CyberCoyote - March 30, 2006

NEWS

Chuck Tomlinson gave a "Presentation-in-a-Box" on data recovery today. The most common cause of data loss is "oops" of course. The practical advice for safe personal computing is: 1) Back up often. 2) Verify that your backups are valid. 3) Test your restore process. The presentation was provided by Action Front Data Recovery Labs.
http://www.actionfront.com/ -- Action Front
http://cybercoyote.org/computer/backup.shtml

NOTES and NOTICES

Read the latest Smart Computing Newsletter online.

Our meeting will be in NC-2 next week, where we'll learn about "Digital Audio Essentials" from Bruce Fries.
http://cybercoyote.org/events/fries.html -- preview

Our last meeting of the season will be on April 13 in the Chaparral Room. The first meeting of next season will be on November 2 in NC-2. (All our meetings will be in NC-2 next season.)

TIPS and TOPICS

Yesterday, while waiting for my car to be serviced, I discovered "iSoldIt", who provides "drop-off" points for selling your treasures on eBay. (They are independent from eBay.)

If your stuff sells, they box it, ship it, and collect the money from the buyer. Their commission rate is 30% or less, which includes their services. The store I spotted is in the Safeway strip mall at Grand and Reems.
http://www.i-soldit.com/index.asp
http://www.ebay.com/

Monochrome laser printers are more affordable now. They're a good alternative to inkjets if you only need black/grayscale. They're a good way to go if you're tired of messing with ink (pun intended) and want lower costs in the long run. Color costs quite a bit more though.

I recently bought one -- an HP LaserJet 1020. It's fast and clean. The Lexmark E120n is another example of an inexpensive monochrome laser printer.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1844591,00.asp -- HP 1020
http://cybercoyote.org/url/172.html -- Lexmark E120n
http://cybercoyote.org/url/173.html -- *all* lasers

WINDOWS

You knew it had to happen. Windows Vista will not have "broad consumer availability" until January 2007. (I say March.) In other words, don't plan to buy me that new Vista laptop for Christmas this year. :^)
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/news/3739005.html (short)
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1742047,00.html (long)

COMPUTERS

You may have heard me say that I use "drive images" as my parachute during computing adventures. :-) The machine I'm writing this on had been running for 3 1/2 years without reinstalling Windows in spite of heavy pounding. I did restore two or three images when things went horribly wrong during that time though. This time my hard drive started making sounds of impending failure.

That's not a software problem, so it was time for a new hard drive. I could have just restored the latest image to the new hard drive. However that would have dragged along some unhandy travel mementos. I decided to create a fresh setup instead. It's based on an clean image that I created way back when I originally built the computer.

The image gave me a nice head start, but left me a long way from where I wanted to be. I've been working for two weeks getting it (mostly) up to date. This new setup has a nice fresh feel. One of the best results was getting rid of a few frustrating delays.

Other things that didn't work quite right are now fixed as well. And there's no longer a strange piece of fuzz clinging to my cursor. :-) Now I guess I'll have to put this machine to work on our income tax return. :-(
http://cybercoyote.org/computer/bu-sys.shtml

SECURITY

Think you can tell by looking if a Web site is free from spyware, spam, viruses, silent attacks, and other maladies? Note: SiteAdvisor does not protect against Phishing, as that is a different kind of attack. Take the SiteAdvisor quiz and see.
http://www.siteadvisor.com/quizzes/spyware_0306.html
http://www.siteadvisor.com/download/ff.html -- extension for Firefox
http://www.siteadvisor.com/download/ie.html -- plug-in for IE

DIVERSION

Be sure you pick up your email sometime tomorrow, and don't count on good Internet access over the weekend. The Internet will be closed for spring cleaning. ;-?
http://cybercoyote.org/url/174.html -- announcement

A little late in the season, but watch this quaint photoshopped animation [long download].
http://www.taylorjames.com/photographic-retouching/tj-menu-3.php

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