bruceb news

Before we get into specifics, you should know that there are two different kinds of backups: backups of your data, and backups of an image of your hard drive.

The one that comes to your mind first is a backup of your data – basically just a copy of your files and folders. It might be done by manually copying them or by running a backup program; the extra copy of your data might be in another folder on the hard drive or on an external hard drive or on a USB stick or online. If you’re running a backup program now, it is likely to be backing up your data. […] continued

Let’s spend some time in the next week or so talking about backups.

Every computer depends on a hard drive to run the operating system and programs and to store your data. A hard drive has very, very thin round platters spinning incredibly fast (typically 7200 revolutions per minute), while arms with microscopically small sensors dance back and forth fifty times per second (about the speed of a hummingbird’s wings). The space between a read/write head and the surface of the platter is around 50 nanometers, about 1/2000 the diameter of a human hair. Hard drive cases are tightly sealed because a speck of dust is much bigger than the space between the platters and the read/write head. […] continued

If you’re like me, then you’ve been caught off guard in the last couple of years by something that you hadn’t realized was obsolete. Here are a few that still occasionally take people by surprise when they get a new computer.

• PS2 connections (the round ones) for keyboard and mouse are almost never included on new computers. There are USB adapters if you have a treasured old keyboard that you can’t stand to give up.
• Parallel printer ports are mostly gone, only included on the most staid and boring of enterprise level workstations. If you have one of those old HP Laserjets that were built like tanks, you’ll have to give it up unless you have an older computer in the corner to run it.

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It seems we’re constantly buying printers to replace the ones that break before their time. A quick word of advice if you buy an HP printer: don’t put that installation CD in the drive! The chances are good that you’ll wind up with hundreds of megabytes of bloated software that will muck up your nice shiny computer (and at worst thoroughly break it).

Always check the HP web site for the slimmest drivers that will support the basic functions – making the printer available to the computer for printing and scanning. You already have nice programs to take over from there. […] continued

A heartwarming story for the end of 2008! On December 31 every owner of a 30Gb Microsoft Zune woke up to a crashed device that couldn’t be started. (The Zune is Microsoft’s competitor for the iPod. Only 14 people own them, so this isn’t all that significant except that it makes Microsoft look so deliciously boneheaded.)

After reports of the glitch started flooding in to Gizmodo and other gadget web sites, Microsoft started scrambling for an answer and eventually turned up a software bug related to leap years. The official answer: avert your eyes, don’t ask a lot of questions, and put the Zune away until January 1, when it will be okay again. […] continued

The headline tells the story of this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

Severe system performance problems occur on a Windows Vista or Windows XP-based computer after you install HP printer software, version 11 (Microsoft KB960673)

To be honest, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen this problem in the real world. “On a Windows Vista or Windows XP-based computer, you install the HP Customer Participation version 11 software that is included with Hewlett-Packard’s new printers. After you do this, you may experience an overall slowing of your computer performance because of an error in this application.”

But I know that HP has been doing a terrible job of supplying software with their printers for the last few years, so this is just an extreme example of a bigger problem. […] continued

If you don’t have enough memory (“RAM”) in your computer, it will run very, very slowly. Once you have a reasonable amount of memory, performance won’t change very much if you add more. Memory has been so cheap for the last few years that most people don’t need an upgrade but I still run into underpowered systems occasionally, usually when someone has complained to me about how slow their computer is.

You can check how much memory is installed by right-clicking on My Computer (WinXP) or Computer (Vista) and clicking on Properties. You’ll see the amount displayed there. Typical business computer users should have a minimum of 512Mb RAM for Windows XP and 2Gb (or 2048Mb) for Vista. […] continued

Some of you are running into unnecessary software included with many USB flash drives. The U3 Launchpad probably seemed like a good idea but I’m not aware of anyone who uses it, and I know a lot of people who find it irritating.

The U3 software is included with many popular models of USB thumb drive, including the SanDisk Cruzer series, some Kingston models, and a host of others. It is occasionally advertised as a feature (the “Kingston U3 DataTraveler”); other times it turns up unannounced.

When a USB drive with U3 is plugged in, the software autoplays and adds an icon by the clock to start the U3 Launchpad, which theoretically allows programs to be run from the USB drive without making any permanent changes to the computer. […] continued

From Paul Thurrott’s blog today.

Unbelievable.

I love Dell, I really do. I recently bought that Optiplex, which has been great. So when my dad called this morning and asked about buying a new PC, I told him I could probably get something at Dell for under $500. I headed over to Dell, went back and forth between the Inspiron and Studio desktops and then started configuring an Inspiron 518.

If you’ve spent any time on Dell.com, you know how this works. They have this nice configurator wizard that walks you through all of the components you can change on the system you’re browsing, like the microprocessor, the graphics card, the hard drive, and so on.

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Running a Vista Media Center Extender in the living room requires a computer in the house running Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate. Your home computer can send your photos and music to the living room without working very hard, so it’s quite possible to use the same computer that you’re using at your desk.

There is a caveat, though. The most important trick for a Vista Media Center Extender is delivering TV shows to the TV, and your home computer probably isn’t ready to do that without an extra bit of hardware to plug in the Comcast cable and act as a TV tuner. […] continued