Cactus TurboNet Newsletter 6/1/06

Shrink those Photos!

 

If you are on a dial-up Internet connection, you’re painfully aware of the size of emails.  If Aunt Maizy sends you a megapixel photo, it can take hours to come in on email, if it doesn’t lock up your email completely.

 

But if you’re on a high-speed Internet account, you may not think about it.  When sending photos to friends and relatives, remember that 50% of them still have dial-up accounts.  Reduce the size of photos to about 800x600 pixels or smaller when sending them, so they don’t cause trouble.  It’s also easier to see these smaller pictures – they will fit on your screen without scrolling down and around.  Your camera or scanner came with software to adjust pictures, and it’s considerate to reduce the size of large photos before emailing them.

 

Backing Up your Data

Irreplaceable family photos, business information, school papers, genealogy files, emails – everyone has something on a hard drive that they don’t want to lose.  Our service department sees woeful faces nearly every day belonging to people who have lost data.  Maybe the hard drive is physically dead, or maybe the computer is so scrambled by viruses and spyware that it must be wiped.  Don’t think of a hard drive as permanent storage; think of it as long-lived but temporary.

You should keep your important data in more than one place.  A business computer should have two mirrored hard drives (it’s less than $100.00 extra on a new computer) so that if one dies, the other takes over and there is no disruption.  Business data should also be backed up onto CD’s or DVD’s – something portable that you can keep off-site in case of fire or other catastrophe.

Personal data should also be backed up.  For photos, just make a copy onto a CD and send it to a relative.  The relative gets neat photos, and you have an off-site backup.  For program data, papers, and earthshakingly important emails, copy them onto a CD and get a safe deposit box.  Or take a copy to the office.

Making a Backup onto CD

 

For step-by-step instructions, go to the Start button and choose Help.  In the search, type writing a cd, then click the green arrow.

 

Free Web Accelerator

 

Our dial-up web accelerator is now included with the standard dial-up account.  Details are at www.TurboNet.com – the first article in the middle of the page.