About Me
- Amber
- The Apple State, United States
- Visit me at ambermcleod.com where I display my wares...
SLOW DOWN already!
10:38 AM | 
Posted by
Amber
Well, a lot has happened over the past 10 years or so.
Digital camera...check. Flash Drive...check. WiFi...check(ish). Ipod...that plays music, right?
I gotta stop there...because there are things out now that I either haven't heard of, or haven't realized I needed yet. So since I spent the past 7 years basically pregnant, I am now going backwards to learn about things I missed.
Here's my latest learn. Thanks to a tech at protonic.com I learned about this new little gadget...apparently not so new though.
A few months ago a power surge zapped the mother board in my Sony Vaio laptop. I was seriously crushed. CRUSHED. While I had backed up all of my design projects literally days before, I merely thought I had backed up all of my genealogical data. Not the case. Any genealogist knows that losing your gedcom is tragic. TRAGIC.
Okay, good news, the data is still on my Vaio hard drive. I just need a new motherboard....at a hefty price tag of $500-$700. I love you old girl, but not THAT much. You just cradle my files until mama thinks of something to make it ALL better.
I digress. I go to protonic.com and whine to them "The Geek Squad wants to charge me $100 to get the data from my hard drive!!" and my friendly tech responds with an answer that seems just too easy.
A hard drive disc enclosure. Brand new they cost about $30. Ebay....$10 -- that's 50¢ + $9.50 s/h, of course. But it's a far cry from a new motherboard!
So in my overzealousness I bid, won & paid in 15 minute's time and am eagerly awaiting the gadget. Apparently I just pull out the HD from my Vaio, plug it in this little enclosure, and it connects to my PC via USB cable. Here I am in absolute AWE that this exists about 5 years too late...the little orange-light-blinking flash drive I see out of the corner of my eye is screaming for recognition, "I'm better! I'm newer! PICK ME! PICK ME!"
...and I do! But not before I retrieve my gedcom...and then only until the next cool thing comes along. Like a scan-bar for my wrist which contains every memory I've ever had. Sniff...sniff...I smell the mark of the beast.
Sorry, but apparently my loyalty lies in what's to come.
Labels:
Gotta love the FREEBIES!!
If TuDogs lets me down, I'm off to Download.com, TuCows, SourceForge....then Lady Google, here I come! Keyword will always contain the words free or freeware. Yeah, they'll try and trick you by calling it a free download--then charge you after 30 days of use. But you gotta be savvy about the whole enterprise.
My favorite freebies?
Tech Support - protonic.com
What? Really? FREE tech support? You know it! Over 400 volunteer techs (I'm one of them...though haven't logged on in awhile) and they're all sweet as pie, ready to help you out.
AntiVirus - AVG Antivirus
This company believes that the internet should be virus-free, and that should include offering a free anti-virus program to make it so. Makes sense!
Anti-Keylogger - Amic Tools
It's sad that we'd even NEED something like this but, alas, we do. You MySpacers listen up! Get an anti-keylogger ASAP!
Anti-Spyware - Spybot Search & Destroy
I won't get into what spyware, malware, etc. is, but here's an overview. They're bad. Your antivirus won't catch spyware, this will. And it's free. Did I say that already?
Office Software - OpenOffice
Now, I gotta say I haven't had the best of luck with this one, but I've used it briefly and if you MUST have something compatible with MS Office but can't shell out the gazillion dollars that Mr. Gates apparently thinks its worth, go download OpenOffice. All the bells & whistles of MS without the price tag.
Techie Newsletters - Kim Komando
Komando.com - make sure that if you tell someone about this site verbally, you mention it's spelled with a 'K' and one 'M'. Made that mistake once. My poor, poor friend...scarred for life! Kim Komando, aka The Digital Goddess, is just that. She's a fancy, schmanchy computer whiz, she knows her stuff inside & out. She also has her own radio talk show.
I admit, I'm not an Explorer hater like so many others. I'm just not. It has some features I like. What makes it even better is Avant Browser, it uses MS Explorer as it's base program but adds al sorts of extras, like mouse gestures. Of course we can't leave out Firefox. It's slick & quick. It's a tossup for me - in fact, I have them both installed because I often switch back & forth.
Email Client - Mozilla Thunderbird
It's open source and you'll find glitches now and again, but this is my life source. I have thousands of emails and this is the program that I trust. It's similar to Outlook Express, but without so many lockups.
The list goes on and on. Oh....I have SO many more faves, but will save them for another post. In the meantime, if you're looking for a good program to do some "x" project - check for freeware!
