Hi and welcome to our 3RD
newsletter.
Back Up, Back Up, Back Up
I have to admit I had a little
embarrassing moment a while ago. You see I'm one of those
people that constantly tells people how to manage & keep
there files safe by backing up, but at the same time
completely ignore my own advice and assume I can fix most
issues if anything goes wrong so what's the point of backing
up? after all I've got magic fingers don't you know?.. well I
eat my hat, cause I lost EVERYTHING, yes I know.. I should
know better... I have certainly learned a valuable lesson and
I now have back ups running all over the place, but not only
that, I now have back ups of back ups. It seems I'm not the
only one, just in the last month or so we've had over four of
our customers loose all of there documents, years of photo's,
emails, music.. Everything! and I can tell you its
devastating. We're now very much in a digital era, its come so
quickly were not all educated properly to do the right thing &
make sure all our private and important data is safe. Its not
until you loose something, you realise how much you took it
for granted.
Let's face it, our computers are a
bigger part of our life than ever before. We shop, work and
play using computers. They've replaced stereos,
encyclopedias and even the postie. They've become journals,
photo albums and canvases for our art, but computers aren't
perfect. With our data stored on the most unreliable part in
your computer, files can easily become corrupt, motherboards
can malfunction and with all the technology advances making
these devices faster things can only get worse. The best
defense is a data backup. Backing up data is vital for
businesses, lost information can cause a major crisis or
worse, lead to business down time costing thousands.
Individuals who don't backup computer data run the same risk.
While this may not cause financial ruin, it can certainly be
frustrating and even heartbreaking. Please heed this as your
first warning and Back Up preferably to something that doesn't
have electricity flowing through it and that potentially can
fail, like a blank CD or DVD! Give us a call or call in to
discuss your options, after all, any back up is better than no
back up!
News – Windows 7
Microsoft’s latest version of its
operating system, Windows 7, is finally in the
release-to-manufacturing (RTM) stage, so the OS will soon be
preloaded on new computers. Though not officially released
yet, Windows 7 is expected to be a hit. For instance after
just eight hours on Amazon in the UK, Windows 7 pre-orders
exceeded the total number of pre-orders for Vista over a
period of 17 weeks.
According to Microsoft, Windows 7,
there will be seven different flavors:
Starter: Only sold with new PCs. For “emerging markets,”
whatever that means. Basically the core system without any of
the eye popping, desktop enhancements, or extra security
features. Limited to three concurrent applications (what?)
Home Basic: Starter with no more than three applications allowed.
Home Premium: This one will have the eye candy and will be the one included
on most PCs. It’s missing the extended security and
mobility features of…
Professional: Everything in Premium, plus encryption and network features
more business-oriented.
Enterprise: Like Professional, but more so. Includes Bitlocker and
Applocker among other system-management capabilities that
would be handy in a volume-license situation.
Ultimate: Everything included, but won’t be widely available; “a
tiny, tiny percentage of the volume” according to the
source.
For the consumers, Windows 7 will be in
retail stores and shipping on new PCs starting October 22nd,
which we already knew. After receiving an overwhelming
response from beta testers, Microsoft is also offering a
“family pack” for Windows 7 that will allow
installation on up to 3 PCs.
Of course, the official RTM release of
Windows 7 comes at a time when Microsoft’s stranglehold
of the operating system is being challenged by the recent
announcement of Google’s Chrome Operating System. Google
is scheduled to release the open source code for Chrome OS
later this year, which perhaps could conveniently fall around
the October launch of Windows 7. The first Chrome OS computers
won’t launch until next year. While Google says the
Chrome OS is targeted towards netbooks at the moment, there is
definite potential for Google’s OS to expand to the
other types of computers, giving Microsoft something to mull
over.
Tips
Windows XP users are accustomed to having the balloon pop up that says”
There are unused icons on your desktop”, right? But what
if I like my desktop the way it is and don't want to be
bothered with these messages anymore?
In that case, I bare good news,
everyone! You can turn it off!
Here's how:
Right click on the desktop and choose
“Properties”.
In the next window click the Desktop tab at the top and then the “Customize
Desktop” button.
Under the “General”
tab you'll see Desktop Cleanup towards the bottom of the
window. Just uncheck the “Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days”
selection and click OK.
No fuss, no muss, and your Windows XP experience just got a
little less annoying!
Q:
I'm constantly on the Internet and get tired of typing in the
full website addresses. Is there a shortcut?
A: It can get pretty tedious typing in
h-t-t-p-semicolon-backslash-backslash-w-w-w-dot-whatever-dot-c-o-m.
So next time you're in a hurry and don't want to bother with
all of that, try this...
Type the name of the site in the
address bar and press Ctrl while you hit Enter . The "www" and ".com" will be added
automatically for you. Ta dah!
Please, note that this only works with
.com's and not .org, .net, .gov, .tv, or .co.nz.
If you have any computer questions you
would like us to answer please reply to this email and we will
try include it in one of our future newsletters.
Thanks for reading
Odeon Computer Services
|
