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The New, the Best, and the Worst
Collected by Pim Borman, Website Editor, SW Indiana PC
Users Group,
Inc.
http://swipcug.apcug.org/
swipcug@sigecom.net
Backup, Schmackup.
I can't pick up a computer magazine without being harangued about the
urgent need to back up my hard drive(s) before the world is coming to
an end. I have never been able to bring myself to follow that
well-meant advice, although not without lingering feelings of guilt.
On a few occasions I have used the latest hot backup program to store
data folders to a compressed file on a backup drive. Then I wondered
if I would be able to retrieve my data from that file if the need
arose, and conveniently forgot to update the backup.
Last year I bought a 200 GB external hard drive to store backups. It
came with a backup program that I used to back up those data folders I
wanted to protect. After I was done I had about 199 GB of external
disk space left. It dawned on me that it might be easier to just copy
the data folders I wanted to back up directly to the external drive.
No big deal and no worry about the integrity of my backup data .
After all, what is there that's irreplaceable? I edit our User Group's
Web site, about 12 MB by now. After every update I publish the site to
my external hard drive and two locations on the Web. Once or twice a
year I also copy the whole thing to a CD-ROM that I give to our
president for safekeeping. That's safe enough by any measure.
I keep extra copies of photos and genealogy data on several hard
drives, and annually copy them to a backup CD. Current financial and
tax data I keep on removable storage with backup to CDs, as well as
hard copies in a file cabinet. Personal email correspondence gets
backed up occasionally, although I can't remember ever going back to
letters from years ago. I might have to borrow a computer from the
Smithsonian to recover my earliest correspondence, written in the late
eighties with a Textra word processor on floppy disks that actually
flopped.
During the past two Christmas seasons, while nostalgia was running
high, my son Mike and I dug out some old 8-mm family movies, taken in
the 60's, 70's, and 80's, for conversion to digital format. The old
projector suffered from a broken drive belt, but thanks to Google I
managed to find a replacement on the Web. I still had some splice
tapes left to repair the brittling film as needed. We used a Vivitar
UVC-1 All-In-One Universal Video Converter to funnel the images into
Mike's digital camcorder. The converter is a rectangular box with an
opaque glass projection window in the long side, and a condenser lens
in the short side. The camcorder, on a tripod, is focused through the
condenser lens and a diagonal internal mirror on the projected image.
We needed to adjust the frame rate of the camcorder to obtain a steady
picture. Mike then recorded the camcorder copy with a SONY RDR-GX300
DVD Recorder on DVDs for sharing with relatives and archiving. Now
THAT is worthwhile backing up! The quality of the old movies is
primitive by today's standards, but the contents are invaluable and
irreplaceable.
If you run a business I can see the importance of regularly and
completely backing up everything, making sure to keep extra copies
off-site. But as a private individual, just use common sense and stop
worrying. What is there to lose, really? And while you are at it,
maybe you should look around the garage, the attic, or the basement
for clutter that can safely be thrown away!
TV Tuner Troubles
We live at the edge of the city of Evansville, with a small, wooded
area behind our back fence. That provides great privacy and a wide
variety of interesting wildlife, from birds, squirrels, and raccoons
to occasional deer. Unfortunately, over the past 50 years or so the
trees have encroached on the overhead power line, and we suffer
frequent power outages whenever a storm passes through the area.
Naturally, that happens just when you are glued to the TV screen to
follow the progress of the storm on the radar.
I went looking on the Internet for an external TV tuner that I could
plug into the USB port of my laptop when the power went off. As it
turns out, there are several models available. I first chose a
Hauppauge WinTV USB2 unit, about $90 online. Unfortunately, it didn't
work as advertised. The picture was all right, but I could not get the
sound to come on, and the software did not manage to activate the
remote control. FAQs on the Hauppage Web site did not help and the
latest drivers were identical to those on the CD. I tried the unit on
my desktop computer with the same lack of success. The vendor, J&B
Music, readily gave me a Return Authorization number, although I'm
still out the shipping charges both ways.
Undaunted, I bought an ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 tuner at Circuit City,
$80 with a $20 mail-in rebate. Same features but without remote
control. Same problems too, except that this time I received no
picture either. Checked their Web site's FAQs, downloaded and
installed newly updated drivers. Now I didn't even get the black
screen. Called support who referred me to a help file on the FAQ site.
No luck. Returned the unit to Circuit City and got all my money back.
Oh well... If you know of a reliable external USB2 TV Tuner, please
let me know. It better be good this time.
Freespire
For those of you with an interest in the Linspire Linux distribution,
there is now a free distro called Freespire. It is essentially the
same as Linspire 5.1, without some help files, but with developers
utilities. To quote freespire.org: “The regular, complete version
includes legally-licensed, 3rd party codecs, drivers and software, to
offer better hardware, file type, and multimedia support. Freespire
includes turn-key, out-of-the-box support for MP3, Windows Media,
QuickTime, Java, Flash, Real, ATI drivers, nVidia drivers, proprietary
WiFi drivers, modem drivers, fonts, and so on.”
It has all the functionality of Linspire 5.1, including some new
features forthcoming in Linspire 6.0. The expectation is that
Freespire will function as a core around which volunteer programmers
will add new functionality under the Open Source system, similar to
other Open Source projects such as Firefox, Thunderbird, and
OpenOffice.org. Meanwhile, if you were thinking of giving Linspire a
try but were unwilling to pay $40 for the program, you can now use
Freespire for free and have essentially the same functionality.
Dell DeCrapifier
Dell stock has gone down more than 50% during the last several years.
Many reasons are given, including the presumed ineptness of its CEO
during the last two years, Kevin Rollins. Specifically mentioned are
poor customer service and the loss of key personnel (The Wall Street
Journal 8/22/06). There is no mention of the disgust of many new Dell
customers when they find their new computer loaded with unwanted
software and spyware that slows everything down and is almost
impossible to remove. Jason York to the rescue! He has written a
script called the Dell DeCrapifier that automatically detects and
removes unwanted software from new Dell computers. If you have a new
Dell you can find it at
www.yorkspace.com. (PCWorld September 2006).
There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this
article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the
author. The Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal
Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of which
this group is a member, brings this article to you.
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