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From: Richard B. Gilbert on 17 May 2010 09:53 Bogey Man wrote: > "Jeff Liebermann" <jeffl(a)cruzio.com> wrote in message > news:08ntu55fb0se33mu4n1bubv4scb3f8nv90(a)4ax.com... >> On Sat, 15 May 2010 10:21:20 -0700, John Navas >> <spamfilter1(a)navasgroup.com> wrote: >> >>> Or wrong, depending on whether you care more about profits or about >>> delivering value to customers. History teaches that mass market premium >>> price strategies often work well in the short run only to fail in the >>> long run. And then there's hubris. >> >> Well, are stock prices any indication of preceived loyalty? >> <http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=1y&s=AAPL&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=att> >> AT&T is fairly flat while APPL has doubled in the last year. > > Stock prices have nothing to do with loyalty to a product and not much > to do with a companies actual performance. Stock prices are just set by > people gambling on whether or not someone in the future will pay more > for the stock than they paid for it. > > All stock markets are just casinos in the financial district that use > stocks instead of chips. Rather over simplified! Companies frequently pay dividends on their common stocks! People, or institutions, buy such stocks for the income they provide in the form of dividends. Other companies reinvest most, or all, of their earnings to "grow the business". Investors buy the stocks of such enterprises in the hopes of being able to sell the stock for more than they paid for it. There's a whole spectrum there!
From: John Navas on 17 May 2010 11:38 On Sat, 15 May 2010 19:41:28 -0400, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88(a)comcast.net> wrote in <f_2dnabO1sOzrHLWnZ2dnUVZ_u-dnZ2d(a)giganews.com>: >John Navas wrote: >> I'm a big fan of incremental backups -- much more efficient for regular >> use. Image backups are better suited to deployments IMHO. > >Incremental backups are fine when used intelligently. That means >something like daily incremental backups and a weekly image backup. You > might stretch it to an image backup every two weeks. My method is _full_ backup every month, plus daily incremental backups. Works a treat. -- Best regards, John <http:/navasgroup.com> If the iPhone is really so impressive, why do iFans keep making excuses for it?
From: John Navas on 17 May 2010 12:14 On Sat, 15 May 2010 17:44:50 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl(a)cruzio.com> wrote in <vjeuu55vai199muslmfbv9ruh1bh545nnm(a)4ax.com>: >On Sat, 15 May 2010 19:41:28 -0400, "Richard B. Gilbert" ><rgilbert88(a)comcast.net> wrote: > >>Incremental backups are fine when used intelligently. That means >>something like daily incremental backups and a weekly image backup. You >> might stretch it to an image backup every two weeks. > >I've been playing computer consultant and repair person since about >1985. Nobody does backups until AFTER they have had a disaster with >attendent data loss. While that may be true of personal users, SOHO, and a fair number of small businesses, larger companies with decent IT departments typically have well-designed backup procedures in my experience >The methods of doing backups have changed over >the years, starting with floppy disks, tapes, and currently >distributed between replication, image, file-by-file, on-line, and >some hybrids. They all work. I don't know of any enterprise that has depended on floppy backup to any significant degree. Methinks you have a PC bias? ;) >My specific problem is getting customers to actually do backups. Most >will "forget" or find a suitable excuse. Sure. That's why backup should be invisible and painless. I set up fully automatic backup for my clients. >Therefore, my criteria for a >successful backup program is that it must be: >1. Fast >2. Easy >3. Reasonably reliable >in that order. My own priority order 1. Reliable - Backup that's no good can be worse then nothing. 2. Easy - Otherwise it won't be used. 3. Efficient - So it can be run in the background. 4. Fast - Not terribly important given efficient. >Note that I did not list all inclusive (i.e. gets >everyting right up to the last millisecond before the drive crashed) >and safe (i.e. encrypted and theft proof). At this time, the fastest >and easiest are the boot from a CD and run an image backup to a USB >drive. The software costs about $40 and the drive about $80. All the >image backup software I've tried sucks or worse, but as long as it >meets the aformentioned criteria, I'll live with it until some company >wakes up and decided to do it right. There are also some Open Source >alternatives that are in the same class (awful but still useful). Having to boot from a CD is a recipe for backup not to be done in my experience, and Windows shadow copy makes it possible to perform backup invisibly in the background from a live system, so there is no real need to boot from a CD given decent backup software: * Windows 7 finally has good backup, now my normal recommendation, * except for ThinkPads, for which I use Lenovo Rescue and Recovery. * I previously used (and still use) Retrospect. Highly recommended. * Acronis and Nova are also very good. * Have not tested Paragon, but expect it to be good based on quality of other Paragon software >Since it requires very little input or "selection" by the user (to >screw up), I like image backups. I dislike the inflexibility and inefficiency of image backups. Full and incremental backups are much more efficient. >I've tried to automate them, but >it's easier to just pass out a step-by-step instruction page to the >customer. All of my implementations are fully automated. Nothing else has worked well enough for my clients. >My worst case disaster is a failing hard disk, where the >customer overscribbles a perfectly good but old backup, with a >perfectly trashed image of their failing drive. Therefore, cloning >the hard disk to another hard disk isn't going to work. It can work if the procedure is made failsafe (not terribly hard). >Image backups have also saved my posterior when working on customers >machines. It's a rare event, but sometimes, the drive fails while in >my shop. The very first thing I do is make an image backup of the >system, viruses, junk, and everything. 20GB takes 20-30 mins on most >machines. When done, I make a 2nd backup, and keep both for about a >month. Very handy. Sure. Full backup works the same way. >How often varies with the customer. During tax season, it's one full >image every 2 weeks. The rest of the year, it's every 2 months with >backups of key directories to NAS in the meantime. Lots of ways to do >it tailored to the customers needs. In most cases, I have to yell at >them to do a backup literally every time. My normal method is full backup every month, plus daily incremental backups. >Mac OS X v10.5, v10.6: How to back up and restore your files ><http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1553> >Note the section in creating a disk image. > >For the PC, I'm currently using an earlier version of this: ><http://www.farstone.com/software/totalrecovery-home.php> >I consider the company to marginal, the product clumsy, and their tech >support completely useless. For example, the previous DriveClone >Express 6.0 simply gives up with an error 0x17 if it encountered a bad >sector during the image backup. Still, it's the best I could find for >the price that does an image backup on the PC. I found other image >backup software that tolerates bad sectors, but is much slower and >produces larger backup images. See my favorites above. -- Best regards, John <http:/navasgroup.com> If the iPhone is really so impressive, why do iFans keep making excuses for it?
From: John Navas on 17 May 2010 12:15 On Sun, 16 May 2010 02:32:01 +0000 (UTC), Justin <nospam(a)insightbb.com> wrote in <hsnlf1$cma$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>: >Jeff Liebermann wrote on [Sat, 15 May 2010 17:44:50 -0700]: >> My specific problem is getting customers to actually do backups. Most >> will "forget" or find a suitable excuse. Therefore, my criteria for a >> successful backup program is that it must be: >> 1. Fast >> 2. Easy >> 3. Reasonably reliable >> in that order. Note that I did not list all inclusive (i.e. gets >> everyting right up to the last millisecond before the drive crashed) >> and safe (i.e. encrypted and theft proof). At this time, the fastest >> and easiest are the boot from a CD and run an image backup to a USB > >The easiest is one that does it automatically, something like carbonite or >syncing to an external hard drive. Disrupting workflow will always lead >to excuses and backups not done. Amen. -- Best regards, John <http:/navasgroup.com> If the iPhone is really so impressive, why do iFans keep making excuses for it?
From: John Navas on 17 May 2010 12:30
On Sat, 15 May 2010 19:56:05 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl(a)cruzio.com> wrote in <h1nuu5dv48f0ulr9eopgevr99k3t8enn7f(a)4ax.com>: >On Sun, 16 May 2010 02:32:01 +0000 (UTC), Justin ><nospam(a)insightbb.com> wrote: >>The easiest is one that does it automatically, something like carbonite or >>syncing to an external hard drive. Disrupting workflow will always lead >>to excuses and backups not done. > >Nope. I've had two disasters with such "continuous backup" schemes. >The problem is dealing with open files. Some programs are clever and >grab the FAT to see which clusters are owned by the file, backup those >clusters, and re-assemble the file. That usually works. Others are >just plain stupid and and ignore open files. I use Memeo for such >automatic backups. Nope yourself, probably why you're having problems: * Windows should be run on NTFS (not FAT). * Nothing decent works by going around the OS. * Windows Shadow Copy is the proper way to backup open files. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Copy> >The problems start when it's time to put Humpty Dumpty back together >again out of the pieces scattered all over the backup device. The >usual ordeal is to reinstall Windoze from scratch, reinstall all the >software, deal with the serial numbers and secret incantations, and >then restore the data from the backups. The time to recover, is often >substantial, especially compared to an image restore. I've done it >both ways. An piecemeal restore takes at least all day. An image >restore, about 15-30 minutes. When the customer is breathing down my >neck demanding instant recovery, image restore looks much better. Unnecessary with decent backup software that's setup properly. -- Best regards, John <http:/navasgroup.com> If the iPhone is really so impressive, why do iFans keep making excuses for it? |