Thursday, October 4, 2012

What to do if the power cord for your laptop stops working

This has happened to me in the past. This is a good blog post from Call That Girl for any laptop owners.

"Drat, that power cord. Always causing problems! Most clients call us for a few reasons in regards to power issues with their laptop. Sometimes we can fix it, sometimes we cannot. Most of the time, we can fix it, but the cost is roughly $150 (it’s a hardware repair, done inside the computer and very labor intensive). If the hardware, also known as a DC jack, is fine, then the problem is most likely a dead power supply (cord).




How to figure out if it’s your power cord:
 
Unfortunately, there’s not always a clear cut sign as to which is your problem. One thing you can try, if you have another that fits, is to plug in a different power supply and see if your computer gets a full charge. If it does, then your power cord is most likely the cause. If this still doesn’t work or you don’t have an extra cord, you can drop off your computer for a free diagnosis and let us figure out what exactly is going on!

What to do if it’s your power cord:
  • Purchase a new power adapter from the manufacturer = spendy, but probably best if your laptop is under 3 years old.
  • Purchase one from Best Buy or Microcenter = also spendy, but convenient.
  • Purchase a generic adapter set online = Most folks do this, but…the adapter can be a problem later. They will either stop working or fail before a manufactured one will."

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

White House confirms 'spearphishing' intrusion

"Spearphishing means an attacker is targeting a specific person or group, typically by sending fake e-mail that masquerades as legitimate correspondence."

Monday, October 1, 2012

I use SOS Online Backup services to protect my valuable data

Every morning I find an e-mail in my Inbox that informs me of the results of last night's online backup. I use SOS Online Backup, an affordable and reliable backup service to automatically backup all of my important data (pictures, music, videos, etc.) to The Cloud. I found that I needed a little help at the start, but the SOS online help team seemed to be always available, no matter the day or the hour, to provide me the help I needed.

One of these days my old IBM desktop PC will fail. If it does so in such a way that I lose data, I feel comfortable knowing that I will be able to restore the backed up data from SOS

This is what he body of the e-mail looks like (with apologies for cutting off the right side of the message, but you see the most important data and, I hope, get the idea):


SOS Online Backup - Backup Report for Friday, April 20, 2012
This email is from the SOS Online Backup system to report to you on a backup that you setup. Note that these backup reports are sent to you by default upon installation and setup of a scheduled backup in the SOS Online Backup software. You can disable getting these reports by going to the "Settings" tab in SOS Online Backup, then clicking "Options", and then clicking "Email Backup Reports".
 
Account Usernamepcdoc@brpcdoc.com
Machine NameIBM8195E9U
Backup Date4/20/2012 10:05:05 PM
Files that were not changed44075
Files that were backed up35
Files that were not backed up0
Total Number of files processed35
Total Data transferred132.88 MB

This email report is auto-generated from the SOS Online Backup system upon the successful completion of your backup session.

Making backup simple, easy and affordable.