Class Summary 5-15-2014

Here is the link to the notes from today's class on Crash Planning...
http://rwevans.com/cccgc/YourCrashPlan.pdf

Discussion today started with an explanation of using classicshell.net to make Windows 8 behave like Windows 7. After installation when you boot up you are brought right to the desktop and the start button opens the familiar start menu, not the new start screen with all the blocks. You can even change the look of the start menu to be  that of XP, Vista, or 7.

Then we had a backup question about Easeus Todo Backup. It is free and can be used to make an image of your hard drive. This allows you to restore from that image should you lose your hard drive--physical damage, bad virus, or even a stolen computer. You need an  external hard drive of at least 500gb. 1-2-or 3 tb  drives are available at less then $100. I suggest the portable version. Here are class notes for a talk I gave at a meeting last year: backing up

Today's talk was about finding a cloud solution to daily backups. We looked at three.

1. Crashplan
2. Mozy
3. iDrive

They are all free for a limited amount of storage. I suggest using a free one for critical document files. I used other devices to backup my pictures and music and videos. They take the most space. Links to all three are in today's class notes (see above for that link).

All three allow you to purchase more space at reasonable prices. They cheapest solution at this time appears to be iDrive which give you unlimited space and allows you to backup multiple computers.

Then we looked at getting rid of unwanted toolbars on a browser. Starting with IE we saw how to locate Tools and disable the extensions we did not want. And then to remove the hacked startup page replacing it with one we want to see like www.google.com. Did the same in Firefox and in Chrome.

The browser you use is a personal choice. I believe Chrome is the best and fastest browser today. Second in my opinion is Firefox. My last choice is IE--Internet Explorer that comes with Windows. You can have all three installed and they do not conflict with each other. Make the one you like best your default browser. This does not affect the others or remove any favorites or toolbars form the one that used to be the  default. If you are using AOL, you are using a browser integrated  within their program.

Questions about EaseUS Todo Backup? They have a great set of documentaion at http://www.todo-backup.com/download/docs/User_Guide.pdf

Here is a nice video on organizing your files into folders http://youtu.be/HR4eCwYnJd8