As one form of back-up I highly recommend Dropbox. I use it all the time - you forget it is there and yet - files backed up constantly. Plus it has a version system in case you save over a file or accidentally delete you can just re-download. Be sure to have a local back-up too of course

Always have your stuff when you need it with Dropbox. A 2GB account is free but if you sign up using this link both you and I will get an extra 250mb of storage for free!

Romey has a question for us:

Hi Matt. I have some teaching CDs I want to make a copy of. When I copy them my computer won't play them as it asks for the original disc. Is there a program that will override this problem? Thanks if you can help.

Copying game or program CDs and DVDs is more complicated than copying music CDs as you need an exact copy not just a rewrite of the data
Some commercial discs have copy protection built in so if the burned copy isn't an exact replica the burned disc might not work correctly – I suspect this is what is happening to you.

Obviously there are copyright issues to consider here
Some people make back-up copies of discs they own to protect the originals from scratches and damage and that seems fair to me

Do you have access to the originals discs?
So to copy them successfully you need to do so in a particular way that makes a bit by bit copy of the disc
Usually the easy way is to make an exact ‘image’ of the disc and then burn that image to another disc. This is similar to the discussion we have had about using Acronis True Image and other ways to Back-up your system

There are specialised programs for making images. I Like ImgBurn and Daemon Tools

According to their website:

ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit!

 

It has several 'Modes', each one for performing a different task:

• Read - Read a disc to an image file
• Build - Create an image file from files on your computer or network - or you can write the files directly to a disc
• Write - Write an image file to a disc

So you can use this free program to copy a disc to your computer as an image file and then write the image to another disc as a backup. It is a very powerful program and the ‘deep geeks’ swear by it. But is is easy enough to use for beginners and the help and user forums are available too. Did I mention ImgBurn is small to download an free!

Here is tutorial on how to make an image using ImgBurn copied from www.ehow.com 
How to Build an Image File With ImgBurn

Step1 - Download and install ImgBurn from its official website. You can choose from a variety of download sites, and the installation file's relatively small, so it shouldn't take long to save.

Step2 - Launch ImgBurn. Unless you changed its installation settings, you can find ImgBurn shortcuts on your desktop, in its Start Menu "Programs" folder or in the Quick Launch menu.

Step3 - Choose either "Create Image File from Disc" or "Create Image File from Files and Folders" from the opening screen of options. Pick the first if you're building an image from a DVD and the second if you're building one from video files on your hard drive.

Step4 - Pick the drive holding your DVD from the "Source" drop-down menu. ImgBurn automatically chooses what it thinks is the right one, but if you've got more than one, you may need to manually pick the drive.

Step5 - Click the folder icon next to the "Destination" field and choose where ImgBurn will save the finished image file.

Step6 - Press the big button showing two DVD discs to read the DVD and begin building the image file.

Burning an image file to disc is just as easy. For more tutorials & guides refer to the  ImgBurn Forum

The only thing that ImgBurn doesn’t do is ‘mount’ an image to your PC. Mounting an image is basically a way to ‘trick’ your PC with software into thinking that the image file is actually a physical Disc in an extra CD/DVD drive. The extra drive with a new drive letter will pop up and interact with Windows in the same way your physical CD/DVD drive does. Using images and mounting them is actually a good way to store Discs you access regularly as it is much faster than waiting for the CD to spin in your physical drive.

I have recently started using Daemon Tools lite which is very good and free

You can use Daemon Tools to make an image file, or you can stick with ImgBurn for creation. Once you have an image file use Daemon Tools to mount the image. Basically just run the program and click File-Open and select your image file. If you open My Computer you will find your ‘new’ drive ready to go.

So hopefully that answers Romey’s question. Does anyone use the programs above or some alternatives. Have you had any success making image files in the past? Would you like to know more? Then leave us a comment on the site using our brand new comment section. Thanks :)

Fishing the net is some articles of interest I have found whilst trawling newsletters and internet sites. Here you go:

Tips for Better Portraits

5 tips for taking better portrait photos with your digital camera

A brief history of Computers as told via TV ads

If you have used computers for a while you will recognize some of these ads and the machines in them. Just goes to show how good Apple usually is at it’s marketing.

Bit of trivia – as a teenager I owned both a Tandy TRS80 and a Commodore 64. The C64 was an excellent machine for playing games – I still remember some

Backup Your Mozilla Profiles

For users of Firefox, Thunderbird, Flock and even (god forbid) SeaMonkey.

Did you know that all the customizations, cookies, bookmarks, and plug-ins you add to your programs can be backed up? You can save them in case of a problem, copy them to another PC and so on. This link gives you a howto tutorial using MozBackup

Ultimate Windows Tweaker - Tweak UI For Windows Vista

Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a Tweak UI Utility for tweaking and optimising Windows Vista. It is modelled after the TweakUI program that was an ‘unofficial’ Microsoft product available for Win XP but never released for Vista. The Win XP version is available here.

Details of Tweaks :

The tweaks are classified under seven categories and can be accessed through a common interface, just like your Windows Vista Control Panel.
1) Personalization,
2) User Accounts & UAC,
3) System & Performance,
4) Security,
5) Internet Explorer (IE7 / IE8)
6) Network Optimization
7) Additional Options

The Complete Guide To Speeding Up Your PC's Startup

A good summary of tips from Lifehacker on how to make your PC start faster. Follow the tips to speed things up. You can also investigate switching off some of the services on your  PC, although this is probably for more advanced users. I have personally tried the startup Delayer program they recommend and pretty quickly stopped using it – your mileage may vary

28 Powerful Photoshop Lighting Effects

Some tricks and tips for adding fancy effects to your pics using Photoshop or similar editing programs

Learn Photoshop in One Week

Interested in all this digital photography editing and manipulation but have never used Photoshop? Well here is a beginners tutorial that may suit you

There you go – that’s a few tidbits to keep you reading over the weekend :)

Found this entry which discusses ways to keep your computer safe when travelling. Written by Chris Pirillo who is a bit of a legend among computer geeks

With laptops becoming more common and smaller it is easy to see how there are more going laptops going around. This provides more opportunity to thieves I guess. More likely though is that the machine is damaged in transit and the data is not backed up. We all know people who have lost vital info – of course it wouldn’t be us!

As always the #1 rules is “Back-ups Don’t leave home without them!”

Here is Chris’s list

• Pad The Laptop
• Keep It On You
• Back Up Data
• Encrypt Your Data
• Document Identifying Information
• Use Strong Passwords
• Use a BIOS Password
• Implement Remote Data Protection
• Use Portable Storage
• Just Leave The Laptop At Home

Source: 10 Tips to Keep Your Notebook Safe when Travelling ~ Chris Pirillo
Site: http://chris.pirillo.com/2008/10/23/10-tips-to-keep-your-notebook-safe-when-traveling/

G'day all

Have been a bit on the busy side with Apex and other community activities so the posts/emails haven’t been coming out

If anyone has anything interesting to share or questions to ask please send through as usual. In the meantime I thought I would send through this offer

We have talked about Acronis True Image before (see here)and Ian has even demonstrated it a couple of times

Right now at the Acronis site you can buy the full program for download for US$9.99 – about $13 Aussie. This program usually goes for over $60

Sometimes you can cheap offers for older or cut-down versions of programs but not here. This is the new full version 11 and is great value. The new version even includes a ‘sandbox’ feature – similar to Sandboxie I demonstrated at Mullies a couple of meetings ago

Here’s a link to a review of Acronis 11 at PC Authority.
Price says A$63 so we are saving $50!

If you aren’t doing full image back-ups of your PC now – buy this
If you don’t know if you are backing up your machine – you aren’t – buy this
If you have a less than legal copy of this program (like I used to) – buy this

Really it’s a good deal
And no I don’t get a commission or anything – wish I did :)

See you at the next Mullies meeting or if I see you on the internet be sure to wave and say hi

As discussed at previous meetings and demonstrated by Ian, Acronis is some of the best imaging software available for windows. Here's a review of the newest version which is now available. Cheers MATT

Performance:

Features & Design:

Value for money:

Overall Rating:

Date: 18 September, 2007
In Short - For those who don’t own version 9, a few improvements should put this at the top of your shopping list.

True Image 9 has been a permanent fixture on the A List since it won our backup Labs a year ago. There’s no immediate visual difference in this version compared to the last, and the changes under the hood are fairly minimal too – thankfully, however, they’re all very worthwhile. Acronis has clearly listened to feedback and tweaked the user interface to focus on the options most people will need.
Realising tasks such as cloning disks and manipulating images are seldom used by less experienced users, they’ve been relegated to the side menu. The latter tasks have also been renamed: you now “mount” rather than “plug” an image.
In their place, we get more sensible everyday choices. The left-hand menu has been expanded to include common options, complete with a separate Help panel. The active backup tasks now have their own pane, along with all the tools for creating, running and editing them. Scheduling also occurs here, with options for daily, weekly, monthly or one-off backups. It can also be set to run at logon, logoff, startup or shutdown, and this can be refined to once a day for PCs with multiple users.
Backing up directly to an FTP server is now a useful option, as is application integration. While True Image 10 hasn’t achieved the Holy Grail of saving entire programs, it will store all your personal settings from a hefty list of applications in 14 wide-ranging categories. Outlook and Outlook Express are dealt with separately from the rest; it will save your archives, personal folders and user settings, as well as your Windows Address Book if you have one.
Acronis has caught up with the consumer-focused competition by making it simple to select all your music, videos and pictures for quick backup. Finally, you also have the standard option of choosing individual files and folders or just imaging the entire drive for the ultimate in data protection – a feature that still isn’t universal among standalone backup utilities.
All the rest is still present from
version 9, so if you’re familiar with the ins and outs you’ll have no difficulty adapting. The Acronis Secure Zone caters for PCs with no external storage by partitioning off a portion of your hard disk, which is isolated from the rest to guard against viruses and other malware. It won’t protect you against physical disk failure, but it’s a useful way of backing up on a budget.
The Snap Restore feature can amazingly get you back up and running in seconds after a disaster by immediately loading the essentials, while the rest of the system is gradually restored in the background. Plus, the Recovery Manager can be accessed without bootable media once it’s been enabled in Windows, so
you don’t have the headache of keeping track of recovery discs. Differential and incremental backups are available to suit your needs, and Acronis will automatically manage the size and distribution of the backup sets based on the disk space
rules you set.
Its weaknesses are few, but some still exist: the basic password protection isn’t up to the advanced encryption of most of its rivals, and you’ll still need third-party burning software to back up to DVD, although plummeting hard disk prices are rendering that less of an issue. It’s also very much a personal product; if you have more than one PC to back up you may be better suited to the Enterprise or Server editions of True Image.
Acronis True Image 10 is a fairly minor reworking of the previous version, so if you already own that the value in upgrading is debatable, despite the low price.
The other reason to upgrade would be Windows Vista compatibility – version 9 won’t work. But for anyone yet to take a step towards backing up, there’s just nothing else that comes close to matching it for power, speed and its do-it-all nature. True Image 10 offers extensive options plus the ability to image your entire PC, and this powerful combination puts it head and shoulders above the competition.

Acronis True Image 10 - Review