Under: The Influence

by Brian Underdahl

Well, Windows 7 is here and it’s been creating a lot of buzz. Having sat out the upgrade to Vista due to incompatible systems, I was quite pleased when Microsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor indicated that I could move to Windows 7. What didn’t please me was finding out that you can’t directly upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7–at least not unless you are ready to reinstall everything. I didn’t really want to try and find all of the program CDs, downloaded install files, and product keys. Fortunately I heard about a program that promised to make things much easier.

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by Brian Underdahl

I’m sure that a lot of younger people don’t really realize that long before the age of CDs and MP3 players we did have recorded music. In fact, a lot of us still have a bunch of those old records (LP’s to you young hotshots) sitting around. Today, though, we have media centers, MP3 players, and even smartphones where we keep and play our music digitally. Believe me, it’s sure a lot more convenient to just select a bunch of music from a list rather than having to turn over a record every 15 to 20 minutes.

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I’m a lousy photographer. I don’t know anyone else willing to admit that about themselves. I suppose I got it from my mother. Just as a tone-deaf person might love playing the violin (yikes!) she constantly took terrible pictures. There were cropped heads. The subjects usually tilted left and appeared to slide toward the edge. They were tiny (she wanted lots of background). She could not be convinced to give this up, and I’m sort of glad she didn’t. A big box of assorted (sordid?) pictures exists and needs organizing. (more…)

by Brian Underdahl

If you have the money to travel you probably have your share of gadgets, too.  Today’s review tells you about a handy little application that will make at least one of those gadgets into a more useful travel too. It may even save you from an embarassing situation!

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by Brian Underdahl

A few months ago I tried out the Jawbone Bluetooth headset and loved it. The unit was sleek, it worked great, and the sound quality was wonderful. It was hard to imagine any way to improve it. Boy, was I wrong!

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by Brian Underdahl

Well, it’s getting close once again to gift giving season so naturally people start looking for goodies like digital cameras. But if you’ve tried this recently you’ve probably discovered that choosing a digital camera can be awfully difficult. There are so many choices and unless you spend all of your time on the subject it almost seems impossible to figure out what to buy. I’m going to try and give you a little help.

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Grandma had hutches and hatboxes. I need a safe location for my electronic stuff. No, I’m not comfortable sending the carefully-pruned fruits of my imagination to someone’s cyber barn where they can be co-mingled, examined and possibly eaten. Backup and disaster recovery are important, but I want them home.

I’m in favor of burning DVD’s; I do it all the time. But it’s easy to work for days without backup. Backup is one of those “when I get around to it” (Have you ever seen a round tuit? They’re kind of rare. Some folks have never seen them at all.) things. OK, bad joke, moving on…I need safe storage. I need up-to-date, continuous, storage. Recently, a wildfire started a few miles from our place (it’s an early fire season, but the weather’s weird). Then firefighters came by the house. We didn’t talk about saving documents, we talked about cutting trees in the back yard, but it’s clear I may need to quickly grab stuff one day. I won’t have time to burn a DVD, and I’d likely be too nervous to do it correctly anyway. (more…)

by Brian Underdahl

When was the last time you backed up your files? You don’t quite remember, do you? Sure, everyone knows they should make backups on a regular basis, but almost no one ever does. In a way, backing up your files is a lot like preparing an emergency kit so you’ll be able to grab the important stuff and run when a disaster hits–it’s just too much trouble and besides, it will never happen to you, right?

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by Brian Underdahl

Who ever has enough storage? Your PC probably doesn’t. That’s why external hard drives are so popular–they’re an easy way to add some additional storage without digging into your PC. I just added a new external drive using the Zonet ZNS8010 3.5″ USB SATA enclosure and it couldn’t be easier.

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by Brian Underdahl

Some years ago we signed up for a long distance plan with our local phone company and at first we were happy with the plan. But you probably know the drill. Sure, it started out fine at $3 per month and 3 cents per minute, but the phone company wasn’t happy with that level of profit (come on, how much does it REALLY cost the phone company for the minutes?).

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