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When to use a CD for backup

Our regular listeners hear us talk about this subject often, but it bears repeating as much as we can talk about it for your data's safety and your sanity. Backing up to CD's is a multi-step process and all the steps need to be followed for it to go right.

CD's work great for archiving data that won't change. This includes pictures, music, your finished novel, etc. CD's should only be burned ONE time. CD-R's have the capability of being written to many times, but this also increases the likelihood of problems with the CD. Burn them once and store them in a safe place.

iPhone cartoon – Yep, this about sums it up

I ran across this cartoon in a random site today. Mac folks are very excited about the iPhone that is due out later this summer. The iPhone is a device that does some things that smart phones have been doing for a long time. Most Treo and Blackberry users have had the features that the iPhone boasts of for almomst a decade.

The feature that makes the iPhone so high in demand is the little Apple logo that is found on the back.

Since this cartoon was found on a random site (a site that shows random pictures from all over the web) I don't have the authors name or the original site's address. I will be happy to post it and link to it if anyone finds it. 

Using Picasa to make a CD of your favorite pictures – Video Tip

Lately I have had several people ask me how to make a CD from only certain pictures from several folders. Here is a short video explaining how it's done.

The background music came out pretty bad, but the rest of the video should run OK. (click "read more if the video isn't already showing)

More lost pictures…

I write often about backup because I'm passionate about the topic. Too often, I see customers who have never backed up there important data and recovering it is either impossible or financially unfeasible.

I visited a young mother today with a laptop that was afflicted with a virus that destroyed all her data. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to recover the data. She could probably send the hard drive into a service like DriveSavers , but the cost would be in the thousands. She elected to just have the drive reformatted and said she would start over when I bring the computer back. 

Getting Better Prints from Digital Photos

One of the disadvantages to digital photography (if you can call it that) is that you don't get prints as often. Photos tend to sit on disk or on your computer's hard drive and never get shared. The photo album is sadly becoming extinct.

If you would like to start printing out some of those digital photos, here are some pointers.

Install Picasa:

We talk about it a lot, but not often enough. Picasa will make selecting, organizing and printing your digital photos easy. In fact, there is little or no need for any other software for most people.

Backing up pictures to flash drives

Flash drives have become extremely popular over the past year. And why not…they are spacious, getting cheaper all the time and dare I say sexy? However, they still cost more per megabyte than any other backup medium. I did a little research tonight to illustrate why you should still use CD's or DVD's for photo and music backup rather than flash drives.

Consider this:

Type of Memory Capacity Cost Cost per megabyte
USB Flash Drive 512 mb $15.00 $.03
CDR 700 mb $15 for 50 disks $.00000000000004
DVD+R 4700 mb $30 for 50 disks $.0000000000000003

I will admit that flash drives are extremely easy to use and work well, but the economics just aren't there for long term storage…yet.

Don’t back up a shortcut

I've mentioned this before many times, but it bears repeating often especially since I saw it at least three times this week. First, I want to commend the computer users out there for backing up and thinking of backing up! However, it is imperative to know what you are backing up. 

Folder shortcutA shortcut is indicated by a little arrow in the lower left hand corner of a folder or file. If your backup media has any of these types of icons on it, your backup is worthless. A shortcut is simply a "pointer" to where the actual data is saved. Backing up shortcuts is extremely fast because there is not data in a shortcut. I too often see computer users dragging a program icon (shortcut) or a shortcut to My Documents or My Pictures to their CD drives, external hard drives, or flash drives then wonder why they have no backup should they need it.

Dial-up users: Are you tired of waiting for email with large attachments?

I have been utilizing this tip much more lately as dial-up users get pummeled with email containing pictures that haven't been resized and an endless parade of forward spam with large attachments from friends and family with high speed connections. For every one megabyte of space an attachment contains, it takes 5-8 minutes for a dial-up user to download it. Many joke emails, slide shows or movies being passed around today can be 5mb or larger…tying up the dial-up users phone line for an hour or more!  If you don't want to tell the offending parties to take you off their list, you can do one or both of the following procedures to gain some control over you email again.

Quickly get to the file or folder in a cluttered window

Today I helped a client organize his photos for a project he was working on. I moved all of the photos for the project into a folder in My Pictures. He had dozens of folders in his My Pictures folder all full of pictures from other projects.

He called me about an hour later to tell me that the folder I had created had suddenly disappeared.

"What have you done since I left," I asked. I wasn't accusing him of anything, but if he had done anything it would help me figure out what had happened to the folder.

"Nothing," he explained, "I took a break after you left and when I came back the folder was gone."

Is the iPhone another Newton?

iphoneFor those of you who don't remember the Newton, it was Apple's first and last foray into the handheld computing market back in 1993. Although it was ground breaking and unique, it was a little ahead of its time and definitely too expensive. The Newton was a little too big to be called a true handheld computer and only worked with a heavy, built-in rechargeable battery. Just three short years later, a small company just down the street from Apple called Palm, introduced the Palm Pilot. It was less than one-half the size of a Newton, ran on a single AAA battery, had an ingeniously accurate handwriting recognition system, AND could synchronize data easily with a PC or Macintosh computer.

Fast forward to this week. Steve Jobs gave his usually raucous key note address at the annual Apple convention known as Macworld Expo. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a device slightly smaller than the Newton, but bigger than a Palm Pilot, and he pronounced it as the iPhone (already in legal trouble with Cisco who claims they own the rights to the name). Apple has been on a tear for about six years now the introduction of the iMac all-in-one computers, the iPod, and iTunes. Trying to capitalize on their recent successes, they decided to enter the "smart phone" market.

A smart phone is defined as a cellular phone that can also be used to synchronize contact, calendar, to do lists, and documents with a computer. They also have a full QWERTY keyboard built into them. These types of phones are extremely popular amongst the geek sector and the 'wanna be' geek sector. Blackberry handheld email devices made email mobile, then Palm introduced the revolutionary Treo smart phone and remains the top vote getter in this market. One problem plagues the smart phone market; there aren't that many geeks. Despite seeing how incredibly useful and versatile a Treo phone can be, most people scoff at it's size and say, "It's too big! I could never carry that thing." Treo's tip the scales at just over 5 ounces and measures: 4.44" H x 2.3" W x 0.8" D. One other factor hinders large scale smart phone sales; many computer users barely understand their computers let alone try and use a smart phone.

Back to the iPhone. Let's start with its dimensions. It weighs about