jackl’s blog

Just an average user…

Spoke today to the Father–in–Law, an intelligent retired man who enjoys exercising his brain and likes gadgets and techie things. He is best described as a typical ‘average’ computer user almost made for ‘user testing’. He has used PCs during his working career and has had a computer at home for a good number of years.

Knowing my liking for computer–related stories he generally tells me what he’s been up to on his PC when he sees me. The latest is his downloading of Google Earth and a more embarrassing event that involves a spreadsheet he has been working on for a while.

Back–ups may be boring…

He had developed a spreadsheet that kept a record of his blood–pressure and was adding things like averages and conditional highlighting on high and low pressures. In his words he “hit something and the spreadsheet went blank”. At this point I suspect he panicked. He exited the program and when it asked if he wanted to ‘save the changes’ he clicked the ‘Yes’ button.

Those that are reasonably computer–literate will realise that this was a big mistake. He now has a blank spreadsheet where three years of data used to be! My first comment was very sysadmin–ish ‘did he have a back–up’. He replied that he had tried to ‘System Restore’ it but it hadn’t helped. I expect this is the same for most computer users, he expected that the system would do this sort of stuff automatically.

A regular, verified back–up of your system and documents is not only important, it is crucial if you don’t want to accidentally lose a lot of useful information. Yes it is boring but not as boring as re–typing three–years worth of data from scraps of paper.

This is system independent — meaning that it doesn’t matter if your computer is a Mac or Windows or GNU/Linux or even a mainframe it needs to have a dedicated method of backing up the entire machine safely. This can be as simple as copying everything in your ‘My Documents’ or ‘home’ directory to a USB memory stick (as long as you don’t have lots of sound or video files). If you needs are greater than a gigabyte then a compressed back–up to either an external hard drive or DVD is the way to go for most home users.

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