Here recently, we had a concerned Gnomie write in with some very specific questions. Rather than bore you to death with the details, allow me to take each one as he asks them:

Question 1.
Computer Associates would like me to buy their total internet security package. Is this a good thing? Should I stick with what I have or look for another supplier? Keep in mind I have a life outside of my computer and time is important to me. Is there something that looks after it’s self like the automatic updates.

After some consideration, here is my response to this: CA products are spot on. Getting the suite would not hurt and Pest Patrol is the must have spyware removal app as it truly does protect you. You can use whomever you like for anti-virus and firewall protection. Just stay clear of Norton System Works - they will let you down and let you down often.

Question 2.
Backups, I am only copying critical data, documents, spreadsheets and a manual backup of my Outlook, incidentally the only time I needed to use the Outlook backup I only had my contacts and the deleted emails!. I am not
looking after my legally downloaded MP3s, Photos, Windows settings, list of Pod casts, Favourites, Desktop layout the list of stuff seems endless.

A. What type of backup should I be doing? Full, incremental, or just copying the whole drive?
B. What should I be backing up to: CDs, External Drives, My IPod, or the Internet?
C. What software is best to handle all this for me (Computer Associates would like me to buy theirs), as I am sure there is stuff I should be backing up that I have never heard of.

Backing up to both CDs/DVDs and an external drive is always a good plan. Back-up only what you need, docs, pictures, etc. As for email backup, I’d seriously look into Aid4Mail. As for back-up software tools, I like using sticky notes and other reminders to simply back-up my data myself. I have never really used archiving software, too many things that can go wrong there. Just set a day each week to copy to another drive/CDs/DVDs and make it happen. When backing up Outlook’s calender or notes, I sync to a PDA but perhaps using the the archive feature from the File menu, then archiving to ‘comma seperated values’ would work better for you? Either is great, so long as you are consistant. Now, I would not bother with Windows Settings. Until Vista rolls out, I see little value in this as you simply bring the ‘win-rot’ with ya to the new install of Windows after a recovery (in my opinion). Oh and remember, if you are wanting to back-up Firefox data, you can find it here: C:\Documents and Settings\Your user Name\Application Data (the latter is a hidden folder).

[tags]backup,aid4mail,outlook,windows settings[/tags]