Newsletter 7 – May 2004
Summer’s coming – or so the Weatherman says! Found a few interesting snippets of information that I thought would be worthwhile sharing and also to tell you of our impending move at the end of the month – that’s the 31st May.
Subscription based computing, as it pertains to applications like Microsoft Office is on the horizon – read more in IT Business at the following link… http://www.itbusiness.ca/index.asp?theaction=61&sid=55605
Have an interest in PC Magazine? You can a 1 year subscription for just “delivered” to you on-line for just $9.99US. See the following link… http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1590180,00.asp
Backup anyone? So you’re backing up are you? I cannot stress enough, the need to test your backup and make sure you can restore… It’s essential to test your backup by restoring the data to a different source than from where it was backup up. Then look at the restored files and compare them with the original. If you can, have more than one backup of your critically important data.
Outlook .PST files. Are you backing up your Outlook .PST files? If not… ask me how! Please be aware that the the maximum size of the .PST file cannot exceed 2GB. This may not be a problem for most you of, but I know that there are users with Outlook .PST files getting up to this size. Data corruption is inevitable if you exceed this limit. Please read the Microsoft (Number: 296088) document on this topic at… http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q296088
Heed the messages your computer give you when it starts up. Most systems use a technology called S.M.A.R.T. which stands for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. This will help you identify gradual degradation of your hard disk drive. It does not give you any warning about impending electronic failure, unfortunately! Read more about it… http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/qual/featuresSMART-c.html
We’re moving to new digs! We’re finally getting our new townhouse (albeit 7 months late) at the end of the month! We’ll be moving to the new Thornhill Woods development north and west of Highway 7 and Bathurst, from the rental using we have occupied for the past 18 month. It’s likely that I will be without email for a day or two from morning of the 31st as we get all our computers and “stuff” move and set up in the new place. The entire townhouse is wired with two network connections in each room as well as having Wireless Networking capability. I’m looking forward to getting onto the FCI Broadband direct Ethernet connection as opposed to the Rogers or Sympatico Modem connection – they (FCI) tell me that it’s faster on both the up and downloading – we shall see. During our transition, please be sure to telephone me should you need urgent attention.
And to end off this newsletter some IT humour…
A nice IT joke for water cooler redistribution:
A sales manager, a hardware technician and a software technician were carpooling to a meeting. At the top of a steep hill the brakes went out in their car, but they managed to slow down by scraping against the guardrail and came to a full stop.
After confirming they were all okay, the sales manager said: “We obviously have a problem here. Let’s have a meeting, set some goals, establish priorities, and by a process of continuous improvement we will remedy this situation.”
The hardware technician said: “That’s never worked for me. I’ll pull out my Swiss Army knife and take apart the braking system, find the fault, repair it, and we will be on our way.”
Then the software technician chimed in: “Before we do anything, we should push the car back up to the top of the hill and see if it does the same thing again.”