Backing up your computer

For many of us, the memory on our computers can seem more crucial than the memory in our brains.

Hoping that’s a stretch and you all have meaningful personal lives outside the world of technology . . . still . . . one crash, one system failure, one freak accident of nature (like the time in college when my attic room’s ceiling broke open and torrents of rain washed out my laptop) can make you wish you had planned ahead.

It’s a good idea to not only back up files from My Documents, your Desktop, etc. on a regular basis, but also crucial bits of information that make your life run smoothly:

• Bookmarks (Manage Bookmarks > Export)
• Passwords saved by your browser (Tools > Options > Security > Passwords)
• Files used by your FTP Client
• Installation files for programs on your computer
• A list of programs on your computer (and any usernames, directions, contacts, etc. you may need to reinstall them later)

The way you save the info doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you do it. Find some space on a flash drive, an external hard drive, your kid’s xbox . . . or burn a few DVDs from time to time. Each time, organize your files and save your new backup info on top of what you have before so you’re not cluttering valuable space.

This is a great way to reduce stress, clean up your life, and to help you keep your calm a little more the next time your computer has a run-in with baseballs, electrical storms, over-zealous children, or just plain old-age.

The joys of Gmail

It’s time folks. If you haven’t joined the Gmail bandwagon, you have no excuse for complaining about AOL, MSN, Hotmail, or any other frustrating email program for that matter. I feel your pain. After nine years of loyalty to the same address, I took charge of my email accountability and put an end to emails being lost or delayed or never having enough storage. You too can sign up for a free Gmail account . . . today. Believe me, your stress load may be relieved considerably!

One stop shop

Not only does Gmail offer tons of free storage space (2.8 + GB and counting), you’ll always be able to sort your archived mail quickly (one of the first in the game to let you do this!). Gmail also will facilitate sending/receiving larger files (20 MB) than the competition so you’re not as limited when it comes to updating friends and family with your latest photos.

The chat function is another excellent attribute that allows you to chat (or group chat) with anyone who has a Gmail account. That’s starting to include most of America, minus the people to whom you should send a link to read this blog J Plus, the excellent part about Gmail chats is that they’re archived so you can easily search for them along side your emails. You can even respond to an email via chat if you see your friend is online, to speed delivery while keeping everything recorded in that message’s thread.

If chat doesn’t make you accessible enough, you’ll love Google Talk, which lets people leave voicemail messages for you that you can open up as sound files in Gmail! Seriously, Google created a whole new ball game with Gmail.

Plus, with Google Documents you don’t even have to download files to view them. This is great as a preview option to ensure you don’t put junk on your computer, but it’s also nice if you’re working on a public computer at a library or at work.

And, if you’re looking for a better way to manage and edit your photos, you’ll love the Google-integrated program, Picasa. You can quickly create a slideshow or set incoming photos as your screen saver. Plus, you can make them brighter, in another color tone (like sepia, etc), and play around with a plethora of other free tools.

Once you realize how great Gmail is, and all the cool products connected to it, you’ll find it easy to get lost in Google’s almost endless array of helpful free products.  I even text message GOOGLE (466453) to find addresses and phone numbers for companies when I’m out and about.  And that’s just a glance at the tip of the iceberg . . . If you ever have a problem, most likely Google can both find an answer, and provide a solution.

Open Office Freebies

When your computer doesn’t come with some basic options like a word processing, spreadsheet, or presentation program, Open Office can save the day!

Open Office offers several great open platform programs that are operable on just about any system or in any language. For a free download, go to www.openoffice.org. The most common programs are Writer (a word processor similar to Microsoft Word), Calc (a spreadsheet similar to Microsoft Excel), Impress (a presentation program similar to Microsoft PowerPoint), and Draw (a vector graphics editor similar to Corel Draw). They have a few other programs there as well than can be used for more advanced office applications. These programs also allow you to export your creations as PDFs, which is a very convenient feature!

For tutorials on how to work Open Office programs and for some free templates, visit the following sites:

• http://www.kaaredyret.dk/openoffice_links.html
• http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html
• http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/templates/index.html
• http://www.smalldataproblem.org/ooextras

For more information on the history of Open Office and additional links, feel free to visit our friend Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org.