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LangaList 2005-05-23 Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free! --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 1) Laptop Setup Secrets: Reclaiming All A Hard Drive's SpaceHats off to successful mobile PC users! Using a portable PC--- notebook, laptop,
whatever type or nomenclature--- can be daunting: Not only do road-warrior PC
users have all the same issues faced by their deskbound brethren, but they also
have a whole range of special concerns ranging from issues of physical and
online security; connectivity issues; extreme power management problems;
performance issues; and more. Although anyone can use a portable PC, using one
well, to its fullest capabilities, takes a little forethought. You'll also find still more information via the index page for my
InformationWeek column at
http://www.informationweek.com/LP/columnists/fredlanga.jhtml . You see, like so many systems today, the new laptop came preloaded with tons of
software I had no use for, and no interest in. The laptop was preconfigured to
offer me special deals from the vendor's marketing partners--- canned ads, in
effect--- trying to get me to sign up with this ISP or that photo service or a
particular antivirus site.... All that software (gigs of it!) was eating up hard
drive space and would make my backups far larger than they needed to be. Plus,
once I layered in my own software, I'd end up with a needlessly complicated,
bogged-down system containing both the OEM software and mine; in some cases, I'd
have two kinds of software on the laptop to perform the same task. That's just
dumb. Plus, as we all know in computers, needless complexity brings needless
trouble. I wanted a clean, simple setup where I could control what went where. Click on over to Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 2) What File Format For Long-Term Document Storage?
Funny you should mention 3.5" floppies as an example: Sony, the inventor of the 3.5" floppy, has announced it will no longer make them. It's the end of a storage-medium era. But you're right: There's lots to consider when you're talking about safe, long-term storage of data.
One element is the viability of the storage medium
itself, and we covered that in Is Your Data Disappearing?
http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20010719S0003 and "Time To Check
Your CD-Rs" You're smart to avoid the proprietary formats offered by some scanner software: Some years down the road when the software is gone--- and maybe the whole scanner company too--- it'll be difficult or impossible to recover files stored in some weird, one-company-only format. On the other hand, files stored in widely-used, widely-supported, or (best of all) completely nonproprietary formats are much, much safer. For example, the ".doc" file format used by Microsoft word is proprietary, but it's so widely supported that it's actually a reasonably safe format to use, at least for short and medium-term storage. But the rich text format, or ".rtf" is even more widely supported (virtually every word-processing tool on the planet supports it), so it's an even safer choice. I've set my copies of Word to default to .rtf formatting for this very reason. No matter what PC, OS, or word processor I'm using even, say, 10 years from now, odds are rtf will still be supported. PDF is mostly an Adobe-only format. I find it clumsy and awkward to use, and complete overkill for most documents. Microsoft is adding its own PDF-like page-description language and tools to the next version of Windows, but I also don't think that's likely to be a good choice for most document storage--- with most documents, what you mostly want to preserve is the content, not the exact, sub-millimeter placement and formatting of every individual page element. Page description tools are really a special-use thing deeply rooted in the display conventions of the ink-on-paper world, and are largely an anachronism in the digital age--- the equivalent of a binary buggy whip. <g> So what should you use? Non-proprietary image formats like JPG and PNG are a good choice for most scanned documents where you're basically filing a photocopy. OCR is another option if you think you might need live, editable access to the data; you can run the scanned document through OCR software, and store the output as an RTF file. But you don't need editable text for tax documents or most other scanned items--- all you need is the digital equivalent of a photocopy, and for that, converting the scans to JPG or PNG images should be fine. If I were you, I'd then copy them to a CD for long-term storage. If they're in a safe deposit box, you really don't have to worry about encrypting the files; the physical security should be ample in itself. And note: In the US, tax documents usually have to be kept for only three years; and never have to be kept more than seven years. The odds of any storage technology or widely-used file format passing into oblivion in that time frame is virtually nil, so you should be safe using any reasonable option. Click to email this item to a
friend 3) Mounting A Drive Upside Down OK?
The main problem, of course, is that turning the hard drive upside down converts all the ones to zeros and all the zeros to ones, making your software useless unless you move to the other hemisphere--- OK, OK. I'll stop. Sorry. <g> It's actually a good question, Dennis, and there was a time when drive orientation mattered a lot: Drive bearings were designed for a particular orientation, and mounting the drive sideways or upside down could lead to early drive failure. And let me tell you, the sound of a hard-drive's bearings failing is one of the less pleasant noises that can come from a PC! But it's been years since I've seen a drive with a "mount this way" or "this side up" sticker on it. Most drives can be mounted and run in any orientation now. Absent a warning label or a cautionary statement in the user documentation, I wouldn't worry about it. One small caveat: If a used drive has been run in one orientation for a long time and you're moving it to a different orientation, there's a slight increased chance of mechanical trouble because the bearings may have "run in" or worn to the original orientation. The new orientation will load the bearings differently, and the worn bearings may have trouble or suffer accelerated wear. It's not a certain thing--- I've reoriented old drives with no trouble at all--- but it's worth mentioning, and is yet another reason why it's smart to make a complete backup or a drive image before doing any maintenance on a PC. Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 4) A Year's Worth Of Updates on ReynaRemember Reyna, a 12-year-old girl who lives in Guatemala? Some time ago, she became one of the dozen kids supported each and every month through the LangaList Plus subscription fund. Her introductory info is here http://www.freetune.com/newsletters/2002/meet_reyna.htm ; one previous photo and note are here http://www.freetune.com/newsletters/2002/reyna_2.htm; another is here: http://www.freetune.com/newsletters/2002/reyna_3.htm With a dozen kids being supported by the Plus! subscriptions, I thought it would be easier to keep track of what's happening with each kid by focusing on one per month; gathering all the correspondence from the previous 12 months and presenting it all at once, rather than dribbling it out in the scattershot and irregular fashion in which the mail arrives. The latest batch for Reyna includes school and health reports, several photos (she's getting tall!), some crayon drawings that remind me of my own daughter's work when she was a similar age (I guess some traits are totally cross cultural <g>), and several handwritten notes, plus their translations. One recent one:
To see the full year's worth of updates: Plus Subscribers click here:
http://www.langalist.com/Plus/kids/reyna_2005.asp What's this all about? Very simply this: Those of us with computers and Internet access are vastly better off than most of the world's population. Because of this, I decided that a portion of the LangaList Plus! subscription fees would be donated to registered/legitimate charities helping the underprivileged around the world. The contribution does not increase the cost of a Plus! subscription in any way; the donation is taken "off the top" of any profits. (This is described in the pages at http://langa.com/plus.htm ) Reyna is one of 12 kids sponsored on an ongoing basis (via an international relief agency) by the collective generosity of LangaList Plus! subscribers; Plus! subscribers also have collectively contributed to emergency earthquake relief efforts in India and to funds to assist those hurt in the Sept 11th terrorist attacks on the US. (To see all the donations so far, click to http://langa.com/plus2.htm#kids ) As the year goes on, and as more readers sign up for Plus! subscriptions, I hope we'll be able to sponsor more children and assist other charities around the world. If you're already a LangaList Plus subscriber, thank you! You can feel good about giving back a little to those less fortunate, and opening a door to the future for a child in otherwise-desperate circumstances. If you're not yet a Plus! subscriber check it out: With a Plus! subscription, you can not only help yourself make the most of your hardware, software and time online with expanded content and no advertising--- but you also can help those less fortunate (like Reyna) make the most of their very lives. Thanks for your help! or give a GIFT SUBSCRIPTION to the Plus
edition: Click to email this item to a
friend 5) Fried BIOSHi Fred, I have been a long time reader, first the free version, and then for about a year the paid version. I have followed all of your backup recommendations for years now but believe it or not I have come up against a problem which having done all the necessary homework and backups is of no use. The place to start would be the Compaq site. using your serial number or other purchase information, you should be able to locate a BIOS upgrade tool, which will create a special boot floppy that will replace all the "volatile" or nonpermanent information in the BIOS. If that doesn't work, or the PC won't even get to the point of trying to read the BIOS update floppy, then a BIOS replacement may help. We've covered this pretty extensively in the past, so rather than repeat the information, let me link you to it: http://langa.com/u/9q.htm If that doesn't help, a basic Google search
will surely get you where you need to go: The Compaq update files should be free; and it's usually only a few tens of dollars to buy a new BIOS. Either way, I'd think it'd be worth that small investment to try to rehab the old laptop, especially if it was otherwise serving you well. Click to email this item to a
friend 6) Recommend This Newsletter And Win!If you think the LangaList is a worthwhile read, maybe a friend would
find it useful too! Just use the following link to recommend the
LangaList---your friend may find a new source of useful information and
you just may win one of three FREE ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTIONS to the
LangaList Plus! edition given each month. (If your name is drawn and
you're already a Plus! subscriber, your current subscription will be
extended by a full year.) Click to email this item to a
friend 7) Firewall Doesn't Block "Ping"
First, you can relax a bit because a "Ping" response is a minor vulnerability, at most. And setting up a system to ignore Ping requests even can cause problems in cases where an ISP will Ping a given connection to see if a PC's connected at the other end. If your PC ignores the Ping request, the ISP may disconnect you, thinking there's no PC there. (This is usually not the case with dedicated connections, such as DSL, though.) Ping also is a useful diagnostic tool when you're trying to track down a connectivity problem. It's about the simplest form of network request, and is often used to see if at least basic connectivity is OK, before trying to troubleshoot more complex failure modes. And all a ping reply does is say "This connection's alive." It doesn't reveal any personal information, or let anyone connect to your PC, or anything else. What Gibson's site refers to is that, once a hacker knows there is a PC at a given address, he or she may then attempt to probe for other, exploitable vulnerabilities. Of course, if your firewall is blocking everything else, and you've also run Gibson's "Shoot the Messenger," "DCOMbobulator" and "UnPlug N Pray" (all available, free, from http://www.grc.com/freepopular.htm ) you're pretty well locked down from external attack. But full "stealthing," where your PC ignores virtually all externally-originating network requests including Ping, still is best in terms of security. And most firewalls beyond the most basic do offer full stealthing. Even the XP firewall can be configured to block ping/echo requests--- see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320855 for reasonably complete information, from Microsoft, on the XP firewall. But other firewalls can do a lot more than the basics; they can, for example, block illicit *outbound* or "phone home" requests that originate on your PC, triggered by malware. The XP firewall does nothing about this kind of reverse attack. (You can test your firewall's ability to block this sort of back-door data leakage with Gibson's "Leak Test," also free, from the above link.) The better firewalls do it all--- blocking suspicious inbound and outbound activity, with full stealthing, if desired. My two favorites are ZoneAlarm and Sygate Personal Firewall, available in free and paid versions; and there are many, many other perfectly good alternatives too. If the XP firewall isn't to your likeing, one of the alternatives (start with ZoneAlarm and Sygate) will almost surely do the trick. Click to email this item to a
friend 8) Another Code Load Success StoryAfter his site was listed in the last "Load The Code" section, code- loader Courtney Harrington wrote:
Do you have a home page or website? (It doesn't matter what size.)
Please click over to http://langa.com/code.htm , and maybe you can join
the thousands of LangaList readers who have "Loaded the Code!" (If
you've already "Loaded The Code" and are wondering if your site will
appear here or on the Langa.Com web site, please see
http://langa.com/link.txt ) Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date Sites Starting At mental tech Radio Wymsey Brain Injury Help free print-and-play board and card games Lowell's Web clear complexion "POWER" E-Mail Newsletters & E-Zines MyNewDimension Nolookingca's Idiotic Blog green revolution (romanian) Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList S.E. Free! ) --- "Couldn't surf the net without you. Security, software, new items, --------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 9) When "System Restore" Won't
System Restore is severely limited in what it can do. It's meant to let you roll back major system files to undo things like bad updates, failed installs, and the like so that you can at least get your system running again. Think of SR as one of those little "space saving" doughnut-like tires you can use in after a flat-tire emergency to limp home or to a repair station. It's an emergency thing, not intended for full-time, heavy-duty or long-term use. Even when everything works right with System Restore, it cannot and will not clean up left-behind files, excess registry entries, or myriad other issues. It does not and cannot restore your entire system to its previous state--- it just rolls back certain, select (and essential) system files to try to get you going again, in the event of major system trouble. System Restore is not, repeat not, a backup. SR also is a space hog; its files can eat up a ton of disk real estate, consuming at a rock-bottom minimum at least 200MB when it's in use, and often much more. You can run into problems if a new "Restore Point" won't fit the allotted space, or if an older RP is incomplete, corrupted, or won't delete. You can help control your Restore Points, and that may improve the reliability of System Restore. Lots more info: http://langa.com/u/9s.htm and http://langa.com/u/9r.htm But it's still just an emergency tool, and is not a substitute for a full backup. In fact, GoBack--- another kind of system-recovery tool--- is much the same. It's more powerful and flexible than System Restore, but it too is no substitute for a full backup. Even GoBack's documentation says that: It's designed to be used to supplement full, normal backups; not to replace them. So use SR or GoBack if you want, but remember that relying on them as if they were full backups is like riding around on those little rubber doughnut spare tires: very dangerous! Click to email this item to a
friend 10) Just For Grins
Lol! It looked so real, it actually took a minute for the joke to sink in. Thanks, Brett! Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 11) Plus! Edition Highlights:
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