Keep your system tidy!
It is a scientific fact that all things break down and tend towards anarchy – just look at a teenager's bedroom! It is just the same with your computer, if left alone files you save will never be where you thought they were, and you will have thousands upon thousands of files to sort through to find that precious document!
Simply planning ahead and saving documents to meaningful folders can save a lot of time and heartache. Eg use My Documents as a starting point, but then create folders for the various activities / organisations / school work that you do. It is much easier to have multiple levels of folders, then thousands of documents at one level.
Tidying up in this way will also increase performance. Adding or deleting a new file in a folder that contains a thousand entries takes much, much longer than in a folder with only 50 entries.
Don’t
forget we offer training if you need it!
Lately,
we have dealt with a few people and organisations that have lost
important or highly sentimental files/photos that cannot be replaced.
See “From the Pit”.
Did you know that we do assessment of damage to your computer for insurance claims? If you have had your computer damaged due to electrical storms, power outages, or physical damage then we can provide a quote for your insurance company – ask us about the details.
For those of you who haven’t been in the store lately, there are some new faces – why not drop in and say hello?:
Evelyn Smith is helping as a part time receptionist and general sales. Evelyn has vast experience following a career in the IT industry.
Igir Ristic is part time engineer, currently finishing a degree at UOW.
We
are currently looking to employ another person, so watch this space!
This months specials include:
· DUAL-LAYER +/- DVD burners (Burn CDs & DVDs) installed with Nero software and DVD shrink from a low, low $140.
· Blank DVD disks Printable 8x for $30 a pack of 50!
· New systems, with Windows XP-SP2 (plus disk and all updates), burner, modem, Open Office Software and more from only $899. We will also throw in free delivery & installation.
·
Windows XP home (SP2) fully installed
with license and disk on your machine. This will get rid of any nasty
problems with not being able to install service packs due to
“invalid keys”. We will install XP-SP2 and GUARANTEE the license
for only $200! (Remember that XP is the preferred operating system for
Apple iPODs)
Following one of the electrical / thunder storms that we constantly have, a customer came in with their pride and joy because it wouldn't talk to them. A quick examination showed that during the storm a power surge had gone through the computer and not only had the power supply blown, but the surge had also destroyed the hard drive.
Their insurance policy actually covered them for replacement of the computer – but it did not cover them for installing the software or setting the computer to work – just hardware replacement.
The
other thing that the insurance did not and COULD not cover was the
data that was lost. Unfortunately this also included irreplaceable
photos that had been downloaded from their digital camera – all of
these memories were destroyed!
In hind sight, what could they have done to help reduce the impact of this event?
Well, a good surge protector would have helped. We sell Belkin surge protectors for PC and other electrical equipment. Belkin guarantee the quality of their protectors by including a $75,000 insurance on connected equipment!
But the other action that could and should have been taken is to backup their data regularly. Now days, CD burners (or DVD burners) are reasonably cheap and are easy to use. A single CD can hold over 100 good quality photos, or thousands of normal word documents. And at around fifty cents each per CD disk, you can back up as often as you want.
An even easier and safer method, is to use an automatic backup process that will save your information away from your home / business (referred to as “off-site”), so that in a worst case scenario you can still retrieve your information, photos, etc. This type of process starts at less then $10 a month and not only saves it off-site, but also encrypts it so that no one other than you can read it!
Whether you are looking at backing up important home information, or a small business that wants to backup financial data, MYOB files and documents, or a larger business that has a number of client records and information that need to be kept securely off-site, but also easily retrievable then we can provide the right solution for you.
Unfortunately,
all of this was too late for the client mentioned at the start, and
they had to try and recover photos from what had been sent to friends
or had been printed, but they lost a lot of important and sentimental
stuff. They now backup their information regularly!
While storms (and loss by theft or fire) is part of our lives, we can do things to help ensure the effects are made as small as possible (that includes less stress, lower cost and time savings). At APC we can develop a suitable backup & recovery process that is tailored to your individual home or business needs. You never need to loose precious or irreplaceable documents, photos or business data ever again!
In addition, for businesses where data is critical (and what business doesnt have critical data?) APC can implement an ongoing plan whereby not only is the data backed up regularly, but we can retrieve YOUR ENTIRE COMPUTER contents in a matter of hours after you you’re your replacement hardware!