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Info CentralInfo Central contains information about growing and maintaining your computer environment. The three sections are:
These tips have assisted our clients in establishing and maintaining a positive computer & network environment. We hope you will find them as useful for you as we have for our clients.
General Recommendations for our Clients We do not think our clients should be on the cutting edge of the latest technology, but should be in the middle of the curve, buying tested technologies which will still have several years of usable life. Most hardware and software reaches a point where support from the makers is no longer available. Soon after that, it becomes next to useless to the user. Shopping for the latest in good prices for hardware is not a good idea. We believe the firm should settle on one name manufacturer of computers and stick with them. Small offices do well with Micron, Gateway, and Dell. These are standard, Intel-based computers which use standard parts. Insofar as possible the computers should also be of the same generation. Studies show that the cost of the hardware in a computer system is somewhere close to one-quarter of the total computer costs; one quarter is spent on technical support, and one-half on end user operations. When computers are brought in one at a time, every 6 months, there may be savings on the hardware end, but the cost of transferring files, moving computers around, and re-arranging workspace can greatly increase the perceived lower initial cost. We encourage several things:
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Tips on Containing Costs for Companies Maintain a good hardware inventory
Maintain a good software inventory
Other basics
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Backing up: standard file locations You should have a pretty good idea of where your basic documents are. They are the files you create using various programs - such as Word, Excel, WordPerfect, Quicken, Access, Exchange, Netscape, MS Internet Explorer. The files and documents that correspond to these programs should be in folders (sub-directories) which you, or the program, set up. The ones you set up should have names like Correspondence, Work, etc. which you should recognize and be familiar with. Note: In newer, Win95/Win98 setups, the default place to save documents is in My Documents, under which may be many personally name folders. If you have no idea where your documents are, or if you want to check, click on Start | Find | Files or Folders. In the file titled "Named", type "*.doc" (without the quotes.) Make sure that the "Look in" field is pointed to your C: drive with no long path following. Make sure that the "Include subfolders" box is checked. Then click on "Find Now." Soon a new window will appear below the boxes you have checked. In this window will appear a series of "Names" that have DOC as their extension. Put your mouse pointer on the line dividing "In Folder" from "Size" and double click it. The field holding the path will expand to let you read the full path. Your DOC files are in the folders at the end of the paths. Each of those folders should be on your back up list , unless they are sample or lesson files you don't need. Open up your Explorer browser, and find the path you are looking at. Open up an Excel spread sheet and write down the various paths you have decided you want to back up. Repeat the "Find Now" with other extensions you know. Some extensions for common files
If you have created your own list of extensions, be sure you collect them all in a list, and add to the spreadsheet you are creating (above.) Search for them and add their paths to the list. The following are harder to find, and are often forgotten when creating backup lists:
Once you have your list: Once you have a good list of your important files you have to implement the actual backup in the backup program. Almost universally, once you have the backup program installed and go to Backup, there will be a way to expand a "tree" that shows your drives, folders and files just as using Explorer would. Typically, you click on a small box to the left of any folder or file to indicate it should be backed up. There should also be a cumulative tally of what you have picked. This number should correspond to your sense of what you are doing. If you think you have chosen 1,000 files, the tally should not read 10,000, etc. Finally, you click Start, or Go, or somesuch to actually start the tape whirring, and the backups recorded. While you can set backup to go off automatically, be sure you are absolutely confident you have picked files correctly, and that the whole system is working. I would do a manual backup weekly just to be sure. If you are working on a do-or-die project, one which missing files would loose you a job, or income, do not rely on one backup only. Use as a primary backup -for the critical files only-floppy drives, zip-disks, a 2nd hard drive, etc. Do such backups very often and perhaps keep sequential copies of those, or at least A/B copies. (Nothing is worse than diligently backing up only to find that the file had gone corrupt days before, and you have been backing up corruption, over good files.) Finally, a backup is only part of the battle. Those files recorded on the tape will do you no good if you suddenly need them if you don't know how to restore them. Make sure you can use the restore module. Practice before it really matters. And periodically do small restores from recent tapes. Tapes go bad! Procedures go wrong. Don't wait until you are on the edge of cliff to check your parachute.
Moving a custom Excel Toolbar from one computer to another If you frequently use a group of customized toolbars sized and arranged on the screen in a particular way, you can save the configuration so that you don't have to redisplay and size the toolbars each time.
Note: If you cannot find the default toolbars settings file, another location for the file might be specified in your system settings. Please check these settings or consult your system administrator.
The following information is necessary to help isolate and troubleshoot problems. If you need to call technical support or ask a friend or systems administrator to help you, please be sure to know the answers to the following questions before asking for help:
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Do a File Find for MSVCRT40.* and make sure that the copy in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM is
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Privacy Issues in the Online world The internet broadens the power individuals have to information and deepens the power to get information about individuals. For a good overview and introduction of the threats to personal information abuse in the brave new world, read the ACLU article. |
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