According to a 2003 article on the Iomega website, only 38% of people surveyed use a computer to prepare and file their taxes. I suspect that by 2005, that number is slightly higher—or maybe I’m confusing the ubiquitous tax software displays in grocery stores and everywhere else I seem to go with actual purchase and usage. The higher your level of education and the higher your income, the … [Read more...]

My apologies to those of you who received a newsletter full of strange ASCII code strings where the apostrophes were supposed to be. Blame Windows 98—I did exactly what I normally do to publish this, with different results—and didn’t find out what happened until too late. I now have my own computer back and in working order, thanks to Charles Lee of McTek Systems in Berkeley (510-525-5129). … [Read more...]

Today Enterprise IT Planet's "AntiOnline" section turns its spotlight on backup procedures, as a contributor makes the shocking discovery that his company's infrastructure team was not up to par, and fellow geeks chime in on what you need to keep an enterprise IT backup structure working. No prizes for a page layout that makes the article almost invisible between ads, though. … [Read more...]

Some time ago the Ur-Guru sent me the following question as a suggestion for a backup reminder: “Is it better to lose your data due to hardware failure and thus have a brand, device, electronics, or piece of metal to blame, or to lose your data because you did something wrong or accidentally weren't thinking when you deleted files? The latter case you'd want to ram your head into a wall. In … [Read more...]

Last night I missed a great opportunity. I could have asked Google co-founder Larry Page about what kind of backup system Google, Inc. uses, but I forgot, so now I’m going to have to find out by another means. You may not know this (I didn’t), but in order to provide its indexing services, Google has to download the entire World Wide Web. Most of us, as individuals or business owners, only need to … [Read more...]