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Vol. 6, No. 21
5-20-06
1 Backups, Part 3
2 Electronic banking
3 Creative vs. Apple, hybrid drive, Blue Security blues, Vista welcome mat
4 iPod Shuffle contest
5 Protecting your computer from other local users
I mentioned last week that I’d be going off the reservation for making backups of financial programs, but before I get to those let’s cover a couple of alternative email programs that we’ll raw copy.
At one point Eudora was the choice of IT departments at nearly every college in the US. It’s fairly small, can be copied from place to place and continue to function and it doesn’t suffer from the security woes of Outlook Express.
Eudora is installed by default into the C:\Program Files\Qualcomm folder. Copy that entire folder to My Documents and, once we back it up, you can restore it by simply copying the entire folder back to Program Files on a fresh load or even another PC. All settings and messages are maintained and no installation is necessary.
Thunderbird (the email companion to Firefox) is another popular email client. All of the messages, filters, accounts and address book are stored in C:\Documents and Settings\your profile name\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profile. Just copy the entire Profile folder to My Documents.
Of the most common financial programs QuickBooks, Quicken and Money all nag when you close the program to make a backup. Generally the default is to the floppy drive but all programs allow you to change the default destination. As always, make it My Documents and do the backups each time you exit the program if you’ve made any changes or additions.
You can verify that the backups are working properly by checking the My Documents folder for:
YourCompany.qbb (where YourCompany is the name you gave your account file in QuickBooks)
Qdata.* (Quicken data files with extensions like .qdf, .qel etc.)
Mymoney.mny (Microsoft Money backup)
If you want to skip the internal backups and rely solely on automated programs you’ll want to copy C:\Program Files\Intuit and\or C:\QuickenW for Intuit programs and C:\Program Files\Microsoft Money for MS Money.
This wastes some space since the program files can’t be dropped in place and count as an install of the program, but you’ll be sure to get all your data files.
At this point you’ll need to browse around for any other data you want to back up. If you have actual files or folders on your Desktop (not just shortcuts) you’ll want to copy C:\Documents and Settings\your profile name\Desktop. If you use something like KaZaA (Heaven forbid) you might want to copy C:\Program Files\Kazaa\My Shared Folder, or so I’m told.
You get the idea. Copy any folder that contains important files to My Documents and next week we’ll automate some if not all of the process, depending on your backup hardware of choice.
Until then, if a storm blows up unplug not only power but also telephone and ethernet cables from the PC, just to be safe…
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Editor’s Note: Sorry for the delay this week. An upgrade to the mailer program caused a bit of a problem (yes, upgrades can cause even us geeks problems ;)), but all is up and running again.
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
From our "If Ya
Can't Beat 'Em, Sue 'Em" Department comes word that
Creative (the
Soundblaster soundcard company) is suing Apple over the
way the iPod searches
for songs:
http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/BF9aa1PBRkHcxT/Creative-Technology-Wants-a-Piece-of-Apples-Pie.xhtml
Samsung
is preparing to roll out a "hybrid" drive next week which will
be part flash
memory and part traditional hard drive. More speed and
battery life,
anyone? :
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125761,00.asp
Blue
Security, the infamous company that fought spam with spam, has
been
out-spammed by spammers:
http://www.informationweek.com/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=187900367&subSection=Cybercrime
Microsoft
is helping customers "Get Ready" for Vista. I like putting
milk and
cookies out for Santa Claus in June, too:
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3607406
Please
write your news stories on the back of a $20 bill for prompt attention
;-)
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
Contest of the Week
If you wanted to enter last week’s featured context for $50 worth of iPod gear but were hampered by your lack of an iPod, cheer up. This week you can win an iPod Shuffle from TagWorld.
To promote a new release from Breaking Point called “Beautiful Disorder”, TagWorld is giving away a Shuffle as well as several copies of the CD. Sign up at:
http://www.winduplist.com/ls/contests/10212.asp
Email Question of the Week
Q: I have an issue that irritates me to no
end. No matter how often I
tell them, other users of my computer continue to
download files &
programs from web sites that I don't OK. How can I set
up a visitor
user profile that will block the ability to download files
and
programs using Windows XP home edition?
A: Here's a simple way to limit other users
access to your system:
Click on Start, then Settings (or Control Panel,
depending on whether
you have one column or two from the start menu) and in
the Control
Panel, create a user under "User Accounts." Select "Limited User"
for
this new profile, and installation of programs will not be
available
to that user.
As for deleting other accounts, that is up to
you, but you can also
put (or change) a password for any accounts that you do
not want to be
used without your knowledge. Selections for all those options
are
clearly listed on the left hand side of the screen.
Hope that
helps and thanks for asking!
Troy Overton
84online@troyoverton.com
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