Protecting Your Digital Photos and Documents

 We all have a ton of data on our devices; important documents, photos of friends and family, stuff you just don't want to lose. Anything can happen though, disaster is always lurking right around the corner. Spill your coffee on your laptop, drop your phone into the pool, your devices can even just up and stop working, and poof, everything is gone in a flash. That's why you need to back up those important files, and you need to do it now. Do not wait until it's too late.

There's lots of ways you can do it, and they're all relatively easy. You can back your files up to the cloud, you can use a backup program that will copy your files to an external hard drive and then do incremental updates to the saved data every time you make a change on your device, or you can just copy and paste the files you want to protect to an external drive. You have lots of options, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Let's review a few.

Cloud backups can be seamless and easy, but the cloud can get hacked, so I'm not a big fan. I don't want any more of my data floating around in the ether for some bad guy to poach and resell on the dark web, there's enough of it out there already. I'm always getting a notice from some institution or other saying, "We regret to inform you that all of your personal information has been compromised. Not to worry though, we've signed you up for 3 free months of Experian Credit Monitoring Services and DeathGrip ID Theft Protection coverage. Enjoy it on us! (special terms and conditions apply)."

No thanks, I'm good. The best and most reliable way to safeguard your data is to back it up to an external hard drive. I don't like to use automatic backup software to do it though. It's always running in the background, and it slows the crap out of your devices. Plus, it backs up stuff that you really don't need to back up. The file structure it creates on your external drive isn't very intuitive, either. I 'm going to show you a relatively easy way to back up your files, and I guarantee it will take a little bit of the worry out of your life.

My preferred back up method is to copy and paste my primary file folders over to an external drive and then update it on a regular basis. It's quick, easy and painless, and the file structure is simple, it's just a straight up copy of your hard drive. The folders you want to back up (or copy) on a PC are shown below. Note: If you save a lot of stuff to your desktop, you should copy that folder over as well. 

These 5 (or 6) folders hold all of your personal data, and that's all you want to be backing up and storing, cuz that's what's really important here, protecting your stuff, not Microsoft's.

For a reliable external drive, I like to use a simple USB plug and play drive like the Seagate 2TB Backup Plus Slim Hard Drive. It's small in size but big on storage, and there's no power cords to fuss with. It works off of a built in USB 3.0 cable, drawing its power from whatever device its plugged into. It comes with preloaded backup software, but I don't use it. As I mentioned earlier, backup programs always seem to be running when you don't want them to, dragging your device down. I just plug in the USB drive to my device, open it up, ignore the preloaded software and create a couple of folders.

In this example, I've created a desktop backup folder and a laptop backup folder. Inside of each of those folders I create dated sub folders, e.g. "Laptop Backup 07 01 2025". There's plenty of room on these drives to do multiple backups of each device, and you should. Next, I copy and paste my main folders from the device's hard drive to the external drive's new dated folders. Simple as that. You can copy and paste one folder at a time, or do them all at once, your choice.

Once the external hard drive starts to get full, I delete the oldest dated subfolder before I create another one, this way I always have multiple copies of all my files on the external device, and I never run out of disk space on it.

But what about the pics on my phone, you say? The best option is to sync your phone, tablets and any thumb drives or SD cards you have with your PC or Mac on a regular basis. Then when you back up your PC to your external drive you catch everything in one neat package. It's the same principle as above, you don't need any fancy software or devices, just plug your mobile device into your PC or Mac with a USB cable and copy and paste (or drag and drop) the pictures and files over to the computer. Easy peasy. Synching your mobile devices also allows you to safely remove pics and free up storage space on them, something we all need to do.

Bonus Tip: For added peace of mind, I store my external hard drives in our little grab and go SentrySafe burn box. If disaster strikes, all of our docs and pics go with us, even if our devices don't make the cut.

Bottom line, you don't have to do it my way, but you do have to do it. Choose whatever method you're most comfortable with and do it without delay. Do not be that person that calls me on a Monday night in a panic and says "Help, that new upgrade just bricked my device and now I've lost all of my family pictures." All I'm going to do is give you the number for the Geek Squad, and wish you Godspeed and good luck, because you're gonna need it, all of it. 

Windows Blue is Coming

Good news for those of you who hate Windows 8 with a passion, the Windows 8.1 update, code named Windows Blue, has been released to manufacturers, and a beta version is available for download now (Windows 8.1 Release Preview). The official release date isn’t until October 17th though, so I’d hold off until then, no matter how anxious you are for change, as I’m sure there’ll be some tweaks in the meantime.

Initial reviews are encouraging, looks like they’ll be addressing some of the biggest concerns users have had with the new OS. Here’s a sampling;

The start button returns, although not quite the way you remember it. Clicking on it will just dump you into the Metro/Start Menu that you now see at boot up.

Shutdown options are no longer buried under the Settings Charm and will appear with a right click to the refurbished Start Button, so it is good for something.

You can choose to boot up directly to the desktop once again instead of the Windows 8 Start Screen, and you can also change the Start Screen so it shows the Apps List (your old Programs List that used to appear when you clicked the Start Button) instead of the tiles it defaults to now.

Your Start Screen modifications can be synced across all of your PC’s.

There’s a Control Panel/PC Settings consolidation that will make it a little easier to find all the things you need.

You can turn off the annoying “Charms Bar” that keeps popping up every time you move your cursor too far to the top right of the screen.

You’ll be able to open up to 3 apps at a time and size the windows yourself. Any size you like, thank you very much. If you have multiple monitors, you can even have the desktop on one and the Metro/Start Screen on the other.

There will be a search bar overlay on the desktop and it will open in a window superimposed on your current screen rather than dumping you back to the Metro/Start Screen.

Improvements for easier navigation using a mouse and keyboard, for those who don’t have a touch screen device.

Faster performance, and a new version of Internet Explorer, IE11.

There are many other changes, some you’ll like, some not so much, so take a few minutes to check out the product guide on the preview page. It’s probably a good idea to download it for future reference as well.

As frustrating as Windows 8 can be, it has some very good features that will undoubtedly be made better with this upgrade. The biggest thing for me is that it won’t constantly be dumping me back to the Metro/Start Screen with all those useless tiles when I really want to be on the desktop, also the “optimization” of those old timey key boards and mice will be a good thing. The goal, according to Ballmer, is “refining the blend” between the desktop and the Metro interface.

As for those who think the only problem with Windows 8 is that the user community is afraid of change, I call BS. I’ve been rolling with the changes since the mainframe and teletype days, quite nicely, thank you, and I understand Microsoft creating an OS suited to mobile devices. What I don’t understand is their one size fits all OS dream. Forcing it onto desktop users just didn’t make sense, and it looks like they’re finally admitting it, to a degree, anyway. Optimizing 8.1 for keyboard and mouse, what a novel idea…

doh!

In comparison, Apple’s iOS and OSX look and smell enough alike so that you know they’re part of the same family, but they’re different depending on the platform, as it should be with Windows. Different keystrokes for different folks, I say.

OK, enough sermonizing. Version 8.1 will be pushed down for free to Windows 8 machines via Windows Update on or after the October 17th official release date. Read up in the meantime, it will help you through the transition.

That is all.

Extended Warranties, Are They Worth It?

Retailers offer extended warranties on almost everything these days, but are they worth investing in?

For me, it depends on a combination of things; the deal being offered and the repair/replacement costs of the product. Black and Decker cordless screwdriver? No thanks, I’ll just buy a new one. It gets a little more complicated with higher end items, though.

It’s the devices that you’re likely to repair as opposed to replace that you might want the coverage on, especially if it covers you against accidental damage, e.g., dropping, spills, etc. and also covers consumables like battery replacement.

With TV’s, I usually balk. Most have a one year factory warranty, there’s no batteries or accessories to replace, and they’re not subject to a lot of wear and tear like a laptop or tablet, just mount them and forget them. Plus with the way the prices keep dropping, they’re more of a replace than repair device these days.

PC’s, laptops and tablets are similar in the fact that prices keep dropping; wait a year and you can buy twice the system for the same money, but they’re expensive to fix, and your first choice is always repair with this type of device. It’s a pain to move all your data to a new machine, near impossible if you haven’t been doing backups.

I purchased extended warranties on both my desktop and laptop, and both paid off big time. The power supply and motherboard on my desktop fried after taking a power jolt with only a couple of weeks left on the plan, and Best Buy fixed it with no questions asked, basically giving me back a brand new computer with my original hard drive.

I had purchased the same Best Buy extended warranty on my laptop, and once again with only weeks left on the plan I began having overheating issues with the video card. Because the video card was integrated with the motherboard, the laptop was deemed too costly to repair, so Best Buy gave me a gift card for the purchase price of a similar model plus tax, and I walked out of there with a brand new laptop. One with twice the processing power, memory and disk capacity, and a larger screen, no less. Nice.

I had also gotten a replacement battery for the laptop shortly before its demise, no questions asked. I just had to show my sales slip and warranty paperwork and they shipped a replacement to my house free of charge. Think about this; if a warranty covers battery replacement, you know you’re going to recoup most of the cost by ordering a battery before the warranty expires, they go for about $100, and what 2 or 3 year old laptop couldn’t use a new battery?

So, before saying yes or no to the extended warranty offer, here’s what I ask myself:

Would I want to get this product repaired?

Is it an “at risk” device, something that will see a lot of wear and tear like a laptop?

Does it cover things that are not covered by the factory warranty, e.g. power spikes, spills, drops?

Is the extended warranty for a longer period than the factory warranty, and is it a reasonable cost?

Consumer Reports warns against buying any extended warranties or purchase protection plans, saying that the odds are that most of the devices they are offered on will either never need repair, or the problems will surface during the original manufacturer’s warranty, however they do admit that the exception to the rule would be laptops, especially Macs, due to Apple’s skimpy warranty policies. They offer a chart (shown above) with average failure rates of products within the first 3 to 4 years that shows laptop failure rates at 43%, leading all electronics, appliances and yard equipment by a wide margin.

Personally, I think the Consumer Reports article is a little misleading. They come out so strongly against extended warranties, then halfway through the article backtrack when it comes to electronics. In my opinion, most people stop reading after the first few negative paragraphs and miss the important caveats. I do have to thank them for the failure rate chart, though. Very nice.

Bottom line, the choice is yours. Weigh your options and make the choice that’s right for you, and your budget.

That is all.

Bose SoundLink Wireless Mobile Speaker

I teased you in my last post that I’d been playing around with some pretty neat technology this summer, it’s time I got down to business. Let’s start off with my favorite new audio accessory, the Bose SoundLink Bluetooth Mobile Speaker.

Forget about docks and cords, wireless accessories are where it’s at these days, and the Bose SoundLink is my personal favorite in the wireless speaker category. It’s small and compact, with a solid feel and a sleek look, and it has pretty good overall volume and sound reproduction for a device of its size and portability.

It pairs with and remembers up to 6 Bluetooth devices. After 6, every new device you pair it with bumps an old one out of its memory. I currently have it paired with my laptop, iPod touch and my Smartphone, all were a snap to pair, and all reconnect to it instantly after initial setup. Its sound is warm and impressive with nice full bass, not sonically perfect, but nice, and it has enough volume and clarity to use outdoors.

The controls are simple, just a few buttons on the top of the device for power, volume, mute and Bluetooth pairing. No remote, but that’s fine with me. The paired device performs that function quite nicely. It also has a built in cover with a magnetic latch that does triple duty. It protects the speaker when it’s closed, acts as a stand when it’s open, and turns the unit off when you close it again.

Like most Bose music systems, speaker placement is key to maximizing its sound; you want to have a solid surface a few feet behind it to reflect the bass, especially when you’re using it outdoors or at a large party. The SoundLink’s range is at least 30’, which gives you a lot of options in the placement department.

I’ve actually had the device for a few months now, but have been holding off on a review until I’d really put it through its paces, and this baby passed my summer torture test with flying colors. The only problem is, I waited so long that Bose has just released a second generation device, the SoundLink II, and a software update for the original device. The SoundLink II has been sonically improved, and now comes in 2 flavors, Bluetooth or AirPlay (Apple’s proprietary Wi-Fi).

The sonic improvements come in the form of new transducers and better digital signal processing, and the addition of an AirPlay version gives the device even more flexibility when paired with an iOS device or iTunes.

The software update for the original model is easy to install, the SoundLink has a micro USB port on the back labeled service, and it’s great to know that the device is upgradeable, seeing as the electronic landscape seems to change every nanosecond these days.

Bottom line, there are other Bluetooth sound systems out there, and most are a lot cheaper than the SoundLink, but for my money the SoundLink has just the right mix of sound, portability, function and form. Small and sturdy enough to travel with, perfect as an add-on speaker for your laptop, iPod or Smartphone, powerful enough to use as a boom box at your next party, and it pulls it all off with style.

That is all.

CyberPower CP1000AVRLCD

The CyberPower CP1000AVRLCD Intelligent UPS/Surge Suppresser/Voltage Regulator offers you protection from brownouts, spikes and power outages, and is a great little device for the money.

The unit has a power capacity of 1000VA/600 Watts and has nine NEMA 5-15R receptacles (5 with battery backup, surge suppression and voltage regulation, 4 with surge suppression and voltage regulation only), and it also has inputs/outputs for RJ11/45 and Coax filtering and surge suppression.

CyberPower’s GreenPower technology means that the Automatic Voltage Regulation feature only kicks in if there is a drop or spike in the supplied current, and it reduces energy consumption by 75% over comparable units. Surge protection is rated @ 1080 Joules, and it has an easy to read LCD screen that displays 11 different functions, including input and output voltage, load, and approximate run time on battery given the current load.

It also has both a USB and Serial port for connection to your PC, and comes with a copy of PowerPanel Personal Edition UPS Management software which allows you to status the UPS from the PC and interfaces with Windows power management to automatically close files and shut down the PC.

I have a 20” iMac, a Windows Media Center PC with a 19” LCD screen, a 1 terabyte external hard drive, and my FiOS router plugged in to the 5 battery protected outlets. With all devices powered on, load is at ~ 38%, with peaks of 50% during reboots. Estimated runtime @ 38% utilization is 14 minutes, more than enough time for a clean shutdown. The PC is the real hog at the trough here, though; when only the iMac, hard drive and router are on, estimated run time is a whopping 60 minutes.

The unit is compact and light, weighing in at about 16 lbs, stays cool to the touch, and is virtually silent; all enormous plusses, and it also has more available outlets then most units in its price range. I have our inkjet printer/scanner, another external hard drive and a small digital cable box that I use with the Media Center PC plugged into the 4 suppression/AVR only outlets, allowing me to unplug everything with one swift pull in the case of a severe lightning storm. Pretty cool.

I like this baby so much that I’m going to order another one for my entertainment center. The battery backup will keep my Cable box/DVR and my DVD recorder from resetting, and protect the LCD TV and audio components from brownouts and spikes. It will give me “one plug pull” in an emergency for the entertainment center also. Nice.

The only drawback to the unit is that although it’s advertised as having “widely spaced outlets to accommodate transformer plugs”, that’s not the case at all. I have no idea why they would put this claim so prominently in their product description when it’s so obviously false, but they do. You can plug in 3 standard power cords and 1 transformer block, at best, on the 5 outlet battery side.

One way to deal with this is by using one or two 1’ extension cords for your power block devices, although CyberPower strictly forbids the use of both extension cords and power strips with their unit. Nein, Verboten! Use of said devices will result in the voiding of both the 3 year warranty on the UPS and the $350,000 connected device replacement feature, so proceed down this avenue at your own risk. I can see why they have this caveat; you could plug any piece of crap power strip or threadbare extension cord in and create a massively dangerous situation.

My advice is; if you’re going to bend the rules, do it right. Use a short, heavy gauge cord like the ones referenced above, or a small, high quality power strip, and only use it to allow for transformer plugs, e.g.: don’t use a power strip so that you can plug in an additional 8 or 9 devices into the UPS and overload it. That’s a very dumb and dangerous thing to do. I saw that little light bulb going on in your collective heads; don’t be that chucklehead.

You can find this unit at Staples for ~$120, or online at Amazon ($106) and Walmart ($111) . That’s pretty short money for a little protection and peace of mind.

While we’re on the subject of protection and peace of mind, here’s another helpful little tip; I have a small, open, 2 shelf bookcase with lattice style sides under my desk. All cords, connectors and power strips are on it, protecting them from wandering feet and rising fluids. I have the cords woven through the latticed sides for a little added strain relief also.

Because my home office is in my basement, the bookcase itself sits on a thick block of Styrofoam, so that if there is water, it won’t soak into the wood and wick its way up to the electronics. That’s a little trick I learned from the ServiceMaster guy the last time we had water issues. Also, the PC tower itself is up on a wheeled tower stand. There should be nothing in direct contact with your floor.

Keeping everything up and semi mobile not only protects you from minor flooding, it will also help with heat dissipation and makes it easier to clean under the desk. Beware the deadly dust bunny.

End Of Transmission.

Buying a PC This Holiday Season?

There are some great deals out there, but before you pull the trigger, there’s some important things you need to know.

I’m not going to get into the whole “what’s the right device for me” question. There are so many choices; desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablets, and there’s a plethora of good deals in all categories. For most, usage patterns and pricing will drive their purchase. What I want to talk about today is ensuring that you get the most out of your purchase, and my advice holds true across all platforms.

First thing; whatever you end up buying, make sure you ask the question “How do I reload the system if it becomes hosed up?”

Some systems come with a copy of Windows, or a manufacturer specific recovery disc. Most systems require you to create your own recovery disc. You must do this immediately, and you must store your recovery disc somewhere safe. Store it where you can find it in say, a year or two, and label it boldly, so you don’t accidently toss it, should you find yourself in a cleaning frenzy one day.

You also need to have a plan in place to back up your data on a regular basis. By data, I mean your music, photos and documents. Basically the contents of you’re “My Documents” folder.

Last, but not least, you have to have a decent antivirus program loaded on your PC before you start surfing the web, and you have to update and run it regularly. Symantec/Norton antivirus is great, and usually comes preloaded on your new machine, but you need to pay for it, and renew your subscription periodically. I find that most people either put it off, or just forget. I recommend using a good free program, like MSE. Note: If you’re going to replace Symantec/Norton, you’re going to need the Norton Removal Tool, because a plain old uninstall just isn’t enough.

OK, so here’s why these things are so important;

This past month I’ve worked on 3 PC’s, all were hosed up to varying degrees with spyware and viruses. One of them was my own desktop, proving that no matter how careful you are, it will happen to you. It’s just a matter of time.

Of the 3 systems, the easiest to repair was my own. I have the system recovery discs, and I also have a couple of recent backups. All I needed to do was format the drive, reload the system from the recovery disc, run Windows update, and then reload my music, photos and documents. It took me all of one night and I now have the equivalent of a brand new machine. Anything I hadn’t used recently didn’t go back on, which freed up a ton of disk space, and the reformatting of the drive cured one of the biggest problems with an older system, fragmented files.

The other two systems were a different story. The owners didn't have the recovery discs, they weren’t even sure if they had ever made them, and they had never backed up their files. I could wipe their systems and reload them with another copy of XP, but then they’d lose all of their personal data.

If they had a copy of their My Documents folder, the fix would be easy. Without it, it’s a slow and painstaking process. You have to clean up the machine enough to be able to write the data to DVD, and if the machine is really hosed, that can be a daunting task.

Both machines had Norton Antivirus and Lava Soft’s Ad-Aware loaded on them when they were new, but neither program had been updated in months, and the last full scan run with either program was back when I had installed them.

After updating both, Norton found five viruses on the laptop and Ad-Aware flagged 253 suspicious items. That one went pretty well, all things considered. I was able to clean it up and save all the data.

On the desktop, neither program would even start. Some piece (or pieces) of malware had disabled both Norton and Ad-Aware, and the host table had been diddled, so I had to resort to reloading them from DVD, along with a few other cleanup tools. The machine was so slow that it took hours to load and configure them.

Very frustrating, and way too much time and labor to be spending on a frelative’s PC. In my spare time, no less, but what are you going to do? It would be a pretty costly endeavor for them to take it somewhere to be fixed, so I try to help, that’s what friends are for, but my rule of thumb is this; The first time it happens, I try to save things, but if you find yourself up the same tree a second time, it’s wipe and go service only.

I value my digital pictures, as do most, and I’ve seen the reaction when someone realizes that all of their files are dust in the wind; anger, anguish, remorse, and sometimes, tears. It’s an awful thing to see. Without those recovery disks and a recent backup, all you’re left with when the hammer comes down is a useless hunk of junk.

Don’t put yourself in that bad place; backing up isn’t so hard to do. I use an external drive with a built in backup program (HP SimpleSave) that’s brainless and painless. I also copy my pictures and documents to DVD and I run the iTunes backup tool periodically. It only takes a few minutes, and it’s time well invested. I keep the most recent copies with the recovery discs, someplace safe.

Also, don’t use rewritable DVD’s when you’re backing up your files (DVD-RW), use write once discs only (DVD-R). I had someone hand me a DVD recently, saying proudly “I have all of my pictures saved on here”. I found out later that they had been writing and rewriting to that same DVD-RW for days, and had overwritten most of the files. It was a hard drive replacement, and a hard lesson. Luckily, I was able to recover the contents of the drive later on, but that’s another story for another time. What I want you to focus on here is that rewritable DVD’s can be dangerous. Capisci?

So, to sum things up:

• Find out if the machine comes with a recovery disc.

• If it doesn’t, create one.

• Store the disc(s) somewhere safe.

• Add or activate antivirus software.

• Back up your important files regularly.

Simple, right?

I hope you’re all nodding your heads out there... If you're not, then we're both in trouble.

That is all.

HP SimpleSave - Revisited

Last year I added an HP SimpleSave 1TB External Hard Drive to my ever expanding desktop disk farm, and I did a post shortly thereafter extolling its virtues. Not only did it increase my storage capacity, it also automatically backs up my systems on a regular basis, and it’s large enough to be useful for both purposes.

After having it in service for a few months, I’m still pleased with the device, but… I have a little user tip that I’m way overdue in sharing.

This drive kicks off an auto backup after 5 minutes of system inactivity, which is a great way to insure that you’re always backed up, but the timer settings can’t be tweaked, and if you have a document open the SimpleSave program write locks it in preparation for backup after about 4 minutes of idle time. That’s just too short. It’s so short that even a quick bio break can trigger it.

Usually my first hint of trouble is an error message that pops up to the effect of: “Saving the Auto Recovery file is postponed for (your file name here)”, which means that Word has tried to do an auto-save on the document, and failed.

The consequence is that any changes you’ve made since the last time you’ve saved it, or the last time Word has done an auto-save, are going to be lost when you close the document. Word still prompts you to save the document when you try to close it, but that fails also.

When it catches me, I’ve usually just started creating a document and I’m cooking along, so when I see that error message I know the whole thing will be lost if I don’t engage in evasive maneuvers.

If it catches you, the fix is simple, although it’s a pain. Click Edit, Select All, and then Copy. Now close the document without saving changes, and then open it again, click on Edit and Select All again, and then paste.

Note: Be sure to go down to the system tray, right click on SimpleSave and selct Exit before you go any further, otherwise you’ll be painting yourself into the same corner.

The real fix is to either remove SimpleSave from your startup, or right click on the system tray icon and select exit before you start anything. I prefer to leave it in the startup and then kill it when I’m going to be working. It’s a pain, but that way I don’t have to sweat whether or not I’ve done a backup in times of crises.

Of course, the ultimate would be if HP made the idle time setting selectable, but I’m not holding my breath. I will, however, be holding my water.

That is all.

Turn Your Laptop into a Hotspot

Happy National Wi-Fi Week!

Actually, it’s not really a national thing yet, but here at berryjooks headquarters we like to kick off the summer vacation season by celebrating those little invisible radio waves that bring us all of that Internet goodness we crave when we’re unplugged and roaming.

We’re going to share a couple of tips with you this week, and we’re going to start with something simple, wirelessly sharing a single Internet connection between multiple computers.

There are two types of Wi-Fi connections; infrastructure and ad-hoc. An infrastructure connection is when you connect to the Internet via a Wi-Fi enabled router or a WAP (Wireless Access Point). An ad-hoc connection is a peer to peer (laptop to laptop) wireless connection that runs solely over the laptop’s Wi-Fi radios, no external hardware is involved. This can be a great tool for file sharing amongst a group when there’s no network available, or if there is a wired Internet connection available, you can take it a step further and enable Internet sharing on one of the laptops and use it as a WAP or Hotspot.

I had a friend ask how to set this up at their vacation cottage the other day, and rather than try to give them a tutorial, I did a quick Google search and found the excellent video below on CNET. It walks you through set up on Windows XP, Vista and Mac OSX, and it even discusses how some PC’s are set to shut down their radios when a wired connection is present and how to get around this.

Note: This video was made before the release of Windows 7, but the Vista instructions will work for 7 also.



Pretty neat, huh?

That's it for now. Later this week I’m going to show you how you can dumb down wireless routers and use them as WAPs to increase your wireless coverage in a large home or office, so stay tuned!

VAIO CW Series Notebook PC

The Sony VAIO VPCCW21FX/W is a sweet little mid-priced laptop chock full of both processing power and bells and whistles.



When shopping for a laptop, it’s very hard find one that’s a good performer and has all of the features that you want without spending a ton of cash. There are lots of lower end systems out there at great prices ($360 to $599), but they don’t have a lot of features or horsepower. There’s also a great selection of top of the line systems ($899 and up), but the midrange systems always force you to make trade offs. This one has a better processor and more memory and disk space, but no video card. That one has a serviceable processor, less memory and disk space, but it’s got a video card, stereo Bluetooth and a webcam. I don’t know about you, but I want it all, and I don’t want to pay a premium for it, so I’m constantly comparing and contrasting them looking for the best value for my buck.

The Sony VPCCW21FX/W has all that and a side of fries. It sports an Intel i3 quad core processor (2.13GHz), 4GB of DDR3 RAM (with room for 8GB), a 500GB hard drive, an NVIDIA GeForce graphics card with 256MB of dedicated video RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS, a 14” HD quality widescreen, A2DP Bluetooth, Wireless b/g/n, Gigabit Ethernet port, CD/DVD player/burner, Multimedia card reader, ExpressCard /34 media slot, high quality webcam with motion and face tracking technology, HDMI and VGA video outputs, IEEE 1394 firewire input and 3 USB 2.0 inputs.

It’s truly in the portable category, weighing in at a scant 5.3 lbs, and it’s truly in the midrange system category, with a price that weighs in at between $809-$849 (Best Buy had it for $809 last week).

The only 2 drawbacks to this system are the less than stellar audio (decent but tiny speakers) and the choice of colors (Blue or Ice White are the only colors available off the shelves in the retail stores), but both are things that I can live with.

As I said, there are plenty of systems out there that offer more, but as an all around standout performer at a great price point, this VAIO is the pick of the litter.

Windows Autorun/Autoplay Problems

I recently did some major scrubbing and upgrading of my system, and as is often the case, broke something in the process.

My PC had gotten sluggish; it needed a good cleaning and more memory. Norton had flagged a couple of downloaders and a Trojan Webkit that it couldn’t remove, or quarantine, so I decided just to nuke it and start over.

Confident that I had a good backup, I popped the hood and added another 2 gig of RAM, then reloaded Windows. Next I spent about 2 hours researching and removing all of the useless crap that comes bundled on the reload disks. Once I was happy with it, I plugged in the network cable and began downloading and applying all of the security patches and updates that had come out for service pack 2, culminating in the application of service pack 3. Done, or so I thought…

The computer was running great. It was clean as a whistle and fast as lightning, and I was a happy man. That is, until the first time I popped a CD into one of the drives.., and nothing happened.

Normally the Autoplay wizard fires up when you insert or connect any media or media devices into your PC. It’s the little wizard that pops up and asks you what you’d like to do with said media. Insert a CD, DVD, USB drive or connect a camera or MP3 player, and it asks you to choose a program to open, play or import data with. It’s not a necessity to have, but it sure makes life easy.

If I opened up My Computer, I could see the media mounted in the drive, so I could use it, but something was blocking Autoplay from starting. I checked all of my settings, and found the process was enabled on all of the drives, so I began searching the Interwebs for an answer.

First I found this document on the Microsoft Help and Support site. It described the problem to a T, and came to the conclusion that the problem was caused by having certain versions of Easy CD Creator loaded on the machine. The fix was to remove the software, and then make some registry changes to re-enable Autoplay. Not having this program, I continued to search for an answer more appropriate for my situation.

Then I found this link to an Autoplay Repair Wizard available from the Microsoft Download Center. After verifying the authenticity of my copy of Windows, Microsoft allowed me to download and run the wizard, which indeed found a problem, fixed it, and wrote the changes and results to a log file. The wizard requires you to log out and then log back in to complete the fix, and once I did, the system immediately recognized the CD I had in one of the drives and fired up the Autoplay feature. Sweet.

Just to be certain I had the problem licked, I switched the CD to the secondary drive. I’m glad I did, because I found that I wasn’t done. I ended up having to run the wizard on all of my drives and ports, one at a time, with a logout in between each. For the USB drives, I had to insert a thumb drive to get them to show up in the wizard’s device repair list, but once I fixed the first one, they all began to work again. It was a bit tedious, but it looks like my system is finally back to normal.

This must be a fairly common problem, as Microsoft has come up with a repair wizard for it. The last puzzler I had like this was the Media Center black screen problem, which they also had a wizard to fix. My post on that problem, and repair, has been the top visited post via keyword search on my blog for over 6 months now, so I hope this one proves to be just as helpful.

An iTunes Mystery - Solved

Back in November I did a post called An iTunes Mystery - The Case Of The Disappearing Cover Art . I think I can finally say that the case is closed, mystery solved.

I was having problems with artwork disappearing from iTunes, and consequently from my iPod the next time I synced.

I won't bore you again with all the details, but you can read them in the link to the original post above if your not one of my three dedicated readers. The bottom line is that once I unchecked “Automatically download missing album artwork” on the General Tab under Preferences, it stopped happening. Although it was an intermittent problem, it's now been 5 months since I changed it and I haven't lost any artwork.

Now remember, this worked for me on a specific platform (XP Pro/Windows Media Center 2005), and in a specific situation (the disappearing artwork was all added by hand to ripped music when iTunes couldn't find it). This solution also has one obvious drawback. While iTunes purchased music is still downloaded with cover art, once you uncheck the "automatically download missing album artwork" box, music you rip and then import into iTunes won't have cover art. I think this is the lesser of the two evils. I'd rather add cover art once when I import a song, then constantly have to re add random batches of artwork. It was an insidious problem because usually by the time I noticed it I had synced repeatedly and then I'd have to go back through the entire library looking for the newly naked tunes.

I finally decided enough time had passed to give you an update on this one plus I noticed recently that the search keywords that bring the most traffic to my site are variations on "Missing iTunes Artwork". I guess there are quite a few others out there who have shared my misery.

You know, I'm almost afraid to upload this, 'cause I know that as soon as I do...

Nah. Never happen.

Sweet!

Both Mike Lowell and my computer are back. I'm doing the happy dance!

My PC is Gone, Baby, Gone.

I’m a pretty careful guy when it comes to caring for my systems and preserving my data. I’ve seen enough “data disasters” to last a lifetime.

You know the drill. You get the call from a relative or friend who has been dumping digital pictures onto their PC for the last 2 years and has never backed it up. Their hard drive is clanking, the PC won’t boot, and they’re frantic. “Oh my God, little Nell’s first communion pictures are on there!” they wail.

Usually you can recover some or all of their stuff but it’s always a pain in the butt and your friend or relative always stands behind you the whole time, wringing their hands and asking “How’s it lookin’?” every 5 minutes. Such a fun time! Once I even had to resort to a trick I learned from one of my coworkers to rescue data, freezing the hard drive. If you pop a bad drive in the freezer overnight sometimes it will work for about an hour after you take it out. It worked, but just barely. The drive started clanking again about halfway through the copy and died for good right after I finished.

I actually think there was divine intervention on that one. The drive belonged to a loved one who was particularly distraught and close to tears as I left for the evening with the dead drive in hand. I was flying home the next morning and although her computer was working, she had no hope of ever seeing her pictures again. Man, would I have loved to have seen her face when the FedEx guy delivered the DVD’s I created a few days later. That would have been priceless.

Anyway, we all say “I’ll never be that guy!” but it’s almost impossible not to be that guy.

I have a laptop, an iMac and a honkin’ Media Center PC at home. Any digital pictures and videos we take get loaded onto both the PC and the iMac, and they all get copied to a portable hard drive also. In addition, once every couple of weeks I burn a copy of the My Pictures folder onto a DVD. Same with the My Videos and the My Music folders and just because I’m totally anal, I also run the iTunes backup routine once a month and rip all purchased tracks to CD.

So, you would think that with all this preparation a machine meltdown wouldn’t be such a big deal for me. Well guess what? Even when you’re prepared it still sucks.

The other night, right after I finished the previous post, my PC went into a coma from which it still hasn’t recovered. It froze and that was it. I couldn’t even get it to POST, let alone reboot. Fried motherboard. Gone, Baby, Gone.

Luckily it’s still under warranty so we made a copy of the hard drive (told you I was anal) and off I went to Buy More. The store was great. They popped the hood, confirmed my original diagnosis, then packed it up and shipped it off on its long trip home to the manufacturer.

Beautiful, right?

Not exactly.

Now I’ve got to wait for its return, which could take up to a month, and when I do get it back there’s a good chance I’ll have to reload everything. A small price to pay, especially if I end up with a brand new system, but a time consuming hassle nonetheless.

In the meantime although I’ve still got my laptop and iMac, I’m out of business on a lot of fronts. My laptop isn’t powerful enough to process video and doesn’t have a video capture card and PVR software like my desktop. The iMac can process the video, but the video projects that I had already started on the PC will need to be restarted from the raw video files on the Mac, or they’ll just have to wait. Also a lot of the software I use regularly on the PC isn’t on the laptop or iMac, which means I’ve been busy loading software.

The coup de grace is that my iTunes library is on the PC and my wife’s is on the iMac. Both are radically different and if you’re familiar with iTunes you know the hassle of transferring to another computer.

On the plus side, this will force me to do some things I’ve been putting off. I’ll probably run all my music through a leveling program and then re-import it into iTunes with sound check off. As you may know, the iTunes sound check software really sucks. My levels are all over the place.

And then there’s…

and…

Ah nuts, there is no plus side. A PC meltdown is just no fun at all.