[Previous entry: "People and their Problem with Words."] [Next entry: "As Sound as the Dollar? Let's Hope Not."]

12/05/2004: "How to Keep Your PC Critter Free and Running Smoothly."

I recently had a terrible time with my office desktop and my notebook. Not at the same time thankfully. But about a week apart. I had to reformat them and reinstall programs. If you've never done that, you can't imagine what a mess it is.

Fortunately, I have done it so much that by now my panic level was down to near-crisis level instead of needing a mental health care provider level. Now one tranquilizer is generally enough to get me through.

At any rate, I thought I had a Ghost clone of my desktop. Turns out the clone was bad. First time that happened. Always before my Ghost copies were perfect and saved my butt. Not so this time.

But I've used an online backup service for years. So my financial data, my client's documents and all the important files were safe and snug. I reinstalled and ran a ghost copy on each machine.

This time, however, I ordered a new external hard drive onto which I plan to put several clone copies of each machine. I also have a thumb drive that I keep special files on.

I bought an excellent new spyware program which actually keeps spyware off the machine before it gets on --- an excellent program. See, the problems I'm describing were caused by spyware. Spyware quickly entered my network and destroyed my system.

Spyware and Adware is not Smart Marketing. It's Bad Business.

To you marketers who think spyware and adware is harmless stuff that helps you to sell to people, I can tell you it is not. And I do not condone the use of it. Anything that might cause harm to a person's computer should not be used to market your product or service. Period. I have zero tolerance on this subject.

I suggest that you do all you can to protect yourself from spyware and adware. I happened upon an interesting article about how one man keeps his computer in good shape. You might want to read it.

Safe computing.