We've
all heard about the importance of backing up your PC regularly. But if
you've ever had to restore a disparate set of week-old or month-old
data onto a new computer, and reinstall all your software (and probably
have to buy the big-ticket software again -- productivity, antivirus,
etc.) you know how difficult and messy it is, and how much time it
wastes and anxiety it creates. Even if your hard drive is fine and it's
the shell, monitor, power supply etc. that goes, do you think you can
just plug your hard drive into a new machine? Hah!
Consumers'
Union consistently reports that PCs rank second only to lawn tractors
in rate of major repair in the first three years of use. A crash of
your PC is not just a risk -- it's a probability.
The sad reality is that software and hardware changes so quickly that
PCs become obsolete in three years and hence most consumers are
unwilling to pay the premium for a machine that will survive longer
than its useful life.
So I've concluded that the only sensible crash-proofing program entails getting all your data and applications off your hard drive.
Keep your data in cyberspace (use a flash drive for when you're
offline) and use apps that are web-based rather than residing on your
machine. Then you don't care when your PC crashes -- you can just go to
any other machine and resume working immediately.
So how would this work? Let's take a look at the major apps and types of data, and see how we might get most or all of this stuff into cyberspace and off our hard drives:
Applications:- word processing, spreadsheet, presentation software
- I'm not ready to use Writely or any of the other web-based 'office
productivity' tools yet (they're still awkard and buggy), but neither
am I willing to fork out any more money unnecessarily to Microsoft, so
if my hard drive crashed I guess I'd download EasyOffice
- e-mail
- If I could figure out how to migrate my Thunderbird mail and address
book easily to my Gmail box, and forward all my messages to my Gmail,
I'd have done it already (now that Gmail finally allows rich text
format messages)
- IM -
I'm currently only using IM as a supplement to VoIP conversations and
groupware; anyone have an opinion on Gmail chat / Google Talk?
- VoIP - I still like Skype, so even if there was a web-based VoIP tool, I'd probably still download Skype if my hard drive crashed
- blogging
- I'm still hoping against hope that Salon.com is going to migrate us
all from Radio Userland (which requires you to upload from your hard
drive, and syncs what you see on the blog with the 'master' on your
hard drive -- really scary when your machine goes down) to some blog
tool that is fully web-based; I'm not tech-savvy enough to migrate
myself and not rich enough to pay someone to do it for me
- HTML page composition
- Right now I'm using the free WYSIWYG tool nVu, which is still better
for some apps (like tables, and graphics formatting) than any of the
web-based WYSIWYG HTML page composition tools I've seen (like
Writeboard), and still really easy to use for non-HTML types like me
- scheduling
- I use my handmade Getting Things Done table (in Word), and it works
just fine, but I'd like to put it out in cyberspace so I could access
it when I'm away from 'my' PC
- project management/groupware/web conferencing - Never found a tool in this category I like, though lots of them are web-based; anyone tried Basecamp?
- desktop search - Now here's the irony: if you get everything off your 'desktop', how do you search across all the stuff you're storing in various places in cyberspace?
- antivirus & anti-spyware - But on the other hand, if you get everything off your 'desktop', you don't need to worry about viruses and spyware anymore
- graphics & mindmapping - I use simple, free tools for graphics and mindmapping, and even if there were web-based tools, I'd probably still download my favourites if my hard drive crashed
- photo and music management
- I think the days of keeping these on your hard drive (except for
backup copies) are limited; keep 'em on your MP3 player, flash drive,
on flickr etc., though you still have to download iTunes, Picasa etc,
to manage these files if your hard drive crashes; no biggie though
- file-sharing & torrent - I
use simple, free tools for these, and even if there were web-based
tools, I'd probably still download my favourites if my hard drive
crashed
- peripherals software
(camera, webcam, printer/scanner/fax, etc.) - getting to be less of a
problem with most modern operating systems (and free tools like Picasa)
able to handle peripherals plug-and-play
Data:
- productivity documents ('My Docs')
- There should be some place that will store all of this stuff in
cyberspace for you free; if there isn't already there will be soon, so
your hard drive will just become your backup (but see point 9 above)
- e-mails, address books - see point 2 above
- blog posts and web pages - see points 5 & 6 above
- photos and music - see point 12 above
- mappings (to peripherals, networks) - see point 14 above
- software downloads and settings - if you get everything off your 'desktop', you don't need to download software anymore, nor do you need to keep bookmarks,
cookies, templates, themes, skins, clip-art, software settings, browser
settings, extensions etc. on your hard drive -- they sit out in
cyberspace with the related software and documents
So we're getting
there -- maybe a year away from liberating ourselves from carting
around hardware and software and relying on it to store our critical
data. Freedom!
Can't happen soon enough for me.
Graphic: This spoof is all over cyberspace, and I have no idea where it originated. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
