New Post on Godfrey B2B Blog

If you struggle trying to get large files to-and-fro over the Interwebs, check out my blog post on Godfrey's B2B Insights area. It's about YouSendIt, a great service to help you move large files around - files that might be too big for email attachments.

Yes, I know - I wrote about this service here in March 2008. The point of my Godfrey piece, however, is that a service like YouSendIt is excellent for ad agencies, for very specific reasons. We deal with massive amounts of files - many of them quite large - that often have tight delivery deadlines. Read the blog post to see how it helps us.

AVG and Me

If I've ever helped you with virus problems on your PC, chances are one of the issues was that your old antivirus software was outdated, expired, ineffectual, or resource-heavy. That's when I probably recommended AVG Free antivirus. The price is nice: free for personal use, without sacrificing the basic protection most users need.

For businesses, an AVG commercial version is also a good choice - although it's not free. BUT, you get a lot of additional components, options, and management tools - the kind of stuff required in corporate environments. And although I haven't done exhaustive price comparisons, it's cheaper than many of the other brands out there and AVG promises steep discounts for yearly renewals.

We ditched Symantec AV (SAV) at Godfrey a few months back in favor of AVG's Small Business Server edition, and it's been great. We were starting to have compatibility issues with our old version of SAV, and frankly what I'd seen of Symantec's new offerings left me less than impressed. The "bloatware" train just keeps on rolling at Symantec.

AVG consumes fewer system resources that SAV, yet also adds spyware, malware, and dangerous link protection along with AV. This means you could ditch Windows Defender, AdAware, Spybot, or other overlapping-applications, further freeing-up of resources.


AVG's interface is clean, intuitive, and informative.

From my standpoint as the network administrator, the central management tools are solid. I set up an AVG server and within half an hour or so, was able to use the AVG Admin Console, push-install the AVG program to all the desktops and laptops on our network, update their definitions, and create custom settings to distribute to everybody. It's got great reporting tools, keeping me updated on everything from new virus definitions to non-compliant workstations (computers with some sort of error, such as a virus, spyware infection, outdated definitions, etc.).


AVG Admin Console - the brains behind my network's antivirus defenses

Downsides? Well, it's a good thing the AVG server and client components are generally easy to set-up and use, because the documentation is spotty and at times downright confusing. Relying on their FAQs and product pages, it took me a long time to sort through the differences between the versions. Nowhere did any help files mention, in exacting terms, that you use the same installer for both workstations and servers (FYI, the installer automatically detects the platform and installs the proper components). That took several tech support requests to figure out, requests which weren't exactly answered in a speedy fasion.

I was REALLY frustrated with how AVG organizes its downloads; the email link I received after purchasing the software on AVG's web site didn't have descriptions next to any of the 5 download links, and the file names themselves were not descriptive. They could do a much better job with delivery and documentation, to be sure. The limitations are senseless and self-imposed. A little bit of useability testing would have gone a long ways, folks.

I mentioned before that Symantec had that "bloatware" feel to it. In fairness, AVG comes with a lot of components, too. I chose not to install "the works" at first. Instead, I installed the basic coverage, and then tested the other parts such as LinkScan and WebShield, adding them one at a time and testing as I went along. (The only component I didn't install was the anti-spam module; our email is already protected from spam by a Barracuda.) After all AVG components were installed, Windows still ran smoothly and none of the components appeared to have interfered with normal email or web operations. The biggest test is this: does it catch what it's supposed to, and are users happy? The answer, for us at least, is yes in both cases.

All in all, despite the documentation and installer confusion issues, I'm glad we went with AVG.

Four quick, final points:

1. First, the link and info above is for the corporate version of AVG, presented here for benefit to IT administrators and uber-geeks. For your home PC, go here.
2. Second, antivirus software is only as good as your updating habits, so make sure you stay current with updates and subscriptions. And having good AV software does NOT negate the need for you to run a router-based firewall, or keep current with Windows Updates.
3. Third, don't get too attached to one AV program or another. You're dating, not getting married. A year from now, the landscape could be totally different. Symantec's corporate version used to be GREAT.
   
4. NEVER install a new antivirus program without removing the old one first.

Computer running slow? It's either an easy fix, or it's not.

A customer and friend recently asked what he could try on his own to remedy a slow Windows computer,
before possibly scheduling an appointment for me to come out and look at it.

I get this question often. On the surface, you might think that I’d be hesitant to answer it in any substantial way. After all, if told him how to get his computer running faster - and it worked - he wouldn’t need me. But the truth is I’m more interested in helping people getting their technology working properly, period. I know that for the ‘bigger stuff,’ he’ll call me. He knows I have his best interests in mind and am more interested in a good, long-term customer relationship than a quick buck.

That said, this is usually a very tricky question to answer. The main issue is that there are SO many reasons a computer could be running slow, and so lots of things need to be investigated. Sometimes it’s obvious: age. For example, a really old Gateway tower that came originally with Windows 98 and was upgraded Windows XP is going to be slow, period. Especially when it still has only 128 megs of RAM.

“Yes, but I used it for years and it's always done everything I needed it to do and it didn’t really seem slow until recently...”

That’s a valid point which I’ll demolish nonetheless.

First, realize that everything ELSE in the computer world has gotten bigger and faster. There was no YouTube or iTunes when your computer was produced, no matter how cutting edge it was at the time. File sizes all around were much smaller. And networking is different today. When you were on dial-up (egads!), your Internet connection was so slow that your computer seemed fast by comparison. Fast forward to 2008. All this “Web 2.0 stuff,” multimedia, games, digital photography, webcams - it all requires ever-greater horsepower. It sorta creeps up on you. But then one day - WHAM - your computer is “suddenly” slow.

Oh, and let’s not forget a little something I call “OS Rot.” Windows operating systems, especially, will develop a sort of virtual decay over time. Programs have been installed and removed, viruses and spyware discovered and fixed (or not), drivers updated, and so forth. Windows does not always handle this gracefully, and one of the main reasons is the Windows registry.



I could go into a whole article on just the registry, but suffice it to say that it’s a big, cumbersome filing system containing configuration and launch settings and parameters for everything that runs in Windows, from your desktop settings and default fonts in Word to booting parameters. It is easily corrupted, not easily optimized, and - after just a year or even a few months - gets littered with all sorts of debris.

Hand-in-hand with OS rot are Windows services - things that are running on your computer but aren’t really programs per-se (although sometimes they are). Print Spooler is a service, for example. It handles traffic between your computer and your printers.

Some programs are notorious for going a little crazy with service installations - Nero CD burning software comes to mind. After you install programs like Nero, not only do you have 10 new things in your start menu - but you've got all kinds of extra services of dubious value that start-up every time you boot your computer.

To check out your running services, go to Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Services. One column shows you which services are running, and another indicates their start preference (disabled, manual, or automatic). There's also a brief description which may or may not be useful.



This is a realm within which you want to tread carefully. Most people can usually stand to disable 3-5 services, but if you disable the wrong ones you could really hamper some particular function or another on your system (although it's easy to undo - messing with services isn't as dangerous as messing with the registry).

Spend some quality Google time checking any that look unfamiliar. Or better yet, leave them alone if you’re just not sure. Any improvements you make, unless you're able to whack really egregious and useless services to recover resources, will be marginal.

So what can you do about your slow old system?

I can tell you what I do NOT recommend: registry cleaners, speed boosters, and other gimmicky software that claims to make things run faster. There’s no free lunch. I’ve never seen anything that really works as advertised, other than physical hardware improvements. In fact, I’ve seen systems get totally whacked by this stuff. And I don’t recommend putting good hardware money into a REALLY old system. So, save your pennies and plan on a new computer to replace your old eMachines 1999-vintage computer. Windows ME in the wild is rare for a reason, you know.

If your system just isn't that old BUT is running slowly, here are some other things you can look at:

• Fragmented hard drive
• Hard drive that’s about to fail
• Lack of disk space - and I mean, you’re down to less than a gig free.
• Virus or spyware taking over computing resources
• Bad network card constantly churning out malformed packets
• Problematic Windows update causing conflicts with other software on your system
• Missing firmware updates for motherboard or other hardware components
• Backup software running during your peak usage times
• Neighbors are using your wireless broadband

This is just a short list - there are a LOT of different places to poke around as you begin your troubleshooting - in Windows itself, on your network, inside the case. Maybe your home router is part of the problem?

Fact is, there are simply too many steps and variables to list here. I’m not sure I could even easily explain in writing how to perform general performance troubleshooting. I've been doing this for so long, that now I kinda start just poking and clicking around and follow my intuition. It seems unscientific, and sometimes it takes only a little time and sometimes a lot. But I usually get it figured out.

Unfortunately, sometimes it's cheaper for my customers to tombstone a not-that-old computer than to pay somebody by the hour to fix it. It's just the reality of commodity PCs and low hardware prices. People don't want to pay 50% of what their computer costs for repairs or upgrades, yet IT professionals can't afford to reduce rates low enough to be commensurate with cheap PC prices. It would be like pursuing a career in toaster repair.

Anyways, to wrap-up this novel: if your system is running slow and you need help, feel free to give me a call. I may not have a snappy, silver-bullet answer for you. But neither am I doing a mental "cha-ching." It just is what it is.

Huge new Mac and Windows updates

Your favorite two operating systems each have major new revisions/service packs awaiting your download and install.

On the Mac side, Leopard users can download 10.5.3, a “long-awaited” update which is supposed to fix a lot of bugs and problems that have been with Leopard since day one. Depending on what type of Mac you have, the update is anywhere from 120-some megs to a whopping 420 megs. Software Update will detect the proper version for your system. I always recommend that you clone your boot drive to a backup external drive before applying an update like this. That way, if it goes south, you can just clone your old OS from the backup back onto your main drive - no harm, no foul.

I’ve applied the 10.5.3 update on my Mac Pro tower, and have not had any issues. The first thing I noticed was that iCal wanted to sync a whole bunch of stuff, which fits in with reports that 10.5.3 brings a lot of fixes to iCal syncing. The system seems to be a little more responsive on my LAN as well, finding and mounting other volumes on the network a bit quicker.

I also applied the update to my Macbook Pro, and - hurray! - the incredibly annoying problem with closing the lid and then not being able to wake from sleep seems to be gone! I’ll be watching it carefully, though, as this seems too good to be true.

On the Windows side, Windows XP Service Pack 3 is going to start showing up in your Windows Updates alerts any day now. Businesses using their own centralized Windows Software Update Server can already download it and deploy to their users.

I haven’t tried XP SP3 yet, so I can’t report on its stability. I’d hold off a month or two if possible, anyways, and monitor the tech media for any news about major issues.

It’s more difficult to clone a Windows system properly if you don’t know what you’re doing. So you might want to give me a call and we can talk about support options when the time comes.

In my case, I’m not working with a physical XP machine but a “virtual” XP installation, which means I’ll be able to test this service pack very easily with no risk of goofing up a working XP installation. To my Mac, the entire XP operating system, programs, and files is just one more program among other Mac programs. (The program that lets you run an XP virtual machine is Parallels - and note that this only works on Intel Macs). The XP installation doesn’t consume an entire physical hard drive - it’s just one file on my disk (albeit a big one - 12 gigs).

All I have to do to “clone” my XP system for safety before installing SP3 is back up that file, then launch XP and install SP3. If the update doesn’t work out, I’ve got my original virtual hard disk. Pretty sweet.

If you’re in the market for a new computer, this is a very compelling reason to consider a Mac. You can use XP (or Vista, or Windows 2000, or Linux, etc) as a virtual machine which you can easily backup or clone, yet you still get all the OSX goodness.

Switchers?

If you've recently switched from Windows to Mac, congrats!

Easy as the Mac operating system is, however, there are a few things that can confuse long-time Windows users. Here's a great piece from the Houston Chronicle that covers the top points of confusion. Among other tips, it addresses keyboard shortcuts and menu bars.

Even those of you who have been with your Mac for a little while might find a tip or two.

CD Burning in Windows

I know people who have CD burners in their PC desktop or laptop computers who have never once actually burned a CD - all because it seems intimidating on the surface. Sometimes the CD burning "suites" that come with PCs are in fact overwhelming, with lots of options and modes and so forth. Nero comes to mind. Nero used to be a great CD burning application for Windows, but over time got really bloated and cumbersome. I haven't used Roxio's EZ-CD-Creator or whatever it's now called in a long time, but it was HORRIBLE.

Mac users have the excellent, easy-to-use Toast program. But what are Windows users to do if they want to just burn some simple data CDs - say, backups of their documents, for example?

Fortunately there's an easy answer, and you don't even have to buy anything. You can burn CDs directly in Windows, using nothing but Windows Explorer. Here's how!

To get started, pop in a blank CD (duh!) You might have to wait a few seconds, but eventually two things will happen. First, the icon for your CD drive will change and indicate you’re now working with a recordable CD. It will say “CD-R” on the icon. Second, a window will come up asking what you want to do with this blank CD:



Choose Open Writeable CD folder. (You may see other options there based on whatever burning programs came with your computer) A new folder will open on your desktop, showing the drive letter and icon for your blank CD:



Now, drag the stuff you want to burn to CD into this window. If it’s a lot of data, Windows will take a little time scanning through your source materials. Then Windows will copy the files you've chosen to a temporary holding area, in preparation for the burn. Nothing is on the CD at this point.

When the disk burn utility is done preparing your files, your Window will look like this:



Right-click anywhere in that window and select Write these files to CD when you’re ready.

A window will pop up asking you to name the CD first. You get 16 characters total, which includes spaces. Burn baby burn!

Handy capture utility

If you use the Firefox Web browser on Windows (which I highly recommend), there's a great plug-in for taking browser screen grabs called, what else, ScreenGrab. It lets you take a screen shot of the entire Web page (even if parts of it aren't visible without scrolling), take a snap of just the visible portion of a page, or select the precise area to capture.

ter it's installed and you restart your browser, you'll see a little doo-hickey in the lower right corner of the Firefox window. Just right-click it and capture away!

This beats the default Windows screen capture approach, which is to capture the entire screen.

Note that Mac users can already do a variety of screen grabs without anything extra - it's built into the operating system. Just hit Command-Shift-3 to capture the entire screen or Command-Shift-4 to define an area.

A Dirty Job

One thing I see a LOT when helping people with their Macs or PCs is DUST. That’s because while a lot of people might keep the outside of their systems relatively clean, they probably don’t think much about what might be going on inside. Why would it be dirty in there?

Fact is, any tower-based system is a dust collection bin. The fan in the back that blows out warm air…where do you suppose that air comes from originally? That’s right – there are intake vents in your PC, maybe several. The intakes, usually in the front, are there to keep the inside from getting too hot: fans in the back pull air over all the components.

A couple of things can happen if you don’t check for and deal with dust build-up. First, when everything inside gets coated with a layer of fine dust, everything runs hotter. This can cause components to wear and fail more quickly.

More importantly, what often happens is this: big, gross balls of dust, carpet fiber, and pet hair accumulate over the intake vents and inside fan propellors. This reduces or totally stops air flow, and then – combined with the finer dust covering interior components – everything REALLY gets hot. And, your fans will live a much shorter life as well, because they’re working very hard at removing air that isn’t there. Kind of like if you run a pump dry.

I snapped a few photos of a recently retired PC - this is what I typically find:



On the left, you can see dust clogging-up the openings where air should be flowing freely. On the right, dust has collected on top of the video card.

I’ve seen dustballs the size of my fist, and that’s not an exaggeration. When I’m working on somebody’s machine in my basement “lab” and see this sort of trouble brewing, I usually put on an allergy mask, take it outside, and blow out the large bits with a can of compressed air. Then I vacuum out as much dust as I can using a crack/crevice attachment and a soft brush attachment.

You can do the same, and help your machine run better. After all, your computer runs on software – but at heart it’s still a machine with moving parts, little motors, and circuit boards. There are even ball bearings in there somewhere!

You can probably find the instructions on how to open your case from your manufacturer’s web site, and some systems are so easy to open you might not even need them. When the side and/or top cover and face covers are off, you’ll probably get a better view of where the intake vents are.

Now, you do want to be very careful about vacuuming – avoid wires and such and don’t press or drag a plastic vacuum hose or tool directly onto any surfaces other than solid metal or plastic casing areas. If you’re not sure about vacuuming, just don’t do it . Just blowing it out and maybe clearing the intake vents and fan motors of gunk and getting rid of the big stuff will have you breathing a sigh of relief.

Do I have to mention that you should NOT try to clean anything inside with any sort of liquid? Well, you never know…

Also, this kind of dust collection is not usually a concern for laptops or iMacs; those types of systems are sealed-up pretty well.

If you have questions about cleaning out your system, feel free to ask!

Why Clone?

You've all heard ad-nauseum about how important it is to backup your computer files. I submit that a data or file backup is just one part of the equation. The other is cloning.

Cloning is a much different type of backup. Let me compare/contrast for a moment. With "standard" backups, you run jobs to create copies of your most important files - your precious digital photos, word processing documents, and so forth. You backup on a frequent basis, enabling you to recover a specific file from a specific point in time. It might be a basic, manual copy to a CD or keychain drive, but hey - you've got an extra copy of the stuff that's important to you. The goal of frequent and regular backups is to give you data recovery options.

A clone, on the other hand, is just what its name implies - an exact replica of your hard drive, including not only your files but the Windows or Mac operating system itself and the drive's boot settings (its "DNA"), plus all applications and settings. The goal of cloning is to give you disaster recovery options.

Cloning involves either launching a special application that can take "snapshots" or copies of data, even off of disk drives you're currently booted into, or booting from a special CD or floppy disk. Next the data from your hard drive is written to files on another hard drive. It could be an external USB or firewire drive, a secondary internal drive, or even CDRs or DVD-Rs. Those clone files are also called disk images. Products for cloning include Symantec Ghost and Acronis on the Windows side, and SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner on the Mac side. There are others as well; these are just the ones I'm familiar with. Note than any of these four sites will provide more information about what cloning is and why it's important.

I mentioned before that the goal of cloning is to give you disaster recover options. Imagine right now that a water pipe broke in the ceiling above your basement office, and water trickled down overnight onto your computer and fried it. Your insurance company will probably pick up the tab for a replacement computer, but they can't very well help you get back your bookmarks, address book, financial files, digital photos, and even your favorite games.

Now, if you did standard backups to a separate drive and you have that drive stashed away, you at least know you've got your data. But think of the time it's going to take to set up Windows and your programs all over again! If you've got a cloned version of your hard drive, however, what would take several days is only going to take a few hours. You don't have to dig out all your serial numbers and CDs, reinstall Windows, deal with re-activating software, and reset all your personalized program settings such as bookmarks, desktop preferences, and so forth.

The best of all possible worlds is to have a regular, automated data backup system - nightly or weekly, and clone once every few months. Or clone right before you make any major changes to your system, so that if something goes wrong you can go "back in time" when things still worked. And if your computer data is critically important - if it's a major part of your livelihood - consider storing backup and clone drives off-site. I keep a clone and data drive for my home system in a drawer at my office, and vice-versa.

Laptop Security On-the-Cheap

Laptops are great - I know I’ll appreciate having one this winter;  my basement office gets drafty and gas for the stove is just too expensive to crank it the way I’d like to. So, I’ll be using my trusty Macbook upstairs at the dining room table quite a bit. Like right now.

If you take your Macbook or Inspiron or Thinkpad on business trips, traveling, or even to your local coffee shop, things get a bit more complicated. Now you have to worry about somebody stealing it. Of course, there’s also network security to consider, but I’ll deal with that later.

Anyway, the estimate for the number of laptops stolen each year ranges from 600,000 to 1 millions. Yikes! 

Now, I’m not as worried about the physical loss of my laptop as I’m worried about the data that’s on it. I don’t know about you, but I’d feel pretty violated knowing somebody else had access to my saved emails, address book, family photos, and so forth. 

Here are a few (mostly Windows) tips that cost nothing but can help protect your data. 

1. Make sure your computer account uses a password. (Settings / Control Panel / User Accounts, choose your account name and click on “Create a password”)

2. Make sure you’ve set Windows to require a login. (Settings / Control Panel / User Accounts, click “Change the ways users log on or off.”  Uncheck “Use the Welcome Screen.”

3. Lock the desktop anytime you’re away from the laptop.  Just press control-alt-delete, then “K” to lock.

4. Make sure your hard drive is formatted as NTFS, not FAT32. NTFS is harder to crack into. Right-click on your C: drive and select properties to see if your drive is NTFS.

5. Set your system’s screen saver to come on in a short time, and require a password to unlock it

6. Set your computer to require a password coming out of Standby mode as well.

(Some of these items apply to Mac users as well - for example, make sure your on your laptop, you have deselected the "automatically log in as..." option, and set the screen saver to ask for a password to unlock. Also see FileVault below.

 

Now, these tips will work fine for the causal attempt at getting into your data. If somebody steals it, takes it home, and opens the lid, they’re not going to get far unless they’re experts. 

Of course, an expert who has physical access to your laptop can always pop out the hard drive and extract the data onto another computer system. That’s where encryption comes into play - if your laptop hard drive is encrypted, even a determined expert hacker is not going to be able to read your data.

You could do all of these things and still become compromised. But at least your personal information and private documents won’t be easy to see for the casual thief. Why make it any easier on scumbags than you have to? 

By the way, there are also a few things you can do to help track your laptop or deal with insurance issues if it is in fact stolen. Some suggest using those hard-to-remove, metal asset tags, which help police identify stolen goods. You should definitely record your laptop’s serial number, in a separate location - not on the laptop itself.

Which now that I think about it, I haven’t done yet either. 

I’ll cover network security for you road warriors next...

Limewire's a No-No

Anybody who’s been online with high-speed access has probably experienced the thrill of trying out a peer-to-peer program such as Limewire or Gnutella or, back in the day, Napster. All those mp3 songs, free for the taking!

An example of a Limewire session.

(For the uninitiated, these peer-to-peer or P2P programs let you search collections of files hoarded by other P2P users, and download their music to your own hard drive. Likewise, others on the P2P network can retrieve files from you. Entire feature-films are traded this way, as well as hundreds of thousands of mp3 tracks. A more popular form of P2P trading today is called BitTorrent).

Without getting into the morality of it, there is one thing you should know about using Limewire and other P2P applications: It’s become a very risky thing to do. Akin to, let’s say, engaging in other “unprotected” practices.

For one thing, peer to peer networks these days are riddled with spyware and viruses. You think you’re getting the newest John Mayer CD, and you might be...but you might also be downloading a trojan horse that silently steals your passwords.

Second, you might be wasting time and using bandwidth needlessly because you won’t get what you're after anyway.  That’s because record companies have started “poisoning” the peer to peer networks with bogus files, or tracks that get garbled halfway through. 

Third, the recording industry does in fact pursue illegal downloaders, and takes them to court. The fines can be enormous - starting at several hundred dollars PER VIOLATION. One track is one violation. As well, companies can be sued when their employees use their networks for downloading copyrighted materials.

How do I know all this? I’ve cleaned it off many a customer’s computer and seen the effects first hand. 

Getting music online is very convenient - no trip to the mall, and you don’t have to buy a whole CD for one or two tracks. Fortunately, for today’s consumer there are legitimate and safe ways to get music online. For ease of use and quality, you can’t beat the iTunes store. No, it’s not free. It’s $1 per track or about $10 per album. But there are no risks, and you’re sure to get a quality product. Your tracks won’t have any hiccups, or be of different volume levels throughout the same album, as they might be if you piece together an album from a peer to peer network. And they’re nicely tagged with the correct artist, track numbers, album art, and so on. And you can easily burn them to an audio CD. 

And (yeah, I know I said I wouldn’t go here) the artist receives fair compensation for his work. 

Introducing the Drobo

I don’t remember exactly how I learned of the Drobo, to be honest, but I’m glad I found it. A Drobo is a really cool external storage device. It’s not a hard drive, but an enclosure into which you put hard drives. Then, you plug this thing into your computer via USB.

What’s so neat about it? Well, it has four slots. If your storage needs are moderate to begin with, maybe you buy a drobo and put two 250 gig hard drives in it. Down the road, after you’ve downloaded lots of music and imported tons of digital photos, or delved into iMovie, you can pop a third drive in and automatically expand the storage. You don’t have to configure anything - no formatting, configuration, etc. It just shows up like one big gigantic hard drive.

But hands down the best part is how it protects your data. If you put in more than one drive, it automatically spreads out the data so that if one drive died,  you would not lose any files. All your data is protected. You would just simply pop out the dead drive, and put in a new one. You can be copying 100 megs to the Drobo, and add or remove drives without hurting anything.  It has lights on the front that tell you if drives are healthy, how much space is left, etc. 

Below are screen shots of the software it comes with, Drobo Dashboard. That’ll give you a great idea of what this unit’s all about.

This is one of those devices that hurts a little bit upfront in terms of cost (about $500, plus the cost of whatever SATA drives you put in it), but I subscribe to the “if you’re going to do it, do it right” mentality. Get one of these, and you’ll be set for a long time because they’re so expandable. You won’t be changing external USB or Firewire drives in or out, or messing with a bunch of cables. And, you won’t have toss out an entire external drive kit when it goes bad - including it’s power brick and the enclosure and everything else. You just work with bare drives. Which can be obtained anywhere, cheap. AND the drive sizes don't have to match, either (a drawback of traditional RAID systems).

The only downside I've seen so far is that being a USB 2 device, it's not exactly a speed demon. If this thing were firewire 800 or even 400, you could actually use it for video production. But, it's great for backups (at least for personal or small business use) which don't have to be blazing fast.

The Drobo web site is well-done, with a neat “Drobolator” function you can use to simulate what happens when you add or remove drives to the Drobo. Check it out to learn more, including their video testimonials.

Virus and spyware on your PC

Word of caution - virus and spyware activity continues to rise, and a great deal of it gets generated via email. If you haven't checked your antivirus update definitions or renewed your subscription, better not wait until New Year's to make a resolution to deal with it. 

I often get asked what kind of anti-virus software I use. I don't use any - I use a Mac. (that's a completely separate newsletter post, I think...) But on my servers, and for customers with Windows PCs, I recommend either Symantec Antivirus if you want a more full-featured solution, or AVG Antivirus which is actually free. AVG doesn't have quite all the bells and whistles, but you can't beat the price. Go to www.avgfree.com for more info. For antispyware, again Macs don't need any but Windows users might want to consider the free Windows Defender from Microsoft. The only catch is that it's only available for Windows XP and above. Sorry you Windows 98 or 2000 users - it's time to upgrade, anyway!

If you suspect your computer already has a virus and you need help cleaning it up, let me know and I can help you scan and decide whether it's "cleanable" or if you'd be better off with a reinstall.