WizGidget

This last week we bought a new display for Ann’s PC. Her old display was having problems, and our favorite office supply store had a 21″ widescreen display on sale for $100, plus we had a customer-loyalty coupon for $20, so that brought the total cost down to $80 or so plus tax.

The new display is capable of 1920×1080 (equivalent to HD 1080P), however when I hooked it up for her, windows XP only seemed to recognize a much lower resolution. This was using the Windows 7 display configuration, accessible via a right-click in the screen background, then pick “Screen Resolution”. In Windows XP this would be the equivalent of a right-click in the screen background, then pick Properties, then pick the Settings tab in the Display Properties dialog window that pops up. Ann’s new display is supposed to be a “plug and play” display that windows can recognize, but for some reason Windows 7 wasn’t recognizing it.

Her PC is a Compaq desktop tower we bought at the same office supply last Fall has an NVIDIA graphics card that has a configuration utility. It turns out that the configuration utility has a feature that allows specifying a custom screen resolution. This utility is accessible via the same right-click in the background, then pick “NVIDIA Control Panel”. My HP laptop has a similar option labeled “Graphics Options”. By setting a custom screen resolution in the configuration utility, she was now able to set 1920×1080 as the screen resolution. Windows allows a test of the new configuration, if it doesn’t work and you don’t click the “ok” button, it will automatically revert to the previous configuration in 15 seconds.

Now that she has her new wide-screen display working properly, she found a new background image out of the canned images available with Windows 7 to go with her wide screen — it’s a vine-covered cottage with a stone bridge over a river in the foreground and forested hills in the background. She was asking how to put her own graphic on the background as she’s seen some people do. This is pretty easy.

First, I’d suggest using an image-editing tool to format the image you want to use to be the same resolution as your screen resolution. It’s always better to use a higher-resolution image, and resize it down, than to upsize a lower resolution image. When you have the image the way you want, save it as a BMP, GIF, JPG or PNG image in a folder that makes sense.

Then, for XP users, right click in the background to get the Display Properties window, then pick Desktop. You’ll see a “Browse” button to the right of the list of canned background images, by clicking that button you’ll get a file browser window where you can navigate to and pick the image you created. For Windows 7 users do the right-click in the background, pick “Personalize”, then pick “Background” at the bottom of the window that appears.

In other news, I bought a Mac Mini on Ebay, to support son Jesse’s interest in developing applications for iphones and ipads. Hopefully I’ll have some hints and kinks for Apple users as we get familiar with that platform.

I had three vintage motorcycles that I’ve always intended to fix up and ride again. All Yamaha’s, I had a ‘73 RD250 street bike, a ‘73 AT3 (a 125cc street/dirt bike) and a ‘77 DT100, also a street/dirt bike. The problem is they’ve been just sitting around for 20 years now because I haven’t had time to work on them. The older they get, the harder it is to find parts for them. There’s already some plastic parts that have degraded with time and need to be replaced. So, even though I’m sad to let them go, it’s time to find new homes for them.

I could have put them on E-bay, and I might have gotten a better price for them due to the auction nature, and then again maybe not. Good prices on ebay depend on having two or more people who want the item and bid against each other. That way the price floats up to what one or the other is willing to pay. If you only have one bidder, the price stays at whatever you set as the minimum bid. The problem with E-bay is that it’s more of a nationwide forum. So, if someone in New York decided they wanted one of the bikes, they’d have to figure in the transportation costs to get the motorcycle to them. I needed something more local.

In times past there might be community bulletin boards or billboards where citizens could post bills for public viewing. Even today there are often bulletin boards in some public places like grocery stores or coffee shops where people can post notices. There’s even such a place on the internet, it’s called “Craigslist”, and that’s where I decided to advertise my motorcycles.

Craigslist is a website where notices can be posted for free. There are various sub-sites that are location specific, for instance http://killeen.craigslist.org covers the Bell County area including Temple and Killeen. It has various category areas, such as Community, Personals, Housing, For Sale, Services, Jobs, and “Gigs” (short-term contract jobs). There’s even a “For Sale” subcategory for motorcycles.

The catch to Craiglist is that the ad isn’t going to be seen by people who don’t use the internet. Even among internet users, and despite Craigslist popularity, many people have not heard of or used Craigslist. Even with that caveat however there are enough people checking Craigslist that it’s fairly effective. I generally advertise my rental property on Craigslist, to good effect.

I posted the original ad May 11. As of today, May 24 (2 weeks later) I have two of the bikes sold, and the third is spoken for. One of the buyers is from Austin — outside Bell County but not too far away.

One last anecdote: last week I got a new iPhone 4 (paid for with motorcycle proceeds of course). It turns out that, you guessed it, “there’s an app for that”. There’s actually a Craigslist “app” for iPhone, which I’ve downloaded and tried out — it’s a good way to browse Craigslist postings while you’re sitting idle in your doctor’s waiting area. There is apparently an equivalent app for Android-based and probably other smartphones as well.

When you set up your backups to run on a schedule, it can be pretty much of a set-and-forget thing. Just forgetting about it probably isn’t a good idea however, because things can go wrong with the backups, and it’d be really sad if you needed to restore a file and discovered that your backups weren’t running after all. Most of the backup solutions that come with external hard drives we’ve discussed don’t really do much in terms of notification either that the backup took place or whether there were errors. Even checking the status just gives a “successful” or “failed,” where “failed” may mean the backup didn’t work at all, or it may must mean that one or two files didn’t get backed up.

My recommendation would be to check on the backups occasionally to see whether they’re working properly. This can be a bit of a challenge, because as mentioned the backup software doesn’t report much. You have to look at the logs to find out whether there were errors and also look at the external drive to see whether backup files were actually created. Sometimes it’s a good idea to manually start off the backup just to make sure it runs.

One issue with backups that I often run across is Windows file locking. For instance, I tend to have Outlook running all the time. Unfortunately Outlook locks all it’s data files when it is running, which prevents the backup application from reading the files. There may be other applications you run that also lock their data files. The solution for that is to close Outlook or whatever application has locked files before the backups run.

Another issue is file permissions. I occasionally run across this when I’ve restored files back to my computer after having re-installed Windows — the ownership of the files may not have been set correctly when the files were restored. Generally I solve this problem by browsing to the folder containing the file with permissions errors, and “take ownership” of the folder, replacing owner on “subcontainers and objects”. You can do this (be careful!) by right-clicking on the folder, pick “Properties”. In the Properties dialog window, pick the Security tab, then click the Advanced button. In the Advanced Security dialog window, pick the Owner tab, and in the “Change owner to” pane, click on the name you log in as, check the “Replace owner” checkbox, then click OK. It may ask if you’re sure — be sure before you do something like this.

There are other backup software solutions online, which I haven’t tried. Lately you’ve probably seen ads for Mozy or Carbonite, which are online backup solutions. The online solutions generally have a monthly fee (a big minus for me), but they also depend on a broadband connection. Sorry Jack, your dialup connection won’t be practical. There’s also a number of software solutions available ranging from free to fairly inexpensive, just google “windows backup software” As always, be careful about downloading and installing software. You might want to do a google search on the name of the software to see if anything scary shows up.

Next week: more about online auctions as a follow-on to the Quibids article several weeks ago.

Oops, last week’s article was supposed to publish this week. We’ll continue the Auction topic this week and save the last Backup article for next week.

There is inherent risk in buying something at an auction, so I want the price to justify the risk. This week I’ll provide some pointers and hints for Ebay, the most popular online auction, that should help you greatly increase your odds of getting a good deal.

First of all is avoiding the feeding frenzy. I do this by deciding ahead of time what I think an item is worth, and what my maximum bid will be. Call me Mr. Spock if you like, but I rigidly stick to my maximum. If the item sells higher than my maximum bid by one cent, well too bad. My maximum bid is based on factors such as what the item would go for new, stated condition, seller ratings, etc. I generally am not interested in paying more than half of the new price, because I’m a. getting a used item, and b. probably can’t get a refund, even if the seller states they’ll do refunds. I look at the stated condition for the item; I might bid higher for an item that is “like new” than one that isn’t.

The seller’s rating is a bit tricky, because it’s a function of their total number of feedback, and the “percentage positive”. Someone who has a feedback rating of 100 could have a feedback ratio of 97% just by tripping over 3 jerks. You just have to look at the negative feedback they received to see who’s being the problem. I’ll sometimes look at the feedback of the bidder who left the negative feedback — if they leave a lot of negative feedback, I figure they’re the problem, not the seller. A seller that has a feedback number over 1000 should have a 99% or better feedback. Beware sellers with feedback less than 25, it may be a seller that opens a new account whenever he gets a negative feedback.

Probably the biggest trick in bidding on Ebay is avoiding a bidding frenzy with another bidder. The solution is built into the way Ebay works. Unlike regular auctions Ebay doesn’t go on until people quit bidding, rather it has a preset time limit. Also, whenever you bid, the price doesn’t go to what you bid, but rather an amount just above the previous bidder’s bid depending on the current price. So, if you keep bidding against someone, it just keeps jacking the price up. The trick is to wait to bid until the last 5 seconds or so, and bid your maximum amount. That doesn’t give another bidder time to bid against you. If you get it, great! If you didn’t, it wasn’t worth the price.

There are tools available to do the “last second” bidding automatically — it’s called “sniping.” I personally use Gixen.com. You set your maximum bid in, and it does the bid for you. It has a concept of a “bid group” you can use to bid on several similar items to improve your chances of getting one. The first one you win closes the group so that you don’t end up with 5 items when you only wanted one.

A few weeks ago we took a look at the “Auction” site Quibids, which really isn’t an auction but rather a way to get people to gamble on getting a reduced price on an online retail purchase.  It doesn’t cost anything to lose in a real auction, while Quibids costs to bid, which is why I say it isn’t an auction.

The real genius in the Quibids thing is that they’ve managed to tap into the emotional feeding frenzy of an auction for the purpose of regular retail sales.  If you’ve ever attended a real auction, you’ll know what I’m talking about.  I’ll use as an example an asset liquidation auction I attended (in 2001 I think) for a dot-bomb where I’d worked (it was fun while it lasted).  They had office equipment, laptops and other computers, up to some network gear that would have cost $50 thousand or more new.  I couldn’t believe what people were bidding on some of the equipment; clearly either they had totally lost their minds in the feeding frenzy of the auction, or they were totally clueless about what the stuff they were buying was worth.  Or both.  I vote for both.  For instance, one guy bought a laptop with a shattered display for over a thousand dollars.

Pretty much everything that was worth anything less than $25,000 went for what I’d call retail prices — you could have bought the same model new for the same price (or less!) — and gotten something new with a warranty rather than a pig-in-a-poke.  There were a few of the high-dollar items like that network gear that went cheap — if I’d had $50 thousand to invest I could probably have doubled my money on those items.

I suppose the people who indulge in the auction frenzy get their jollies from the exitement of the moment. Maybe it’s a bit like gambling.  I can just see it now: Auction Bidder’s Anonymous for those who can’t control their urge to bid ever higher.  So maybe the thousands spent on junk are really just spent on “entertainment”: a thrill, cheap or otherwise.  Personally if I want a thrill I’ll go ride a roller coaster or drive I-35.

There’s a couple things I keep in mind when participating in an auction.  Number one is that the item is generally used.   Even Ebay auctions that list items as new, may in fact be “gently used.”  Secondly, it isn’t going to have a warranty.  Anything bought online isn’t going to be as easy to deal with issues as something bought at a local retailer.  If an online purchase is Dead On Arrival, I’m going to have a couple hours on the phone plus a minimum of a week or two waiting to get issues resolved.  Also, there are some online retailers that are impossible to work with after the sale.  So, the online price has to be low enough to justify the potential hassle if the transaction goes bad.  And, if it’s an auction, it has to be low enough to justify the fact that it’s used and may not be “as described.”

Next week we’ll continue this thread with some tips on wise online purchase techniques whether retail or Ebay.

Having an external drive that runs automatic backups every night will help because you’ll have two copies of every file. What that doesn’t protect you from is events that would destroy both of your copies at the same time. I can think of a couple fairly common events that could destroy both copies of the data. It could be lightning that zaps both the computer and the external drive. It could also be theft — if the drive is connected to the computer, a burglar would be likely to grab them both.

The solution is to have more than one external drive, and switch them out occasionally. How often you switch them is dependent on how much data you can afford to lose. If you can’t lose more than a day’s work, then daily switch-out would be needed. Probably every other day or once a week would work for most folks. The trick would be to keep the “off” disk in a place separate from the computer, safe from impact, static electricity, and theft. A folder in a file cabinet might be a good place, or a pouch in a loose-leaf folder in your bookshelf might be good places to put the drive. Something that would help with switching out the drive occasionally would be a dock for the drive. Seagate has docks for some of their drives. They even have a two-drive dock that will connect to the network, so that the files can be accessible by any computer in your home connected to the same network. There may be other manufacturers that have similar solutions.

Once you’ve bought your backup drive, connected it and installed the software that comes with it, you’ll need to set up your backups. I mentioned last week that some drives come with a “disaster recovery” tool that will completely recover your data onto a new disk if necessary. My Maxtor drive has it, while the Seagate drive doesn’t. While I recommend having and using the “Disaster Recovery” or “SafetyDrill” backups, that type of backup makes a copy of all of the data on your disk, which will tend to be very time-consuming, and really only handling restoring the entire disk. Let’s face it, if it becomes an inconvenience you’re likely to be less than diligent about your backups.

So, in addition to that, you need a backup solution that will provide incremental backups, and most of the external drives have something like this. Incremental backups will only backup the files that have changed since the last backup, which greatly reduces the time to backup as well as the disk space needed on the external drive. You’ll need to take a full backup occasionally, like once a month, or every two weeks. The rest can be incrementals. Also you don’t generally need daily backups of your entire disk drive. If you’ve already taken the “Disaster Recovery” backup, then most people could get away with just running the backups on “C:\Documents and Settings”

Next week we’ll take a look at some common backup errors and gotchas.

One of my church friends Jim asked me about backup solutions, so I thought it might be good to drill into that subject this week.

First, let’s think about why we need backups: data loss. One way you could lose data is if your hard disk crashed, in which case you would most likely lose all of the data you have on that computer. Years ago disk crashes were fairly common, but these days they’re fairly rare. Even so, it’s a good idea to take backups. Another way would be if the data on your disk were corrupted somehow, such as by a virus. Yet another way would be if the computer were stolen, such as having a laptop stolen out of your car. Finally, and most usually, what I call a “short between the seat and the keyboard” — you accidentally delete or overwrite a file you realize you needed. So, there’s three basic modes of data loss: total data loss, partial data loss where the computer becomes unusable, and one or two files.

The fast, easy and fairly cheap way to provide backups these days is using an external USB drive. There’s a bewildering array of these available: I did a quick check of the local office supply chains as well as a major electronics retailer to find a combined 13 different makes of external USB drives. Some of them are intended to be desktop, some are portable — I have two that I carry with me when I travel. Most if not all of them these days come bundled with some form of backup software.

There are several things to look for in an external backup drive and it’s software. First, I’d look for one that can provide an emergency recovery backup. My Maxtor external drive has something it calls “SafetyDrill”, that when combined with a DVD that came with the drive will pretty well put humpty back together again — just connect the drive, boot off the DVD, and follow the instructions. This assumes you’ve taken the SafetyDrill backup beforehand — it can’t recover your data from thin air. The SafetyDrill backup isn’t intended to recover individual files, it’s a disaster recovery tool. Also, my other external drive, a Seagate drive, doesn’t have this feature.

The next thing to look for is the backup software itself. You’ll want something that can take “incremental” backups, which is to say that after taking a full backup you can then regularly backup only files that have changed. You need this feature to recover from those “oops” situations where you deleted or overwrote a file accidentally. If you set the backup software to do an incremental backup every night or every other night, you’ll likely have a good copy of any file you accidentally delete. Which brings up another feature you need: the ability to schedule backups. You also need something that’s going to be fairly easy to use, although I don’t really see how you’d know that before the purchase decision, unless the people at the store have a demo set up for you to test drive.

Next week we’ll continue the discussion on backups.

Spouse Ann asks about ways to speed up her PC.  One easy way is to defragment the disk.  First let me explain what disk fragmentation is. As your computer writes things to the disk, it allocates blocks of data on the disk to whatever file is being written.  Ususally the blocks are allocated in full sectors. Think of cutting a pie —  Ann likes to cut really small slices to get maybe 12 slices.  Then think of concentric circles around the pie that cut each piece into really thin arcs.  That’s about like a sector on a hard disk — it’s a portion of a full circle around the disk.

When you first write a file, generally all of the blocks (sectors) are all together, so it’s easy to read the data.  If you only wrote data to the disk all at once and never erased, you might not ever need to defragment.  But we generally don’t work that way.  We write a little to this file, then write a little to that file, the erase that file.

Let’s say I create a Word document.  I write a bit to the document, and of course save it.  Something else comes up, so I go on to something else, and start creating a new file, which gets written starting with the block just after the last block written for the previous file.  When I go back to the first file again and add to it, it doesn’t have any more free, contiguous space, so it hopscotches over whatever’s there and starts writing on the first free block.  When you erase files, that creates free blocks in the middle of other files, which will then start to be used, but those also are of fixed length, so that leads to more of the hopscotching thing.  That is fragmentation.

When files are fragmented, the read-write head, about like the needle in an old phonograph, has to be moved around a lot (called a “seek”) to find the right blocks.  Also, let’s say the current block I’m reading is on sector 1, while the next block is in the last sector, sector 12 (Ann cut this disk to get lots of pieces).  As the disk is spinning, I have to wait until the right sector comes around before I can read my block, almost a full revolution of the disk. You can see that all the hopscotching and waiting for the slot to come around on the merry-go-round can really slow things down.

Defragmenting reorganizes files on the disk so that the blocks are all together.  It’s an easy thing to do.  Open a Windows Explorer by right-click on My Computer (or the Start button), then click Explore.  Make sure the folder hierarchy is displayed in the left pane (click the Folders button), then expand “My Computer” in the left pane.  Right click on the C: drive and select “Properties”.  Pick the Tools tab of the Properties window; and click “Defragment Now.”  Right-click the disk to be defragmented (C:) and pick Defragment.  I recommend starting the defragmentation just before you wander off to bed — it can take a very long time.