The temptation for someone like me to buy an iPad is irresistible. Apple has discovered high-tech heroin.
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While scoping out a local restaurant on the web I encountered the following error message:

And then it get weird.
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When you blindly click the Accept button to agree to Facebook’s term of service, you are granting them an unlimited right to own and possibly sell your images — and to profit from that sale.
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Fading in and out on his screen saver were this guy’s vacation photos from 2004 up to today. That cruise from 2003? And all the family photos before then? Gone. The PC went into the shop and the hard drive was erased. I accepted that the guy had no backup, few casual users do. Yet I was floored that he just figured losing all that important information was a standard part of owning a PC. Folks, it’s not!

Thanks to the whole user-friendly thing, there are zillions of people out there operating computers who have no clue about what they’re doing. That’s okay for our market-driven culture that prides material goods and debt over knowledge and understanding. I would expect more, but I’ve given up hope long ago. There’s just too much pressure on people to work / shop / be happy. So being ignorant is kindly forgiven and even rewarded.

The annoying truth you don’t want to hear, however, is that you never need to lose anything on your computer. Just because you have digital pictures inside Mr. PC doesn’t mean that they go bye-bye when you get a virus or have to take the computer into the shop. That so many people blindly accept such a thing is humongously disappointing.

The very first topic I wrote about in the very first computer book that I published (in 1987) was backup. I’m weary of writing about it because so few people pay attention. And with the attitude today of “well, it’s okay that I lost all those precious digital moments” you can understand my frustration. But things need not be that way.

First, I’ve been the victim of losing data — and I didn’t enjoy it! In 1989 my hard drive was subject to a .5 second power outage. All data gone. I lost 6 months worth of work because it had been 6 months since my last backup. Then just a few years ago, my external backup drive failed. It stored the only copy of my complete publishing archives. So I lost data from six books that I’ve published. Gone forever. (I now have several redundant, external backup drives.)

Second, there are three marvelous backup solutions I want to share with you. Because of these solutions, there should be no excuse for you not to backup your precious stuff and never to lose anything on your computer.

I’ll discuss the three solutions in my next blog entry.

Microsoft being bullied? For years, the conventional wisdom has been that it’s Microsoft who bullies the computer manufacturers. Who would have thought that it was really the other way around! Apparently, Microsoft was really tousled and tussled over Windows Vista. Microsoft kowtowed to the hardware vendors, curtailing the operating system’s potential.