Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
November 12, 2006

Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter
http://www.terryscomputertips.com
A computer tips newsletter for users of PC's.

Volume 2, Number 22 — Sunday, November 12, 2006

Part 1  | Part 2  | Part 3 | Part 4

IN THIS WEEK'S ON-LINE ISSUE:
   1.   Backing Up Your Computer & Data
   2.   Updates Last Week
   3.   Backing Up to External Drives
   4.   Firefox 2.0 Bookmarks
   5.   HOWTO: Adding a SaveAs Button to Word/Excel/PowerPoint
   6.   My Computer Security Software Recommendations
   7.   Dialup Internet Changes
   8.   Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

Welcome to the on-line edition of my Terry's Computer Tips newsletter.

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1.  Backing Up Your Computer & Data

As I wrote a couple times recently, the hard drive on my notebook computer failed recently. First, any activity got slower and s-l-o-w-e-r. Then, the symptoms became worse, quickly. Unfortunately, the failure was also corrupting the drive data as I continued to use the drive.

I backed up my data every night to another computer across my network. For this purpose, I used the fantastic, and free, program Replicator (www.karenware.com) to automatically copy changed files. Not only can Replicator be used on a schedule to copy to another computer, it can just as easily copy to a different hard drive in the same computer, a different partition on the same hard drive or into a different folder on the same hard drive.

Why would you even want to consider backing up your data into somewhere else on the same hard drive? Simple answer — the most common reason for needing your backup data is user error -- brain freeze -- editing a file and then saving it over the original, when you meant to save it with a new name -- that kind of thing...

Of course, you still need a real backup that is not on the same hard drive, preferably not on the same computer. An external hard drive is the best choice for a real backup copy.

If you want a reliable backup copy, you need to connect the drive, make the backup, disconnect the drive, and then put it away.

It's that simple. If you leave the drive connected to the computer and leave it running, it's vulnerable to the same viruses and other malware you might encounter. Even if you turn it off and leave it connected, it is just as vulnerable to fire, lightning damage and theft as your main computer is.

One final thought: If you need to use your backup file — COPY it to your regular computer. Never edit the backup file while it's on the backup drive. If Murphy's Law (If things can go wrong, they will.) ever had a pertinent time, it will apply when you try to edit a backup file!

My experiences with that drive failure convinced me that I wanted to return to my previous practice of making image backups of my hard drives. No, that's not a picture and it's not backups of my pictures...

An image backup is like a Restore CD -- except that it's a Restore CD (or DVD or file) that I make that has all my settings, my programs and my data on it.

I can make image backups and burn them directly to CDs or DVDs. I can make an image backup directly to another hard drive, whether across my network or on an external hard drive. With most of today's image backup programs, you can also access and restore individual data files out of the image backup. Similarly, most will allow you to choose to make full backups (complete) and incremental backups (files that changed since the last full backup).

The backup programs that I use are:

• For image backups, Acronis True Image (commercial)
• For data backups, Karen's Replicator (free for non-commercial use)

2.  Updates Last Week

Microsoft (operating systems, email, web browser, office suites):
None! Microsoft releases almost all updates once per month, on the second Tuesday. The next scheduled update is Tuesday, November 14.

Firefox (web browser, http://www.mozilla.com, free):
This week, Mozilla.org released an update to the 1.5 versions. Firefox v1.5.0.8 was released to handle significant security issues. They also posted the following statement: "Firefox 1.5.0.x will be maintained with security and stability updates until April 24, 2007. All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 2." Firefox v2.0 was released on Tuesday, October 24th.

Opera (web browser, http://www.opera.com, free):
No update last week. Current version 9.02 was released during late September.

Netscape (web browser, http://browser.netscape.com, free):
No update this week. Version 8.1.2 was released during the week ending September 30.

US-CERT issued a press-release on November 8th that recommended that Netscape users turn off JavaScript. (Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey and Thunderbird were subject to the same issues, but new versions were released on November 8th to solve the problem.)

SeaMonkey (web browser, email, HTML editor, newsreader; http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey; free): NEW UPDATE! Current version 1.0.6 was released on November 8th. This is a seruity update. They also released a public beta of version 1.1, available at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/releases/1.1b.html .

Eudora (email, http://www.eudora.com, options: paid, sponsored or free/lite):
No update last week. Version 7.1.0.9 was released October 11, 2006. This was announced as to be the last commercial version before Eudora becomes open-source in the first half of 2007.

Mozilla Thunderbird (email, http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird, free):
Thunderbird version 1.5.0.8 was released November 8th. This is fixes a significant security problem.

OpenOffice (office suite — spreadsheet, word processor, presentations, graphics, web design; http://www.openoffice.org; free):
Version 2.04 was released on Friday October 13, which was also the 6th anniversary of OpenOffice.org. What's new?

Part 1  | Part 2  | Part 3 | Part 4

Volume 2, Number 22 — Sunday, November 12, 2006

Copyright © 2006 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.