleaner also cleans up Windows Explorer, the System, and any applications you have that like to store files. CCleaner also includes a Registry Cleaner that you can run seperately if you wish. You should never run any registry cleaner unless you first set a System Restore Point first in case you need to go back.

The first time you run CCleaner you’ll get a message stating CCleaner will delete files. Uncheck that box so you don’t get this message every time you run CCleaner. CCleaner only deletes unnecessary files that slow down your computer.

I’d recommend running CCleaner every couple weeks. You’ll be amazed at how much junk Windows collects and how much getting rid of it can speed up your computer!

There are a couple more simple things you can do that can add a little more kick to your computer.

The first thing is to turn off hard drive Indexing. Click Start and open “My Computer” right-click on your C: drive and go into Properties. Uncheck the box that says “Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching”. Apply this change to C:\subfolders and files when you get the confirmation window. This may take several minutes to run. You’ll only have to do this once though.

The second thing you can do is Defragment your hard drive. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. Click the Analyze button and you’ll get a message letting you know if your hard drive needs to be defragmented. If you decide to Defragment your hard drive, this is another function that can take several minutes to run. I usually Defragment my hard drive about once per year.

If you’d like to see a 25 minute video where you can look over my shoulder as I walk you step-by-step through what I do to speed up and optimize a computer click HERE.

One final bit of advice… If your computer is infected by a virus or adware your computer is going to be slow and do things like: change your Internet Homepage, give you endless pop-ups telling you need to buy some software (don’t do it!), produce system errors and a host of other annoying things. The things I’ve covered in this series of posts may help but your computer will never run right until you get rid of the malware (malicious software). If this sounds like your problem you can start by going to http://www.eset.com/onlinescan and running a free virus scan.

Regards,

-Bert

Having worked with computers for several years there’s one complaint I hear more than any other. The complaint is normally given to me as a question basically asking how someone can speed up their slow computer. Fortunately there are some things that anyone can easily do to speed up their computer.

For the next few articles I’m going to discuss why computers run slow and how you can speed them up.

One of the main reasons computers run slow is they don’t have enough memory (RAM). RAM is the memory that’s used every time you run a program on your computer. Some programs use very little RAM while others can use a lot of RAM. If your computer is short on RAM your computer will use virtual memory, which is very slow.

If your computer is more than 4 years old you may need more RAM unless you’ve already upgraded it. Also, companies often sell new computers with too little RAM so they can charge you to buy more later. I know, that’s not very nice of them!

If you’re running an Operating System prior to Windows 2000, seriously consider buying a new computer since Microsoft is no longer supporting it with essential security patches. This includes Windows 95, 98 and ME (Millenium).

If you’re running Windows 2000 or Windows XP you should have, at a minimum, 512MB of RAM. I recommend 1GB.

If you’re running Windows Vista you need at least 1GB and I recommend 2GB. Vista is a very memory hungry Operating System that still has a lot of bugs. As of this writing I’m still not recommending it to people buying new computers (but it’s getting harder to find new computers that come with Windows XP).

How can you tell how much RAM you have in your PC? Right click on your Task Bar and left click Task Manager. Next click on the Performance tab.

In this picture of my Task Manger’s Performance tab you can see the red arrow is pointing towards the Physical Memory of this computer. Total is the amount of RAM in this computer. 523,632 is basically 512MB of RAM. You also want to look at Available. This computer has 105,552 or 100MB of avaliable RAM.

Do you need more RAM? You can buy some at newegg.com. Not sure what type you need? Find out at kingston.com. There are many types of RAM and they’re not interchangeable. Don’t go out and buy the first RAM you find on sale and expect it to work in your computer. Chances are it won’t.

If you don’t want to take the time to find out what type of RAM you need and how to install it you can take your computer to a computer repair shop or find a friend or relative who’s done it before. A RAM upgrade should be around $100 installed and is well worth it if your computer is slow.

If you’d like to see a 25 minute video where I walk you step-by-step through what I do to speed up and optimize a computer click here .

Regards,

-Bert

A good friend of mine told me a story not long ago. His 10-year-old daughter was doing a school report about baby chickens. Turning to the Internet for help with her report, she innocently typed “chicks” in the search engine. My friend was shocked when his daughter yelled, “what are all these naked ladies doing on the screen?”.

If you have kids on the Internet at your house, and especially young children, you need to know how easy it is for them to find inappropriate content & pictures. Just like my friend’s daughter, a child doesn’t even have to go looking for it, it will find them. Something as simple as an Internet search or misspelling a web address can expose your child to things even you wouldn’t look at.

I don’t believe that choosing to do nothing to protect children online is an option. The most important thing we can do as parents is to start talking and teaching our children about the good parts and the bad parts of the Internet while they’re young.  Even if they’re older and know more about the computer than you, it’s never to late.

A really close second to communication is putting a web filter on your computer to filter out things like pornography, violence/hate/racism, illegal drugs, etc..

If your kids are a little older and you can afford it, I’d suggest you spend $39/yr for Net Nanny. PC Magazine awarded Net Nanny its Editors Choice Award in Feb 2008. Net Nanny can be configured differently for each user who logs into the computer. Also, besides just Internet content filtering Net Nanny includes Instant Message monitoring, time scheduling, remote management and some other neat bells and whistles.

If your kids are younger or you don’t want to spend the $39 for a yearly subscription I highly recommend a free Internet content filter called K9, which was created by BlueCoat. BlueCoat has been providing world class filtering products to fortune 500 companies for several years. They created K9 as a way to give back to the community.

I’ve been using K9 on our home computers for a couple of years and am extremely impressed with the quality of the filtering, the simplicity of the program, and that it doesn’t slow down your computer or internet searches. You can choose to block or just track up to 60 different categories of websites. And, you can set time limits on Internet use. You can’t modify the settings for different users, but as the Admin, you can easily make any necessary adjustments.

This is one area I don’t believe any parent should ignore so I’ve made a free 10-minute video that walks you step-by-step how to install and configure the free K9 web content filter.

It’s nice not having to worry if our 9-year-old daughter will see or read something inappropriate on the Internet. Don’t wait on this one. Get some “peace of mind” today!

Regards,

Bert

You can find free software on the internet to do nearly anything. From cool free screensavers to free games to free antivirus software and just about anything else you can think of.

I learned a hard lesson several years ago. I’ve always liked car racing games (yes, that should tell you something about the way I drive) so I went to my favorite search engine and typed in “free car racing game”. Today nearly 5 million results turned up when I did that search! Anyway, back then I went to the first sight I found and downloaded and installed the game.

Besides the fact that the game was lousy I got a lot more than I bargained for with that so-called “free” game. The next day my wife and daughter were on the computer and using the internet when my wife asked, “Bert, why are there pornography folders in our Bookmarks?”.  Yikes!

So after a lot of unnecessary communication with my wife and some research I realized that free software is often packaged with Adware, Spyware and Viruses. So I paid for some anti-adware/virus software and found several other malware (malicious software) programs had been installed as well. So my free program ended up costing me in my relationships, my pocketbook and my time!

After that experience you’re probably thinking I’d never install any free software ever again… but the truth is I love free software! Although most of the free programs you download off the internet are either malicious or worthless the small percent of excellent programs is well worth finding and using.

In fact, on my home PC I use free software for my:

• Antivirus
• Antispyware
• Firewall
• Internet Filter
• Picture Editor
• Internet Web Browser
• Media Player
• CD Ripper
• etc….

The best tip I can give you today is to only download free software from a reliable source! In fact, I’d recommend only downloading free software from download.com. They have thousands of free and shareware (free for a limited time, then you pay for it) programs and guarantee that you won’t be getting any malware included. Even download.com has some worthless software though so I’d also suggest looking for programs with a lot of reviews and either a 4 or 5 star user rating.

Regards,

-Bert

It seems like nearly everyone has friends and/or family in faraway places. Shoot, if you don’t own a car even 20 miles could be far away I guess..

But I wonder how many of us who have friends and relatives far away are missing out because, thanks to broadband and webcams, we could see them any time we want to!

My sister Teresa and her husband Brandon live in Arizona and just recently added a baby girl to their family. Since Grandma, Grandpa, and the rest of us all live in Minnesota seeing this new baby girl could have been quite a challenge and very expensive in days gone by.

With all the advances in digital communications I knew there had to be an inexpensive way to communicate with voice and video.  And, if we needed a solution, I figured there were probably other people who might be looking for one as well.

So I set out to find a way for our families to be able to hear and see baby Milayna. After checking out several web cams and video services I came up with an excellent combination that’s inexpensive and works great!

First, I bought a Microsoft LifeCam VX-3000 webcam from Amazon. With a 4 out of 5 rating from over 200 reviews and for only $35 it sounded like a great deal. As expected the webcam was simple to set up and has a great picture quality. It even has a built in microphone.

Next, I needed to find an online service so we could call each other and talk. This particular webcam is optimized for use with Windows Live Messenger but I decided to find a different route for folks who don’t have this particular webcam.

After looking at several free and pay services I settled on SightSpeed and am glad I did. The service is free for personal use and it’s easy to set up. Simply fill out a registration form online, download and install the software, and you’re ready to call. Of course the other party will need to get a webcam and sign up for SightSpeed as well.

Last night we had our first video conference call using the VX-3000 webcam and SightSpeed and all I can say is WOW! For my $35 investment the call was priceless.

If you have loved ones far away don’t put this off.  As long as both of you have a broadband connection for less than $50 you could be seeing and talking to each other almost like you were talking face to face…

Regards,

-Bert