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What should you back up?

Link: Backup basics

Published: October 6, 2004

There are many ways you can unintentionally lose information on a computer. A child playing the keyboard like a piano, a power surge, lightning, floods. And sometimes equipment just fails.

If you regularly make backup copies of your files and keep them in a separate place, you can get some, if not all, of your information back in the event something happens to the originals on your computer.

Deciding what to back up is highly personal. Anything you cannot replace easily should be at the top of your list. Before you get started, make a checklist of files to back up. This will help you determine what to back up, and also give you a reference list in the event you need to retrieve a backed-up file. Here are some file suggestions to get you started:

• Bank records and other financial information   
• Digital photographs
• Software you purchased and downloaded from the Internet
• Music you purchased and downloaded from the Internet
• Personal projects
• Your e-mail address book
• Your Microsoft Outlook calendar
• Your Internet Explorer bookmarks

If you haven't already decided where you want to store your backup copies—external hard disk drive, CDs, DVDs, or some other storage format—and you want to know more about your options, you can read about the types of external storage available.

After you've decided what you want to back up and where you're going to back up, you're ready to learn how to back up.

The 16 Best-ever Freeware Utilities

Link:Tech Support Alert

There are a lot of great freeware programs out there. Many are as good or  better than their commercial alternatives. This list features my pick of the "best of the best."

All these utilities have been featured in past issues of Gizmo's free Support Alert newsletter.  Subscribe now to stay up-to-date with the latest freeware and shareware programs.

Editors note: I usually start with my search for solutions when I recieve the monthly newsletter from Gizmo. It is my reminder to check out what is available and see if what I'm using or recommending to people is still a good solution. Please take a look, he's done some excellent work to save everyone a lot of time. Reward him with a donation too. It's a fair thing to do if you find his suggestions useful and may encourage him to keep helping us out.

Browser feature could make scams easier

Link: HoustonChronicle.com

An Internet browser feature meant to permit Web addresses in Chinese, Arabic and other languages could encourage online fraudsters by making scam Web sites look legitimate to visitors.

For once, the affected browser is not the industry-leading Internet Explorer from Microsoft Corp. but rather several of its more robust competitors.

That's because the aging IE lacks support for internationalized domain names — at least without a plug-in, which would then make IE vulnerable.

Configuring Linux Workstations for a Microsoft Windows Environment and Network

Link: Tutorial from YoLinux

This tutorial is aimed at those who wish to migrate fully from a Microsoft Windows desktop to a Linux desktop system but still integrate with the Microsoft Windows servers and infrastructure like that found in a typical corporate environment.

Integration with Microsoft print services, file sharing (mounting smbfs), Exchange server, other MS/Windows PC's, dual boot NTFS drives, Citrix, remote X-Windows logins, telnet and ftp access are all covered in this tutorial.

This tutorial assumes the base system with a full X-Windows and Gnome desktop installation. See Linux Red Hat Installation Tutorial for more information.

Microsoft Office Compatability: Open Office (bundled with Red Hat Linux 8.0+/Fedora Core) can read/write Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. It also has a vastly superior (compared to MS/Office) HTML web output conversion capability. It is currently (in my opinion) the best office software suite for Linux today. See: YoLinux Linux Office Suites 

Yahoo! News - Microsoft Plans Major Patch Day on February 8

Link: Yahoo! News

Fri Feb 4, 6:00 PM ET   Technology - PC World

Stacy Cowley, IDG News Service

Microsoft is expected to release 13 new security patches on Tuesday, February 8, including several "critical" updates.

The release, part of Microsoft's regularly scheduled monthly security update, is the company's biggest patch roundup in months. Included will be nine Windows updates, with at least one rated "critical." Also in the update bundle will be a "moderate-risk" update for Microsoft's SharePoint Services and Office; a.Net framework update rated "important"; a "critical" update affecting Office and Visual Studio; and a "critical" update affecting Windows, Windows Media Player, and MSN Messenger.

HP researchers propose alternative to transistors

Link: Detroit News Online

Challenging a basic tenet of the semiconductor industry, researchers at Hewlett-Packard Co. have demonstrated a technology that could replace the transistor as the fundamental building block of all computers.

The devices, called crossbar latches, could be made so small that thousands of them could fit across the diameter of a human hair, enabling the high-tech industry to continue to build ever-smaller computing devices that are less expensive than their predecessors. For years, engineers have been able to pack more and more smaller transistors onto a fingernail-size silicon chip.

The rate of integration, first predicted by Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, has driven computer performance and prices for more than 30 years. But the pace of Moore's Law can't continue forever, and the high-tech industry has been scrambling to develop workarounds for the day -- expected in a decade or so -- when transistor dimensions become too small for the materials commonly used today.