Stories about: Carbonite

No question, the iPad and iPhone are amazing devices. But the iOS operating system isn't perfect. For example: How come AT&T rebills customers every month for cellular data service without asking? Do you really have to buy a AirPrint-compatible printer to print via your iPad? Can you get a refund from Apple on an iTunes purchase?

At DCA we regularly deal with people who come to us for data recovery. We have a pretty good track record at salvaging important files; however, in many instances of catastrophic damage to the hard drive, there is no means of recovery. This can leave some people distraught. I have personally dealt with people who have lost their entire photo collection, ledgers, as well as critical tax documents, just to name a few examples.

It's been nearly five years to the day since Amazon introduced its groundbreaking Simple Storage Service -- or S3, as it's more commonly known. But despite that offering's track record, many enterprise IT executives still struggle with the notion of using cloud-based storage services to hold their corporate data.

Most people -- even IT pros who spend their lives maintaining corporate computing infrastructure -- are so busy with life, families, work and the rest that they tend to leave periodic home PC maintenance tasks at the bottom of a long list of things that never get done.

Reformatting and restoring a PC is not fun--in the way spending 2 hours in the dentist's chair is not fun. You have to back up all your data (and pray that you haven't forgotten anything), reformat the hard drive, install Windows, track down missing drivers, find and reload all your software, restore your data, and pull out clumps of hair over the things you inevitably neglected to save. (Firefox plug-ins, anyone?)

Facing consumers with an appetite for cloud storage that has increased 50 per cent over the past year, the world's largest consumer online storage provider said on Monday that it will no longer offer unlimited storage and will increase fees for the limited online storage it's now selling.

Have you ever noticed that insurance seems to operate on the Murphy's Law principle? If you have it, you never need it, but as soon as the insurance is gone a catastrophe strikes. That is pretty much how backing up data often works.

AVG (AU/NZ)has created a Back-To-School Computer Use Checklist For Parents (www.avg.com.au/resources/security-tips/). With the government’s Education Revolution, and the growing use of laptops by school children, will come enormous losses of school homework, assignments and study notes through laptop damage or theft, so it is vital to protect laptops from theft or loss.

All-in-one desktop PCs have long been touted as space-saving wonders, squeezing an entire computer into a frame that's only slightly bigger than the monitor itself. They've also represented some of the computer industry's best bargains, typically selling for about one-third less than a standard desktop PC with a separate monitor. But did you know they can cut your electricity bill significantly compared with a traditional desktop system?

I’m still in the audience at the DEMOFall conference, and still taking in demonstrations of new products and services. One of the cooler ideas this morning is Symform, a small-business remote-backup service. Technically, it’s utterly unlike services such as Mozy and Carbonite: Those services store everything in massive server farms, but Symform is farm-free–it uses peer-to-peer technology to store backups on the PCs of other Symform users. If you wanna back up 10GB of data, for instance, you agree to devote 10GB of disk space to other folks’ backups–and to leave your computer on 80 percent of the time.