Faith in Technology

Everyday I have folks ask me if they should get rid of their aging, slow computer. In discussing their problems I usually discover the computer isn’t really all that old or would serve their purposes just fine if it worked “faster”.

While computer and tablet prices continue to drop it is tempting to just throw out an old computer and buy a shiny new one. Besides, most people assume it will cost hundreds of dollars to have a repair shop fix the problem so why not just buy a new one? Many of my customers are happy to learn, however, that their computer speed problems can be remedied without spending hundreds of dollars on a new computer or on computer repair services.

Computer slowness can mean different things to different people. To some it means surfing the web is slow, to others it may mean that it takes too long to boot up, and to some it may be sluggishness while checking email or using productivity applications.

Typical causes of slowness can be hidden malware, a low amount of RAM memory, excessive or broken startup applications or even a full hard drive. Other often overlooked reasons can be your anti-virus application(s), problems with your Internet Service provider, your router or other networking equipment or even your internet browser application.

Whenever someone contacts me about a slow computer I always begin by asking probing questions so I can best narrow down the cause(s) of the slowness. So if you are having slowness issues give us a call before you throw out that computer. Often we have folks back up and running full speed again in about an hour.

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We’ve helped several customers recently, both commercial and residential, to implement disaster recovery plans for their computer systems, so I thought I would share some thoughts on the subject. You see, we witness first-hand the pain, downtime and expense that comes with a catastrophic computer failure. Major computer or server system failures can occur from failing hard drives or other hardware, malware attacks or even operating system updates gone wrong.

Having a good working backup of all your data is important, but a data backup alone only eases the pain when a major crash occurs. When an operating system has to be reloaded recovering the data is only a small part of the recovery process. A technician first needs to apply service packs and security patches, download and re-install device drivers and re-install required software applications such as Adobe products and Office suites, etc. This can be very time consuming and costly for the customer.

By leveraging the breadth of backup device options we currently have available today – such as large capacity external hard drives, Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices and unlimited online “cloud” services along with backup software solutions that are either free or relatively inexpensive – we can nearly eliminate the pain associated with a catastrophic failure. With a properly implemented and maintained solution a customer can be back up in running in minutes instead of hours with no loss of data.

Soon I will be posting links to software and hardware solutions that, when put together, can make an automated disaster recovery setup a snap. If you are interested in backup or disaster recovery solutions and have some questions, feel free to give us a call.

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We have moved our site to a more admin friendly design that will allow us to make timely changes and additions to the site with minimal effort. Much of the old content is gone but we hope to use the new format to start a fresh new site with useful information and resources. If you miss something that was on the old site please send me an email.

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