Things I Learned in 2009

1. Back up your hard drive. This is something I know I should have been doing but didn't. It finally got my attention and brought my life to a screeching halt for over a month.

Two weeks before my laptop's one-year warranty was up, my hard drive completely crashed. I happened to be working with several computer savvy people and was able to talk with someone and get their trusted advice. He was able to salvage most of my data on the corrupted hard drive while I waited for the new one to come in.

The new hard drive, along with the restoration and recovery CDs, arrived about a week later. My helper wouldn't be able to do the work for me, but he gave me good instructions and I was able to do the work myself.

Although much of my data was recovered, I still had to spend many, many hours reinstalling software, starting with the operating system! I had to find the CD for installing the printer software, MS Office, and several others. Plus, several of the businesses that I deal with online require a user name and password. I used to keep that on my laptop. Information gone. Even accessing email needs a password. Now that I was trying to access my accounts from a "different" computer, some of the more secure sites required an additional step from me to confirm that it really was me.

I was just getting settled in, when five weeks later, the replacement hard drive crashed. After spending a few days trying to get my computer to work again, I had to come to grips with the fact that I was about to repeat what I just went through. But alas, the replacement part had a 30-day warranty and I was at day 35. Good feelings gone.

I called to get the new hard drive and was told it could take two weeks for it to arrive. In the mean time, I brought my laptop to a local shop ("Mr. Notebook") so that they could recover the data on the bad hard drive. Although the process of getting the data would only take a few hours, it would be a week before they could even look at it. Plus, they would need an external hard drive on which to put the data. So up to Fry's I went and bought a nice Seagate and delivered it to Mr. Notebook.

Then, what to do for two weeks?? I used the computers at the library and at the local community college where I attend several classes.

Finally, the hard drive arrived in the mail and Mr. Notebook called to say they were done...both happened on the same day! Good feelings return.

I had never replaced a hard drive before, and now here I was duplicating the process I had learned only six weeks before. It was just as painful and time consuming the second time around: reinstalling software and confirming passwords.

The Seagate is really easy to use. All I have to do is plug the USB cable into my laptop and it does the backup automatically. It took some time to get it set up initially but now, it's a breeze. I back up about once a week; more often if I have spent alot of time on a project and don't want to lose it.

2. Store your user names and passwords in more than one media format. I thought I was so smart the way I was storing this information until the hard drive crashed and I couldn't get to the information. I can't tell you my new system in case you decide to break into my house to get to my passwords. I'm just saying, make a back up of your passwords.

3. Firefox is faster than Internet Explorer. Somehow, websites display faster with Firefox. I like to look at weather web cams so that's where I've noticed the most difference. The "favorites" are arranged differently and a little harder to access than on Internet Explorer (I.E.) so I use both, depending on what I'm doing. If I want to use a familiar favorite, I use IE. If I want to look at web cams, I use Firefox. Another benefit to Firefox is when I start typing a URL address, it starts to guess at what I want (based on my history) and gives me several options. I almost always find what I'm looking for this way.

I would not have even tried it had I not been in a web design class that required us to verify our designs in multiple browsers. I was absolutely astonished at how some of my designs displayed very differently in each browser. As I designed a web site, I was constantly checking to see how it displayed in Internet Explorer and then see how it displayed in Firefox.

I have since downloaded Apple's internet browser, Safari, but have not used it much. (See next item.)

4. Apple isn't all it's cracked up to be. Fifteen years ago, Apple had the market on making it easy for regular people to use a computer. The desktop, folders, trash can, and drag-n-drop were brand new and way better than trudging through DOS. I owned a Mac (proudly, I might add) but became frustrated because of the limited amount of software available. By the time I reached that point, Microsoft had developed "Windows" which looked alot like a Mac. That was nine years ago and I have never regretted changing from Mac to Microsoft.

I had a chance to see the latest Macs during a summer class at the local community college. I hated it. It's a bunch of fluff that I'm sure is doing nothing but hogging space. Who cares if the folders do something fancy when they close? So what if it looks like its being sucked into a vacuum cleaner hose? Ugh. I hated it.

So, when I downloaded Safari (to see how it displayed my web site designs) and saw that it does a bunch of unnecessary whirling and twirling, I had the same feeling. Yuck. Give me IE or Firefox.
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