Odds and Ends
By Cate Eales
Appeared January 12, 2006 on castanet.net
This week we have a few, unrelated, short items for you.
None of them really rates a column of its own, but all of them seem worthy
of a mention. I hope something here helps someone out there.
Archived Files
Someone emailed me this week asking advice on consolidating and organizing
a bunch of files which are all on 3 ˝" floppy disks. She'd been told that
the disks were obsolete and that in order to preserve the information she
had to "get the files off of there." Her questions were, "Should I put
them on a CD?" and "How would I do that?" and "Should I put the Word files
on one CD and the Excel files on another?"
First of all, those floppy disks aren't just going to go up in smoke, like
the reel-to-reel tape at the beginning of a Mission Impossible episode.
It's true that more and more computers are sold with CD and DVD drives and
WITHOUT floppy drives, though, so it's not a bad idea to archive those
files on CD (or DVD) instead of floppies. You won't need as many CD's as
floppies. The capacity of a floppy disk is 1.4MB; a CD will hold about
700MB.
Find a PC with a floppy drive and a CD-RW drive ("burner"). Make sure
there is software on the PC for burning the CD. In this case, the idea is
to archive the information in a way that most people would be able to
access it if necessary. So I would recommend just saving it to a CD-R, not
to a re-writable CD, as not all computers can read them.
Copy the files from the disks onto the hard drive. There's no earthly
reason to separate the Word files from the Excel files. Just organize the
data in a way that makes sense to you. Maybe you just need to create a
folder that says "2004" and another that says "2005" and drag the files to
the appropriate folder. Then use your "burner" software to get those files
onto the CD. It's a good idea to put a label on the CD and write something
informative on it so you know what you are looking at in a couple of years
when you need the information again.
Big Files
Someone else wanted to know why they were getting error messages when they
tried to email a large file. We spent a little time getting the exact
wording of the email message, but it turns out that the file is just too
large to email. I recommend YouSendIt (http://yousendit.com),
but Creative Guy has a list of 50 online file storage/file sending sites,
all of which are free. Check it out here:
http://www.jdempsey.com/2005/12/08/free-online-file-storagesending/.
Windows Updates
Please make sure your Windows Updates are…up to date! Microsoft released a
patch last week that will correct a very large security hole. In Internet
Explorer, click on Tools | Windows Update, and follow the prompts. Windows
XP users can open Control Panel | Security Center and set up Automatic
Updates. Please remember --- if you set Automatic Updates for 3:00AM, you
need to have the computer ON at 3:00AM. Consider choosing a time when the
computer is usually on, but you're not really using it. Lunch time. Dinner
time. When you're usually in the shower. Whatever you do, even if you
elect to update manually, please make sure you're getting the critical
updates.
Archived Columns
Please feel free to browse the archives of this column, which are kept on
my website at http://rlis.com/. We're
making some changes over there and trying out some new things, so if you
have a moment, please stop by and help us out with the "subscribe by
email" test.
---
Cate Eales has been helping people make online computing safe, accessible
and fun for over 20 years. She lives in Kelowna with her husband, Eric,
and her dog, Sandy. Cate is a partner in Real Life Internet Solutions,
helping individuals and small businesses with virus, spyware and malware
eradication; personal computer training and management; digital image
management; music transfer; and website design, hosting and management.
Email Cate at cate@rlis.com with your
comments, suggestions, or questions. To browse the column archives, visit
the Real Life Internet Solutions website at
www.rlis.com.
© Cate Eales 2005 – All Rights Reserved
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