The start to a new year is a good time to review your PC. Last weekend I pulled out my desktop PC and performed the following:
Backup Your Critical Data in 5 Minutes
At least once a year, I take a call from a friend or family member who is despondent because they’ve lost pictures or video or other critical data stored on their computer. Sometimes they accidentally delete a file or a directly. Or worse, a hard drive dies, taking all their data to the grave.
I listen and try to have empathy. I really do, yet I can usually predict the answer to the question I’ll ask next: “Did you have a backup of your files?” It’s probably a good thing they are explaining their situation to me over the phone when they tell me, no, they did not have a backup.
Windows Backup Options
Backing up your computer is very important. This post covers the various types of backups you can do on a Windows-based PC, with a few specific examples of related software and services.
Please, please, please – backup your data!
One of the most painful things to hear about from a customer is lost data. Whether it is hours or days of lost work for a business, irreplaceable family photos, or important financial records – data loss hurts. And it can be caused by many things: viruses / malware, file system corruption, physical drive failure, theft, fire, flood… the list goes on. Unfortunately some people don’t think about this till it is too late, so I am here with a public safety announcement: Please, please, please – backup your data!
7 Things to Do with Your New Computer
I am sometimes asked by customers what they should make sure to do with a new computer before they start using it heavily for work or play. I put together a list of what I consider the basics that just about everyone would benefit from doing, and will share it here.
What I Wish I Had Known
As part of my job at Puget Systems, I speak with many of our customers at various stages of ownership that range from about a week to a couple of years. These customers often share feedback that we use to improve our products and services.
Occasionally customers share what they wish they had done differently when they were configuring their computers. I share this information with our sales team, and figured it might be helpful to those of you considering a new computer today.
So in the vein of “If I could do it all over again…” here are a number of items our customers would change if they could turn back time:
Crashplan: A Full-Featured Online Backup Solution
Last month I wrote an article about why Dropbox is one of my favorite products. Not only does it sync files across all my PCs and mobile devices, but it does so with an elegant presentation and little user intervention. Basically, it just works.
This month I’d like to share another product I’ve been using for several years. Although Dropbox easily syncs files across all my devices, I have a much larger set of files ranging from financial documents to music and videos. This group of files I need to backup, but don’t need to access as often or from all my devices.
