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By Dean in La Ventana.....
Cloud storage of important information and backing up
your files. These are great free services, and recent entries to the
market of Microsoft and Google should tell you something. I have
been using box.net for years and find it so valuable. But I have to
say their free service is nothing compared to the benefits to
Microsoft's free skydrive or googles free new as of Tuesday Google
drive.
These are great for a small business. Great for a
traveler and just ideal for everyone. You have access to most if not
all your information anywhere in the world. And it is the ideal
backup because it will always keep you most recent changes online.
So if you have a computer/hard drive crash all your important
information is still recoverable.
This is password protected but remember you should
always have a strong password. People that do not use special
characters in their password should not be doing this. just add a
$,!,%,^, use the same one before and after your password and it will
be infinitely more secure.
The way these work is when you download the program
(did I say it is free) for 5 and 7 gig again only your data is
stored. Not your programs so you will not need this much unless you
are a camera junkie who shoots in high resolution. Microsoft offers
about the best deal for $10 a year 20GB a lot more space. So you
download their program and it will install a folder on your
computer. Then you move into that folder the documents you want
online and it will always sync them. VERY IMPORTANT you can choose
public or private. In general you will always put things in private.
If you want to share them to the world put them in public.
Also with Microsoft they have a feature that allowed
you to make or edit word, excel and so on documents.
I had been using box.net for years but will not because
these other features put box to shame. these newer services are
truly the so called cloud in action. I keep copies of nearly
everything I am working on there including copies of passports
credit card company phone numbers in case of loss of card, bank
phone numbers, copies of travel reservations/tickets and so on. If
you remember your password you can retrieve anyplace in the world.
But do remember if you ever use a unsecured computer in a cafe I
STRONGLY urge you to change your password when you get to a secure
computer later.
And yes these will be accessible by smartphones. (phone
operating system dependent).
There is one other system worth noting sugarSync, it
syncs any folder on the PC so you do not need to make a new
directory. There are more details and links at
www.la-ventana.info
under ask a geek
dean@la-ventana.com
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