Internet Technology World - Last week was an especially bad time to be in the Johnson household.
In the span of a single day, pretty much all of my tech failed in one
way or another. And that was no small feat: Keep in mind that the only
residence I’ve ever seen that has more technology than my house is the
International Space Station.
Here’s what happened. Around noon last Saturday, I tried to play music on my Sonos,
a gadget that streams music from a PC to rooms throughout the house.
(Sonos is probably my most prized gadget, ever.) Well, no joy: The
computer on which I kept all my music had been getting old and appeared
to have failed catastrophically, so my house was robbed of the sound of
music. As a result I decided to replace the PC by making a trip to the
store.
After setting up the new computer, I discovered that my wireless
extender was no longer working, either. (I have an extender because my
house is apparently made entirely of lead, and consequently I’ve had
trouble getting a reliable Wi-Fi signal throughout the house using just
my old and cheap router.) But when did it stop working? When the
computer broke or when I installed the new one? Did one cause the other?
Were the problems related?
As I struggled with those questions, I also found that I didn’t have
easy access to essential setup information I needed to get the new
computer up and running – stuff like configuration details for my email
accounts, and how to connect the new PC to my wireless printer.
I got up and running – eventually – but it reminded me that I wasn’t
following my Five Golden Rules of Home Technology. These are essential
guidelines to protecting yourself from a tech disaster. Here they are,
and fail to heed them at your own peril.
Always have a reliable backup.
You never know when disaster will strike. But mark my words: Every hard
drive fails eventually, and if you don’t have a good backup of your
personal data (pictures, music, documents) then when your drive does
fail, all that data will be gone forever. I (neurotically) recommend a
dual backup. Use an external hard drive and a simple backup program so
you have easy access to your stuff if you need it, but also spend a
little money on a cloud backup solution like Mozy or Carbonite. That way, if your computer is ever stolen or it bursts into flames, you have a reliable copy of your data stored online.
Keep a recovery checklist. If you ever have to
“rebuild” a computer – reinstall programs, set up email, reconnect to
your printer, and so on – I’m sorry. It’s no fun. But it’s even less fun
not knowing what to do, or having to aimlessly browse the Internet
looking for instructions. Here’s what to do instead: Take the time right now to
write down all the steps you need to get a new PC up and running,
including all the special settings to get your accounts configured. Keep
that paper printed out (not just stored in your Documents folder) and in a location that you can easily get to when you need it.
Only change one thing at a time. Need to upgrade,
fix, or replace a few things? Make changes to your PC or network one at a
time. Adding new memory to your computer? Install it, make sure
everything still works for a day or two, and then replace the video
card. If you change two or more things at once, it can be really hard to
know how to troubleshoot the system when things go awry.
The simplest solution is usually the best solution.
One of the problems with my home network was that it was needlessly
complicated. My wireless extender made my entire network more fragile
and convoluted. I tried troubleshooting for a spell, but in the end I
did what I should have done to begin with: I replaced the router with a
new, high quality model. Miraculously, the new router had the range to
reach all around my house and solved all my glitchy network problems
without the need for an extender.
Have a cookie.
Having computer trouble? It can get really frustrating, really fast.
Remember to occasionally walk away – take a break, have a cookie, and
decompress. Then take a fresh look at the problem a bit later, knowing
there are more cookies where the last one came from.
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