PC Maintenance and Security

For this assignment, I have reviewed several tutorials from the PC Maintenance and Security workshop provided by Atomic.

Clean up and Speed up
I decided to start with these tutorials because I was the most familiar with them. I have been a PC computer user for many years before my Mac. I am still using a Windows based computer in my classroom. It is running very slow, so I watched these videos to get some ideas. I was familiar with uninstalling unwanted applications, and disk clean-up. However, I was not familiar with running "msconfig" to speed up start times. I did try it at work the other day, but I was too afraid to continue with the process. I will pass this information on to our Tech guys to see if they can give me any other information on this process. I was surprised that you could restore your computer to earlier settings without erasing files. Still a little hesitant, I backed up my files just in case!

Intrusion Detection and Prevention
These tutorials provided information about software that is available to help keep your computers safe. There are IDS's (Intrusion Detection Software) available on the web such as TeaTime, Spybot, and WinPatrol. It has been my experience in the past that if too much is being blocked, I get very frustrated. It was suggested that you only choose one program to run. Otherwise, you could run into the same frustrations I have in the past. That is something that I will definitely share with my collegues. It was surprising to learn that you could actually block pages silently.

File Backup Options
I chose these tutorials because I am not good about backing up my files. I realize that a flash drive is a readily available option that I should be using frequently, but haven't. So I was interested in finding other solutions. The tutorials covered several options that are free including KarenWare, Foldershare, and MediaMax. I was really excited about MediaMax because you could backup 25GB for free. However, when I tried to look up that website it took me to another site. The information was similar, but not the same. I am still hesitant to start messing around with my life (i.e. my computer) with something that seems off. I was very impressed and surprised with different options out there via the web. I will be sharing KarenWare and Foldershare with others. We all need to be better about backing up our files and these are two great "free" options.