The importance of backups

I cannot stress enough with friends, family, clients or even potential clients the importance of backups. I always feel sorry for someone who phones me and tells me that their notebook has been stolen or that their hard drive seems to have crashed "now where can I get my information!?". "Did you make any backups?" would be my rhetorical reply. No matter if you are a home user with some of your holiday pictures and itunes library or if you are running your business from your computer - backups are absolutely imperative.

Backups are the first thing that one should consider with your information as it is THE MOST IMPORTANT step in your disaster recovery plan, but unfortunately it is always omitted or "forgotten". Generally as long as you are up and running backups are the last thing on your mind.

One has to weigh up the cost of losing years of business, financial or client data or even accidentally deleting all the pictures of your kid's first school day compared with implementing an effective backup solution.

I would also like to stress that a backup solution does not have to be complicated or expensive at all. The simple process of a freelance copywriter or editor copying his documents to a USB flash drive which is then stored in a safe place could be the difference between loaning a friend's machine to carry on working from your backups after your laptop has been stolen or spending months having to recreate your portfolio and losing out on precious work.

With external hard drives being so inexpensive there really is no excuse. Nowadays even not having the cash to purchase an external drive is not a valid reason not to have backups as one can do backups online FOR FREE - completely secure!!!

Enter one such wonderful product called SugarSync which provides one with free online backup storage space of up to 5GB!




Be honest now, have you done your backup today?

Warren.

Anti Virus Concerns

There is still a big boom in the IT industry with regards to desktop security with many third-party software vendors that promise you the world. If you are like me then free trumps annual subscription.

However working in this industry has shown me otherwise. There are many products on the market today - ranging from overpriced, to affordable to free - but unfortunately the old adage "you get what you pay for" does ring true.

I have been an avid user of the AVG software and then hopped to Avira and some other free permutations, but unfortunately I have been disappointed many times as I have found that if it does not completely tax your machine to the point of it being slow and unusable, it does not catch all infections. I have had one or two ugly battles with some really clever pieces of code where free Anti-Virus was not smart or robust enough to stop it before it started executing.

But wait...

I have been using an Anti-Virus product by Microsoft entitled Microsoft Security Essentials for the last two years. I have found the product to probably be the best performing, scanning, awareness, self-updating, running in the background without griding your system to a halt piece of engineering that I have come across yet. If anything I think this is a product that one can trust to scan your files and keep your machine and browsing experience safe as who better to trust than the vendors of the operating system you are using.

Here is the kicker - it is absolutely free for anybody to use provided they are running a legitimate copy of a Windows Operating System!!!

This is a product I have subsequently recommended and installed for numerous happy clients that I do some freelance work for and I can definitely recommend it to you.

For more information visit Microsoft Security Essentials page and see for yourself.

Hope this helps or at least saves you some annual overhead.

Regards,
Warren.

Marketing!Marketing!Marketing!

Well since I have started this venture I have learned a massive amount and I am still learning everyday. My biggest lesson however has come in the form of patience.

I am strange in that I can be the most patient person with some things and with other things I cannot even wait for a couple of minutes. Business has taught me that things take time to happen and more importantly can only happen if you make it happen - but even then it will take its time. So you can see how this is a double edged sword.

To anyone else wishing to start off their freelance career I can give you the following advise: start as early as possible and build up some kind of client base. Once you get some solid work and feel confident that you can leave your permanent job that would be the best time to do it.

Right now I am learning about marketing by research and speaking to some experienced execs. Everyday is a massive and exciting learning curve.

Just wanted to share the following link which has given me some good pointers and inspired me to start off my marketing with a boom again today.

Good luck!

Regards,
Warren.

Exchange 2003 - SMTP Connectors

I have recently been asked to assist with configuring of an SMTP connector and after some troubleshooting I was unable to assist. After some time I took a fresh look at the problem and did some research and managed to come up with the following articles - amazing how clear and simple things look if you take a second look after clearing some perceptions you have from struggling with something for a while.

Configuring SMTP connectors is relatively simple if you have all the relevant information and you understand what is required in your situation. I used the information from the following link:

www.amset.info

and was able to solve the problem.

Hope this helps somebody else.

Regards,
Warren.

First Post

If you are reading this post I thank you for taking the time to join me on this journey as I start and grow my venture whilst blogging about it on the way.

This blog will mainly be about my daily encounters in the field of IT or anything interesting in the tech or media world.

Please feel free to recommend things that I can blog about or to comment on anything.

Regards,
Warren.