I was writing about large capacity hard drives in laptops and why I personally feel that they can be a dangerous thing. Where I ended my last post I was writing about Shrinking and Partitioning a large hard drive, and why we should do so this applies to both laptops and our PCs. Where are our My Documents files located on our hard drive in the Operating System should something cause the hard drive to fail or we get a virus that our antivirus cannot remove we will have to reinstall that operating system and all of that data will be lost. Moving those documents to a second partition that you create and format will preserve those valuable documents, videos music Games pictures etc. We use our computers for so many things now in our daily lives that we forget that they can fail so we need to safe guard our data.
What is our greatest fear concerning our laptops dropping them, driving over them when we forget that we put it on the roof of a car when get in and drive away. We have all heard the stories haven't we.
How many of you the readers know how to make an image of you operating system, an image of your data files or and image of your recovery disk partition in your computer so that if your hard drive fails we can reinstall the information on a new hard drive? Do you know how to use the Windows back up Wizard that came with your Operating System?
I have a dumb question, when you bought your computer turned it on created your Administrator account and Activated it on line after you ran the automatic install disk that was provided by the manufacturer did you make the suggest Emergency Recovery Disks; you know the 7 CDs or the 2 DVDs. and do you keep copy's of them when you travel with you laptop, with a second set at home in a safe place? This was the first thing I did when I bought the computer I am writing this post on. I travel all around the world by air and sea have been to Korea, China, Japan, Guam, over 30 times in the last 4 years and I have the disks I made with me at all times. Additionally I have all my data backup on an external hard drive, with an image of my operating system with all the programs that I like to use installed on the operating system or C-Drive Partition. Do you?
This learning process is still an on going thing for me and it should be for you also, we use our computers on a daily base. The weak point in all computers is our hard drive and in our laptops we have only one drive. We keep so much information on that hard drive we cannot remember were it is stored half the time when we have all that information on a laptop that has all the operating system our documents all on the same drive we are bound for trouble.
Thus the reason that I feel that having a large capacity hard drive with a single partition in a laptop is a dangerous thing. The same applys for your PC which you can install additional hard drives in to move your data off the C- Drive. It is your data, music, pictures, and how you protect it is up to you.
Will be changing subjects, I turned on my computer this morning and my MSLive popped up like always and Today also popped up. You know news and information quick reference. Noted this article:
WHICH PC BRAND HAD THE BEST TECH SUPPORT?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38584942/?GT1=43001I have provided the link from my address bar information well worth reading. I will let you judge for yourself.
My personal experience with tech support has and has not been pleasant I am sure that we are all in agreement on this. Of the computers I have purchased 5 have been manufactured by Acer of Taiwan. They are now the largest manufacture of computers in the world over the years they have acquired Gateway you know the company that used the white cow with the black spots as an advertising medium that stated out in a garage and grew into one of the largest computer companies in the world. Gateway is the maker of Emachine computers I have purchased 2 of them. One has Vista and a celeron 2 core processor came with a 320 gig hard drive recovery DVDs and a Emachine Recovery CD on a partition of the hard drive. A 17 inch monitor. keyboard USB2.0 powered speakers. 1gig memory DDR2 667 2 chips. The cheapest I could get at the worlds largest retailer.
Overall this is a very good computer I have installed 2 ea 1gig memory chips and up graded the operating system to Vista SP2 shrank the C-Drive. Moved the page files, the temp, tmp and the Internet Explorer Temp files for all users to my newly created data partition and created a 4th partition for my music files. I also went into Display-Themas and change to MS Classic. Why did I do this? Well, I learned from Monte Russell's (webmaster at DIY-computer-repair.com) ebooks that 40% of our processors usage is in maintaining the video images on our monitors: that nice pretty Microsoft hills and clouds are always in the background. In Classic we have a solid color blue which you can change to what ever color you want. Do you really want to use 40% of your processor(s) to maintain that image or other 3D pictures that you have chosen as your back ground? Or would you like to use it to play your 3D video games?
The other Emachine computer I bougth was to replace the 2 second had ones that my sons purchased that were dead it has a AMD processor, 1 gig memory and 160 gig Hard Drive. Keyboard, mouse and USB2.0 power speakers. The 20 inch monitor I had to purchase separately. I have optimized it but have not increased the memory for everyday computing needs it is an OK product. Games are very weak and my sons are into gaming I am not.
Customer Support is Irritating at best with ACER. Warranty expired they will not even talk with you even with a 3 year extended warranty they are unable to answer certain questions but say here is a repair order number ship it to this address after getting permission to do so and we will repair the problem (Support Chat)
Remember they are Acer, Gateway, Emachine and now Packard Bell. Their Aspire One Netbooks die and they will not back that product. Been there done that.
I really do like their Monitors. and their Acer Gird Vista which allow you to divide you monitor and external monitor into 4,3,2 1 grids for laptops only thus allowing you to have 8 windows open at the same time.
Acer brand computers and all of their sub company computers have excellent Owner/service manuals in your lists of Programs. But YOU need to copy them from the programs file to your Flash drive to safe guard the information. PDF form read in Adobe Reader. This does make up for the lack of TECH Support.
HP has very good support in their Philippine and India reps. Can give you a website to log into and with the proper encoding can go into your computer and make repairs even for your printers. And talk to you on the phone while doing so via a 1-800 number as long as you are under a warranty. Also they monitor your computer when purchased new and will call you on the phone ( if you registered it with them providing your phone number) and say Mr. Jones your computer has a problem and we are going to fix it by remote please do this.
I have not gotten into Sony computers mainly laptops so can write noting about them nor can I say anything about Apple Computers as I have never used one. The same for the other computers that are reviewed in the article.
I can say that I have been in a couple of Toshiba Laptops and I have found their Owners manuals and disk recovery to be very easy to work with. Again they have a recovery/repair disk downloaded on a partition of your hard drive that you can use to make repairs to the operating system the applications and reinstall your operating system.
Make your own ERDs it is not hard and you will learn how in both Windows Help and in the Owner/Service manuals that are provide by the manufactures 70 % of all computer repairs you can do yourself in 15 minutes. I speak from experience; and I am still learning.
Self Computer Repair Unleashed is the book to buy if you want to learn more about maintaining your own computers it is the best information source I have found in my view, it is the latest publication that I have purchased form the site and well worth every penny I paid for it. I have purchased all the books that the webmaster has written. Given them to my friends and a business associate that run an Internet Cafe to maintain our computers on the tiny island of Saipan.
I am by no means an expert on computers or the repair of them but I can say that I like you the reader of this article have a great interest in learning more about them and improve my knowledge of computers.
For additional information please visit my blog. http://orangepickelsonlinemoney.blogspot.com/ This article may be freely distributed, reprinted and shared if maintained in original form.
Comments are welcomed.
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