What You Need to Know about All Things PC
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The Naked PC - http://www.TheNakedPC.com What You Need to Know about All Things PC Publisher: Lee Hudspeth and T.J. Lee Editor in Chief: Dan Butler Contributing Editor: Al Gordon This issue is for Thursday, February 27, 2003 - Vol. 6 No. 05 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Table of Contents ** 01. Letter from the Publisher ** 02. What To Do When Your PC's Broken and You Can't Fix It (by Lee Hudspeth) ** 03. Just the Right Touch for Backup (by Al Gordon) ** 04. PIMs Part III (by Dan Butler) ** 05. Featured Product - Retrospect Gets Friendlier (reviewed by Al Gordon) ** 06. Featured Web Site - Hyperhistory (reviewed by Dan Butler) ** 07. Featured Drawing ** 08. Newsworthy - a potpourri of current events and interesting stuff ** 01. Letter from the Publisher In this issue Lee offers a list of things to try when your PC is broken and you can't fix it. Al describes an amazingly easy (one- touch magic button) backup system. Dan continues his series on Personal Information Managers. "Good for you!" to The Naked PC subscriber Lew N. who won our previous issue's drawing, a $20 TheNakedPCStore.com credit. Everyone who enters our drawing this issue will receive a discount coupon good towards any purchase this week. You must use the coupon at the time of checkout (the coupon cannot be used after you order). It's fun and easy to enter, see this issue's Featured Drawing article. Reader support is what keeps The Naked PC free. You can help us by passing a copy on to co-workers and friends (no spam please). We make it easy for you to refer people to The Naked PC... check out our Refer page: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/refer/ +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ >> "That's the Handiest Thing Anyone Has Given Me..." With one of our handy space pens you'll never be without a reliable writing instrument again. They write just about anywhere and any angle - even upside down or in the rain. And the quality. Built to last and still look great. Rich P. said, "They're everything you wrote about them." Click here to find out more: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/a/tr.cgi?spacepen +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 02. What To Do When Your PC's Broken and You Can't Fix It (by Lee Hudspeth) Say you've got a PC hardware or software problem, and you can't solve it. The dog, er, PC, just won't hunt. Assume that you don't know a local PC consultant or repair technician. In this article I suggest what you can do to fix a problem before it becomes so severe that you have to take it in to a repair shop. In a subsequent article I'll cover how to mitigate the risks of leaving a broken PC in someone else's hands. (But if you must visit a PC repair shop before that article is written--assuming your PC is not so broken that it can still boot and make a backup--at an absolute minimum make a full backup of your data. You won't have scrubbed the PC of proprietary data, but you at least have a backup copy of your data. Also make sure you eject any CDs or DVDs in your drives.) My first caveat is about privacy. Although it is a machine, a PC isn't like a car or appliance; it contains volumes of personal information that you probably don't want anyone to see. When your PC is giving you fits, consider the following steps. 1. If the PC is under warranty, use that channel to make the repairs. Otherwise, contact the manufacturer and inquire if you can renew or extend the service warranty and if doing so will include coverage for the *current* problem. 2. If the PC is out of warranty, ask the manufacturer for the name and phone number of the company they use to provide regional in-warranty support for your system and contact that firm directly. 3. (Assuming your problems are solely or at least partly caused by the operating system...) Contact Microsoft and get your questions answered under the operating system's warranty. Caveats apply if you've already used up your quota of free support incidents, but Microsoft does offer fee-based support. Microsoft's Web site offers the following resources when trying to get support--either free or fee-based--for an operating system. a) Computer Manufacturer's Support Phone Numbers -- this page provides a listing of the largest OEMs from Acer to Toshiba, with an A-Z set of links for the rest: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?lee1 b) To find out about the support options for your Microsoft operating system, go here, select the product by name, and answer the wizard's questions: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?lee2 When I follow this process for Windows XP Home, here is what I see. If I choose phone support, I get two incidents and installation support free by calling 425-635-3311 (see the Web site for the hours of operation), after that paid support is $35/incident by calling 800-936-5700. I can also choose online support which is available 24x7. Here is Microsoft's definition of an incident, "An assisted support incident is defined as a single support issue and the reasonable effort needed to resolve it. A single support issue is a problem that cannot be broken down into subordinate problems. If a problem consists of subordinate problems, each shall be considered a separate incident. Before Microsoft provides support for an assisted submission, the customer and Microsoft's designated Support Professional must agree on what the problem is and the parameters for an acceptable solution. An assisted support incident may require multiple phone calls and off-line research to resolve it. Support Professionals are responsible for determining what a single support issue is and communicating this to customers." 4. If you know a computer consultant or technician, ask her or him what to do about your problems. If they are too busy or don't know the answer, ask for a referral to the technician or repair shop *they* would personally use if they were in your shoes and didn't have the time to make the repairs themselves. 5. If you don't know a consultant or technician, ask local friends and colleagues for referrals to same. Ask plenty of questions about the referral, and especially if the person had any direct experience with an in-shop PC repair at the facility they're referring you to. As before, ask them, "Where would you take *your* PC if this was happening to you?" 6. Pay an expert for online, live (phone), or email support. (Note: I have not personally used or reviewed any of these services, I just found them by a simple Web-based search. They're presented here in alphabetical order.) Ask Me Help Desk: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?lee4 HelpShare: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?lee6 Keen: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?lee3 LiveAdvice: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?lee5 7. Get free online help from newsgroups. Microsoft's product support newsgroup interface is here: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?lee7 You can also access newsgroups via Google Groups: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?lee8 (Thanks to Gary Ames, Managing Director, www.ActiveJobSearch.com, for the inspiration for this article.) (c) 2003, Lee Hudspeth You can reach Lee Hudspeth at: mailto:LeeHudspeth@TheNakedPC.com +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ "You Can Laugh At Money Worries - If You Follow This Simple Plan" Do you sometimes have more month than money? Ever wonder how to dig out of the hole of debt? Maybe someone you know is struggling. In today's uncertain times with tens of thousands being laid off, this is one step you can take now to make your future more certain. This proven multimedia course will show you everything you need. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/a/tr.cgi?financial +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 03. Just the Right Touch for Backup (by Al Gordon) For most of us, backing up our computers is a little like going to the dentist: it's good for you but you always put it off. If only there was a device with a "magic button" to push that would do a backup job quickly and unobtrusively. Poof! There goes your excuse. Maxtor has rolled out its Personal Storage 5000 line, which includes a "one-touch" -- pardon me, "OneTouch (TM)" -- backup button system coupled to Dantz Retrospect Express. (See companion article.) There are four units in the product family: The $400 5000XT, which I tested, is a 250 GB, 5400 rpm external drive with both USB 2.0 and FireWire Support. Yeah, that's right: 250 GB. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?al1 There's also an 80 GB, 5400 rpm, USB 2.0-only 5000LE priced at $200: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?al2 The XT will support a small business or workgroup and is also a choice for power users. The LE is a good value for home users. While both will work as an external hard drive for most purposes, multimedia production and like needs would be better served by Maxtor's 7200 rpm units in 200 GB and 120 GB capacities. For more links and pictures, please see my supplemental page. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?al3 Use cannot be any more simple. Half the work is unpacking the drive, cables, power supply, etc. from their protective cocoon. Thereafter, you put the setup disk in your PC, run it, installing the drivers and Retrospect Express. The you connect the drive to power and your PC, and you are in business. OneTouch is what it says: There is a button on the front of the unit. You push it and it runs Retrospect. When it is done, it exits. Backup speeds are substantially faster than tape or CD-R, And because of Retrospect's excellent incremental backup methodology, use of the drive's capacity is very efficient. I used to rely on automated backup to keep me protected, but OneTouch is so simple that after a few days of testing, it became a reflex to hit the button when I was going to be away from the PC for a few minutes. The one problem I encountered was that Maxtor's setup presupposes that the user does not have Retrospect already in place. I do, and setup was flummoxed by the presence of an existing installation. One workaround is to just let the setup program overwrite your version of Retrospect, then re-install yours. No settings get lost. Or in Windows XP you can ignore Maxtor's setup instructions, plug the drive it, and have XP run its usual "found new hardware" routine. (This probably works in other versions of Windows, but I only tested it in XP.) Either way, you just need to be sure you have a backup script called "Maxtor OneTouch" (without the quotes), as that is the job the button will run. There has been a gap for some time in SOHO backup ever since Travan became inadequate for modern capacity hard drives. I have tested various new tape formats for The Naked PC and found them too expensive for most users. External hard drives were problematic because of connection speeds. However, USB 2.0 and FireWire have solved that and plummeting drive prices, even at huge capacities, make the economics work. Tape does have the advantage of allowing you to move a spare backup set offsite, but you can do this with external drives by using two of them. Eric Ullman, Dantz Development Corp.'s technical marketing chief, crunched the numbers and found that hard drives are cheaper than prevailing digital tape formats. Extrapolating his numbers for the 250 GB drives, two 5000 XTs actually are cheaper to protect 250 GB worth of data than Sony AIT1, Ecrix VXA-1, or OnStream ADR2 systems. (Those are the tape systems I had tested and are the lowest-priced systems with greater capacity and speed than Travan.) And the pricing advantage still holds as capacities increase and you need more drives. This is because the media costs for 250 GB worth of tapes is expensive in all formats, plus those drives are more expensive to begin with. Incidentally, the mathematics also suggest that for backing up one or two PCs, you should consider a pair of 5000LEs as an alternative to one 5000XT. OneTouch is just the right touch for simple system backups. (c) 2003 Al Gordon. You can reach Al Gordon at: mailto:al@TheNakedPC.com In addition to his computer interests, Al Gordon is a principal in the Boston-area strategic consulting firm, Mary Fifield Associates, www.maryfifieldassociates.com. +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ >> "How Many Ways Will You Use These Amazing Devices?" They're incredibly handy. When we first saw these amazing little devices we thought, "these will look cool hanging on my key ring." Then we started using them. WOW - every day we find more uses. How many will you find? http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/a/tr.cgi?swisstech +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 04. PIMs Part III (by Dan Butler) We have been discussing various Personal Information Managers (PIMs) that I use to keep track of information. This issue I'll tie up a few loose ends and tell you about a free PIM that might meet your needs. If you missed the first articles in the series you can find them here: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?dan1 Many of you who downloaded Time & Chaos wrote to tell me how much you liked it. The main question I received was why I don't use just one PIM to store my data. Specifically why I keep certain things in Ecco Pro while keeping my address book and calendar in Time & Chaos. At one point I kept my addresses and calendar in Ecco Pro. It did a fine job. My wife kept her information in Time & Chaos. It too did a fine job. But we had our data scattered across two applications. Coupled with the fact that I used Ecco at my office, it made for a mess. So we decided to just use one application. Time & Chaos got the nod for its ease of use and the fact that my wife and children were already up to speed on it. Of course getting up to speed on Time & Chaos is about a 10 minute process which made the decision even easier. The truth is I actually prefer a paper-based address book and calendar when possible. Why? I just like paper and pens. I like to see my own handwriting. I like nice pens. Plus it gets me away from the computer which is always a good thing (according to my wife). I'll have more to say on this in a later article. My address book and calendar are paper-based, then I update the master address book and calendar when I'm at the computer. The specific paper planner I've used for the past few years is the Planner Pad. It's inexpensive and does just what I need. You can find them at: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?dan2 Some people asked about Palm Pilots. I've tried handhelds in the past but just didn't want "one more thing" to carry around. That, plus my love of paper and pen, makes it unattractive to me. All of the PIMs we are discussing will synchronize to handhelds either natively or with an add-on program. The Palm comes with a nice little PIM called Palm Desktop that runs on Windows or Macintosh computers and synchronizes to the Palm Pilot. You can download and use Palm Desktop for free. It may meet your needs just fine and if you ever move to a Palm Pilot you are ready to go. Just synchronize your data. I have not used Palm Desktop but talked to several people who find it meets their needs just fine. Get more information and download Palm Desktop here: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?dan3 Next issue I'll talk about loose bits of information. Those little scraps of information you want to reference someday that just don't fit in a PIM. (c) 2003, Dan Butler You can reach Dan Butler at: mailto:danbutler@TheNakedPC.com ** 05. Featured Product - Retrospect Gets Friendlier (reviewed by Al Gordon) No good deed goes unpunished, and so the aforementioned Eric Ullman suffered for tipping me off on the economics of hard drive backup by having to wait for a review of Retrospect 6.0 until a Maxtor drive became available for test. Sorry about that, Eric. So belatedly here's the scoop: if you have been holding off from Retrospect because its interface was too forbidding, 6.0 will be a big help. Dantz adopted a Web-Page like design with a menu bar on the left and dialogs with buttons in the middle to guide you through its many features. See the screen shot here. (Scroll down a bit to see the screen shot -- Ed.) http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?fprod1 Pricing also has improved with the addition of a "Professional" version ($85) that supports SOHO networks and slots neatly into place as a helpful upgrade to Retrospect Express. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?fprod2 Functionally, the main advance in 6.0 is the capability for open file backup, which primarily will be of interest in corporate settings because of its dependence on the NTFS file system. So if that doesn't excite you and you already have mastered the 5.x interface, there isn't a compelling case to upgrade. Retrospect's core strength is its unmatched capabilities for managing incremental backups and to take "snapshots" of your system at the time you backed it up. After your first pass to collect all data on your system, each subsequent backup only needs to gather changes, additions, and subtractions -- allowing for speedier jobs and less media consumption. Further, these capabilities carry over into the critical task of restoring. As noted in past reviews of Retrospect, these days a hard drive failure is only one danger. A virus infection or a software installation gone wrong also can seriously corrupt your system. So rolling back to a "snapshot" of a working configuration is a lifesaver. ** 06. Featured Web Site - Hyperhistory (reviewed by Dan Butler) It's funny what you stumble upon. While searching for something else I came across Hyperhistory. This is a nice historical time line that you can view specific people, history, or events. The time line is color-coded for science, culture, religion, and politics. Clicking on an item brings up a concise description along with further links to items inside the site and on the Internet. Every time I've been to the site I find myself clicking around and finding all sorts of interesting items. The set of Special Lifelines were particularly helpful to some private studies we are doing. An example being the composers outline which shows the composers on a time line with the various periods marked as well. Click on a composer's name to read a biography with links to more information on the Web. If you have any interest in history or just want an overview of how certain events influenced each other, you'll want to visit this site. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?fsite ** 07. Featured Drawing If you haven't entered one of our The Naked PC survey drawings before, here's how it works. You go to a Web page on our site, answer one survey question, and type in your email address. To encourage folks to participate, we conduct a drawing from the email addresses of each survey's participants and we give away something really useful. Now, obviously we already have your email address or you wouldn't be reading this, but this drawing for prizes will only include those folks who answer this issue's question (entering a prior drawing doesn't count for this one). We'll only use the email addresses we collect for the purpose of notifying who won the prize, nothing else. Before our next issue is published, we'll pick one entered name at random. The winner gets a $20 store credit (at our discretion the gift varies from drawing to drawing). Remember, you have to enter to win. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?fdrawing ** 08. Newsworthy - a potpourri of current events and interesting stuff *-* Electrostatic discharge (ESD) presents a tough barrier to future developments in nanotechnology because ever-smaller circuits are much more susceptible to damage from ESD. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?news1 *-* Tsering Gyaltsen, a Nepali sherpa, seeks to establish a cybercafe at Mt. Everest's base camp. Gyaltsen's grandfather was a sherpa in the first expedition to scale the peak. http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/605/tr.cgi?news2 Have you come across something newsworthy? 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Also, if you wish to post this newsletter to a newsgroup or electronic discussion group, you may do so if you preserve the copyright and subscription information. Thanks. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe, surf on over to: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/subscribe.html To make comments or suggestions, surf on over to: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/tnpfeedback.html or send email directly to: mailto:tnpc@TheNakedPC.com WEB BULLETIN BOARD Check out our 24x7 Web bulletin board. If you've got a technical question about PC issues, or suggestions of your own, this is the place to hang out: http://www.PRIMEConsulting.com/annoyanceboard/ ADVERTISING To advertise in The Naked PC go to: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/tnpcadvertising.html Mail services provided by Blue Horizon Enterprises, one of the very few "Mom and Pop" operations left on the Web: http://www.bhorizon.com Copyright (c) 2003, PRIME Consulting Group, Inc. and Dan Butler. All Rights Reserved. The Naked PC is a trademark of PRIME Consulting Group, Inc. ISSN: 1522-4422 TNPC Hot Tips:
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