Category Archives: Computers & Electronics

How Do I Back Up My Computer?

Computers & Electronics, Home & Garden, Internet, Technology,

I think a lot of people live in a world where they know the chances of their computer crashing are significant and yet they still put off backing up their data. I think in most cases this is due to their lack of knowledge of how easy it can be to back up your data. I know people who occasionally add the files in their documents folder onto a CD or thumb drive but it is not very frequent and chances are if their laptop or PC were to fail they would lose data for sure.

I myself have had no less than 1 PC and 2 Laptops die on me completely, without a hope of recovery, in the last 3 years. The first laptop died due to someone else trying to fix something by removing the operating system and not being able to replace it. I stupidly had not backed up my data before allowing them to do this, my bad. The 2nd one, the PC, died a few months later, it was a few years old and I had started slowly copying the data over but had not finished backing up before it went. Lucky for me I had a friend who, with a lot of effort, managed to rescue the data from both machines. So if you are wondering how do I back up my computer then I’ll tell you the easy way that I do it (although there are other ways but for someone who doesn’t want to delve into lots of settings this one is simple),

Set Up An Easy Plug and Play Back Up

And so it came that said friend decided that I needed an easy back up facility and bought me a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Drive with I think 500 Gb of space. Now I am sure that there are other easy plug and go back up drives available but as I have used this one I wanted to share my experience with it. Basically it has software installed that you can just run and once you have that installed, every time you plug the drive in afterwards it will automatically detect and new or changed files and back them up to the drive.

That is as simple as it is – plug it in and it will back up for you. For someone like me, who never quite gets round to doing a manual backup, it is a godsend. And that was shown to be the case when my 3rd computer, a laptop that was only about 18 months old, also died. Lucky for me that just the day before I had plugged in the backup (I had actually plugged it in to look for a file from one of my old computers that was stored on it but of course as I did that it backed up too).

So really, for less than 100 dollars (on Amazon anyway) you can have a very easy back up system that is suitable for any technophobe to use and really is the simplest back up out there as far as I am concerned. Don’t leave it until it is too late – it is not always possible to recover data from dead computers or can be expensive so save yourself the worry and trouble by getting a back up now.

You can check out the GoFlex drive on Amazon US and the equivalent in the UK below:

 

I Forgot to Deauthorize My Computer for iTunes

Computers & Electronics, ,

OK, so this happened to me, not just once, but a few times. I had an old PC, 2 old laptops, maybe 3, that became defunct and I either gave them away or ditched them depending on what state they were in. But I forgot to deauthorize my computers in iTunes. Urgh, and now I have hit the 5 computer limit of the number of machines that iTunes will let me play my songs on.

If this is you, and maybe you have already hit 5 and can’t authorize your new machine, then do not fear, there is a way round this. I discovered this when I set up my latest new PC and wanted to load iTunes on there. Luckily it was the 5th machine that I had authorized but I knew that only one of the other machines I still had in my possession so I also knew that there would come a point where I would likely want to authorize another new machine and I wanted to preempt that.

itunes-deauthorizeSo basically what you need to do is to go to your account info page and you can deauthorize all of your computers – yes it is all or nothing! Then you can reauthorize the ones you are actually using.

You just need to enter your apple id and password to get to the account settings page so make sure you know this info.

Then you will get the option to deauthorize as shown below. Now you don’t see the actual deauthorize option on my screen shot below (that is why I have added it manually in the place you would normally see it) – because you are only allowed to do this once a year (at least I assume that is why you don’t see the button here – it may also be because I only have one PC authorized right now and I can do that from the store menu, so that may be it.

deauthorize.bmp

 

 

How To Get Free Lives on Candy Crush

Computers & Electronics, Entertainment, Games, Internet, Recreation, Social Networks & Online Communities

Well if you are one of the 20 million people currently playing Candy Crush Saga and you maybe get to a level where you get stuck and keep running out of lives then there is one really simple trick to get you 3 times the amount of lives before you actually run out.

This is maybe something you already know but if not it might just help you get through to the next level. Firstly if you are playing Candy Crush on your phone and you run out of lives then go play on your laptop/PC. You will immediately have a full set of lives regardless of whether you have just run them down on another device. Then, once you have run out of lives there, just go to your iPad and get another set of lives there!

OK that is a quick and free fix. If you want more in depth hints and tips and ways to totally race through the levels of Candy Crush then maybe you will be interested in Candy Crush Online…

Where is the Undelete Function on Sky?

Computers & Electronics, Entertainment, ,

So there were a lot of adverts going around for Sky showing off the new undelete function that they had, whereby if you (or someone else) deleted a program accidentally (which is easily done as I have found to my cost when backing up from something you are watching, hitting delete straight away, and it deleting something completely different because it had just recoded something else while you were watching your program!) you could recover it.

However, what the adverts did not show, was how do you actually undelete something on your Sky box? In theory it is quite simple but in practice it is much easier to find if you know where you are going (much like anything really!). So, to undelete a program, go to your Planner and you will be taken to the All programs section (the place where all your recorded programs are). Without pressing the down arrow to go to the programs, skip left and you will see the Deleted section. From here you can see the programs that you last deleted. Programs will be kept here until you need space for further recordings so if you do have plenty of space on your box it should be no hassle to go back and retrieve a deleted program.

Sky-undelete
This is where you can recover your deleted programs.