Monday, May 11, 2009

UPS - Uninterruptable Power Supply

By Chris Eden

What is a UPS?

A UPS is a device connected between then mains electricity supply and your Computer Server or PC. It has two main functions:

1. It filters the mains supply to remove spikes which can cause failures; these spikes can be a thousand volts or more and last for a brief time; it is during this spike time that real damage can be caused to electronic components.
2. It takes over the supply of mains in the event that the mains electricity fails or worse goes into a state known as a brown out; this is where the supply falls to an unacceptably low level; it is during this time that disks can crash and data in memory is lost or corrupted.

Recently we suffered a momentary power failure at the building where my office is located. I heard a groan of complaint from other people in the building as their computers stopped working and any work was lost.

All my office equipment is connected to a UPS so all we could hear was the bleep, bleep of the warning signal telling us that the UPS was working correctly. We know that once this signal starts we have 10 minutes of usable time before then system batteries are exhausted. This allows time to complete the piece of work being carried out and shut the system sown in an orderly manner.

Are these UPS devices expensive? No, they only cost a couple of hundred pounds. Worth every penny when I hear the bleep, bleep, bleep.

Chris Eden FIBC, MISSA, ACQI is a director of Quality Matters Limited an established independent management consultancy based in Essex, UK which specialises in ISO27001 Information Security Management consultancy.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chris_Eden

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Why Do We Have Software

Our computers are a big part of our lives to day. Yet a lot of us are still not sure of what we need when it comes to a computer. All you hear about is hardware and software and if you don’t have the right equipment in your computer your computer will not run right. So in these cases what do we do, for most computers software is all add on, and if you do not know what to add on then you will never be sure if your computer is going to be able to stand up to what you are doing. I say when you are buying a computer let the sales man knows what you are going to be doing with your computer. Most cases they will make sure that you get the best hardware and software for what you normally do with a computer. Then you need to make sure that you keep up with the ever changing products on the market. Yep! That is right most software changes on weekly or even monthly bases, and we as consumers have to keep up with this. I am not telling you to go every day and found out what is new, but you do need to check what is on the market at least every month. Most people do not understand that there are children and adults out there that come out with programs everyday just to see if they can get a few computers to crash. So yes you have to keep on top of the updates and new programs all the time. Take the few minutes every week to back up your computer, this is an easy process now a days, and in most cases only takes a few minutes. There are thousands of products out there that you can down load to do this, and these programs have a step-by-step procedure that they walk you through.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Games Games Games I Love playing Games! This is what a lot of us are saying now days, and with so many sites out there and so many places to down load games, songs, and movies where is the right place to go. You have to take a good long look at any place you decide to go to down load anything now a days and the best thing you can do is go to review site. These are places where people have gone into these sites and researched them and then let you know what they think is best one such site is www.games-download-pc.com I have found this to be one of the better review sites out there. But be careful not everyone has your best interest in mind. No matter how much you think you can trust a person and or site does not mean that that site is the best one for you. Remember These sites are trying to sell you something so you the consumer have to do a little reading and in some cases trying to make sure you are getting the best site for you so as you check these sites out try and find a site that has free trial period or offers a refund if you are not happy with in a short period of time. You can also find sites that have a basic subscription these sites are usably your best because you spend a little for a month subscription and at the end of that month if you do not like the site you can cancel your subscription. These are usably the better sites but rember you have to notify them before then end of your subscription to get it canceled or they will keep charging you.
“DO WHAT IS BEST FOR YOU, NOT WHAT IS BEST FOR THEM”
We are in a time were Computers are a part of our life no matter how hard we try to stay away from them. We cannot go any were except into the wild that there is not a computer doing something. So with so much of our life depending on computers would it not make sense to keep the computer we have running at the top of its game. So many people now a day’s do not realize that for just a few dollars a month or in some cases a year we can keep our computer running at the top of it game. This means that if our computer is always running fast and not dropping files that we would take a lot of stress out of our lives.
Most all computers now a day’s need to be backed up and cleaned on a regular bases and if we do not do this our computer starts acting funny and running slow then we either start getting mad and throwing things at it or we start yelling at our kids and they did nothing wrong. Then after the smoke clears we climb in the car and go down to the store and spend 1000’s of dollars on a bigger better computer to only have that one do the same thing in 6 months to a year.
So now would it not be smarter to just spend a few dollars each month or each year and get the programs that are needed to keep our computer clean and running the way it is suppose to run. It does not matter how hard you try you are going to get bugs on your computer. In today’s world someone is writing a program every day just so they can try and mess up your computer so instead of getting mad about it and buying a new computer every year why not just fight back and keep up with those people. There are a lot of places out there you can go to find these programs.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Lets discuss why a laptop backup software solution is absolutely required in the business organization world. laptops are prominent in most sizable enterprises today. The use of portable laptops has inflated by twofold, due to the ease of use, and portability, but this has also created other issues. But laptops are being used by employees of all levels both for in office use and also for remote or at home use. This has created difficulty for IT staff whose responsibility is the backup the information in a timely fashion.
Corporate IT personnel have a hard time backing up that confidential information on these laptops because of the laptops location, and often there is a lot of highly confidential information kept on these laptops. Most business organization IT departments are used to backing up computers that have a unceasing hook up to the network. But, when it comes to business organization laptops, these are often off the network when the regular backups occur. Because the backup with a conventional software solution is regular according to a specific time the laptops are not always connected therefore they miss out on the backup. Speciallized laptop backup software solution backups up the laptop as it joins to the electronic network on a unceasing basis.
An example might illustrate the difficulties with conventional backup software solution more clearly. One might anticipate that when you buy automobile insurance coverage that you would not have to trouble yourself about where you go you should be protected everyplace. Now what if that policy has a rider that states that you can only drive within a 100 mile range in order to be protected. The company, or person, has paid for full coverage, but can only go within a certain limited area. This example illustrates what happens when the companies backup software solution does not reliably backup laptops at a remote location when it is connected to the network. While the software solution programs provide laptop backup it is often tied to conventional patterns of time and regular connectivity. With reliable laptop backup software solution, both management and IT staff, feel invulnerable in the knowledge, that even crucial information kept on laptops located off the network, is backed up at proper times and dates.
Just as in the insurance lesson increasing laptop backup protection safeguards all over not only in specific areas or time. By having a trustworthy laptop backup software there is a sizable increase of time and resources for the corporation as a whole since the info is assured and accessible.
For more information on how to best deploy a laptop backup software for your company please visit http://www.druvaa.com/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Wilmer_Streed
Let's say I want to backup my hard drive. What are my options?
Fortunately, I have many options at my disposal, depending on my lifestyle, my computing habits, whether I work or I am in school, how much and what type of data storage requirements I need, whether I access my data frequently while on the go from multiple computers, a single laptop, a desktop at home, or a workstation at the office.
I can use a thumb drive (also known as a USB Drive) to back up my hard drive. It's simple and convenient. It plugs right into your computer's USB port and becomes a "removal data drive" where you can save your files to. And you can carry it with you, wherever you go. It can fit on your keychain, in your pocket, in your purse, your book bag, or your briefcase. These can store a few dozen gigabytes at a time. I can use an external hard drive to backup my drive. It operates using USB, just like a hard drive, except it's bigger and bulkier, taking up more space. It can store several hundred gigabytes, however. It's not as convenient to carry with you, but it can get the job done as well. I can backup my hard drive onto recordable or even rewritable DVD disks. You can't store as much data on these as you can on USB drives, but it's a great way to create a permanent, or semi-permanent archive of your data for easy and convenient storage. Look for these to get phased out in the future, however. I can do it online via the Internet, to a remote data backup management facility. I just need to install a simple backup agent on my machine, and it takes care of the rest. It silently works in the background, backing up my files in real-time, 24 hours a day, to the remote backup site. And whenever I need to access my data, I can retrieve it from a virtual network drive that is created in "My Computer" or "Windows Explorer".
Are you prepared in case disaster strikes and you lose your data? Fortunately, there is an easy solution: You can backup your data online instantly on autopilot.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Hugh_Kent
The realm of restore backup software has matured by leaps and bounds over the past several decades, as file storage has become cheap, network connectivity has become faster, and software has become more fault-tolerant and reliable.
It used to be the case that the only recourse most companies had, to implement restore backup software was to run a backup program on your local machine that would run once every twenty-four hours and take a snapshot of your computer's hard drive. It would then compress this snapshot in a proprietary data format, which then had to be transferred onto tape drives attached to the machines themselves.
A generation later, we were able to evolve to the use of recordable and rewritable CD-ROMs and DVDs for mass files storage.
Fast forward to the present day and we see that many people are able to use USB drives to manually backup their files.
Today, we have the ability to backup your computer's hard drive in real-time on autopilot without the use of any special hardware. All you need is a software agent and a high-speed Internet connection.
For a mere fraction of what it would have cost you a generation ago, you can now have your files backed up online. As you edit your files, they are encrypted and sent securely across the Internet to a remote backup facility. There's no need to schedule the backups to occur, because the agent detects changes in real-time.
Recovering your own files is also a no-brainer. Your backup folder is mapped to your Windows Explorer as a network drive. So you can recover your files by copying and pasting them from the network drive to your local hard drive.
Restore backup software has sure come a long way since the days of old tape drive backups.
Are you prepared in case disaster strikes and you lose your data? Fortunately, there is an easy solution: You can backup your data online instantly on autopilot.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Hugh_Kent