"As we reflect on our search, which included Best Buy, CompUSA & Dell online, we felt your knowledge and guidance was superior, comprehensive & honest." -Sylvia McCauley
Window Media Center: Great for your family room, bad for your desk.
I have a Windows Media Center PC hooked up to my entertainment center at home. Despite a few minor bugs, it works great! It's kept in my family room for the following reasons:
Recording TV & Movies
Organizing Music Libraries
Organizing & Viewing Pictures on TV
Organizing & Viewing Home Videos on TV
These are great features to have in the family room. However, Windows Media Center is not a good operating system for an everyday computer. Lately, I've noticed a lot of PC makers using it in place of Windows XP Home edition. We've found this to be a bad idea. Most computers with Windows Media Center are slower, less stable and just seem to have more problems. This is Microsoft's first attempt at a media driven PC, and it seems like they've missed the mark (think Windows ME). So, buying a Windows Media Center PC is a good idea, but only if you use it for media driven tasks (such as those listed above). Otherwise, I recommend sticking with Windows XP Home or Professional edition.
As you may know, Microsoft Office is a useful and important program. Costing $150 to $659, it's also an expensive one. Before you spend a dime, I recommend trying the FREE alternative - Open Office. Open Office has programs that rival those of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). In addition, Open Office can open any document created in Microsoft Office. So if you're buying a new computer or need an Office suite, give Open Office a try. It may save $659.
Over the course of the past month I've been testing an innovative online backup service - Data Deposit Box. To securely backup all of your data, simply sign up online and download a small software utility. It's that easy!
Why is this such a great service? Most backup systems will only protect your data against hard drive failure. So you're out of luck if your computer or external hard drive are stolen or destroyed by fire, flood etc. Data Deposit Box protects your data from just about every imaginable circumstance - natural or man made.
To protect your data, install a small software program. Data Deposit Box will then backup your data (to its off site data center) anytime your computer is idle. If and when you ever need to restore your files, just open the program and select the files you want restored.
At $2 a month per GB, this service is perfect for people with a lot of Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, etc. If you have a lot of pictures, music files and/or videos, you'll save more money with an external hard drive. For example, backing up 2,000 songs will cost you about $25 a month. However, even if you have an external hard drive I strongly recommend using Data Deposit Box to backup you most important files (to protect against theft or flood,fire, etc.). This service is also great for laptop users who travel and don't want to lug around an external hard drive.
This is my nephew, Drew, whose eyes were bright red before Picasa.
Recently, I started playing with Picasa - Google's free photo management program. I was amazed at how easy it was to organize, edit, share and even print my pictures.
Google's Picasa is a great program for anyone who's new to digital photos or is looking for an easier way to share pictures with friends and family. I've used other photo sharing services, such as Snapfish and Kodak, but I love the photo management and editing capabilities of Picasa. Removing "redeye" and cropping photos, couldn't be easier. In addition to organizing, editing and sharing photos, Picasa also allows you to order prints from your favorite photo finishers (Walgreens, Cord Camera, Target, etc). Give it a try and let us know what you think!
