Archive for October 30, 2015

Back it up! Please!

Usually I can recover data from a dieing hard drive, but sometimes it dies so quickly your data is just gone! So please back up you PC. I had a business client who had his whole business on his laptop and one day the hard drive crashes and everything was gone. He had to go to great lengths and expense to recreate his business docs because he did not have a recent backup.

There are Data Recovery companies, but it can cost 1,500 or more to recover your data. Most people don’t value their data that much

You can backup to an external hard drive (they all come with backup software) or you can use a service like Carbonite. I use Carbonite because it is really inexpensive, less than $60 per year. I like it because it is automatic and my data is saved offsite in the cloud. Very easy to recover a single document if you need to.

Oh, and Raid Mirroring is not a backup. Sure it is very dependable, but if you delete a file it is gone on both drives. You still need to backup a Raid drive. Raid is primarily meant to protect you from drive failures and the immediate lose of data.

Thanks,

Joe

 

How to Keep your PC Clean, Virus Free and Tuned Up!

I believe Malware or Annoyanceware come from many places. Ads on Google and other sites, especially free software, games, coupon and music sites. Avoid Coupon sites, I think the printing services they install on your PC boarder on Malware and track your activity and influence your web searches.

1. Install a Good Antivirus\Antimalware like Bitdefender Free, Avast Free or Sophos Free on MACs. (malware refers to all threats, including viruses)

I personally like the free ones and I use Bitdefender Free. If you want a little extra protection, the pay version of these are excellent also and so is Webroot.

If you want a little extra pay protection download HitManPro 3 for a second opinion malware scanner. It is free for 30 days. I’ve found and eliminated threats with this that no other scanner found.

In a recent PC Mag report Bitdefender and Webroot ranked at the top of pay Antiviruses. I don’t like Norton or McAfee, they are too bloated and intrusive.

2. Run a full scan with your Antivirus once a month. These are usually manual. Most Antiviruses run quick scans on a regular basis, but never a full scan because it can take hours.

3. Once a Quarter or as needed

a. Run Free Adwcleaner

b. Run Malwarebytes Free 

c. Run Advanced System Care Free

d. After running them, uninstall all three so they don’t annoy you with upgrade requests etc.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Joe

iOS 9.1 released to the Public

This release includes new features, improvements and bug fixes, including:

Live Photos now intelligently senses when you raise or lower your iPhone, so that Live Photos will automatically not record these movements
Over 150 new emoji characters with full support for Unicode 7.0 and 8.0 emojis
Improved stability including CarPlay, Music, Photos, Safari and Search
Improved performance while in Multitasking UI
Fixes an issue that could cause Calendar to become unresponsive in Month view
Fixes an issue that prevented Game Center from launching for some users
Resolves an issue that zoomed the content of some apps
Resolves an issue that could cause an incorrect unread mail count for POP mail accounts
Fixes an issue that prevented users from removing recent contacts from new mail or messages
Fixes an issue that caused some messages to not appear in Mail search results
Resolves an issue that left a grey bar in the body of an Audio Message
Fixes an issue that caused activation errors on some carriers
Fixes an issue that prevented some apps from updating from the App Store

How to clear iPhone Email Badge of Huge Incorrect Unread Gmail Email Count after iOS 7, 8 & 9 Updates

1) Go to full site for Gmail on a computer and click on the gear in the upper right. Go to settings and select 100 conversations per page (this is the max).

2) type in the following in the Gmail search field “is:unread” (without the quotes).

3) Click on More and “Mark all as read”

4) Another 100 should appear and repeat step 3, repeat until there are no more messages in the “is:unread” search. I did this for 3000 and it didn’t take too long.

Thanks – Joe