Whenever an application stops responding, there are usually three options to get things back on track again. But first, how would you know if an application has hung? The three cardinal symptoms are the spinning beach ball, increased CPU usage and systemic unresponsiveness. If you’re experiencing any one of these, especially the infamous spinning beach ball of death (SBBOD), you’ve definitely got an application that isn’t working the way it should.
So the first option when faced with a frozen or unresponsive application is to kill it. Not literally, of course! We can try to kill or “terminate” the program. The easiest way to do this is to simply right-click the application in the Dock and select ‘Force Quit’.
Back in January I treated myself to a new laptop, a mobile workstation. Compared to my old laptop, the new machine was operating at the speed of light. However, with all the software that came and went over the months, and despite regular system maintenance, some minor but annoying bugs had crept in along with the performance slowly declining. At some point reinstalling your machine simply is inevitable. Although my system was not at that point yet, I decided it was time to clear the battlefield last weekend.
If computers are an indispensable part of your life then I am sure you understand the value of data and what could be the consequences if you lose it. Whether it’s your picture files, music collection, videos, documents, wordpress blog or any other form of data, you’ll know that if your operating system ditches you and the computer goes down, your data is lost too (unless you can afford to pay the data recovery firms to get it).
If you are on Windows, it’s almost mandatory for you to backup your important data since it’s not an operating system which you can always count on (although it is the most popular one).
Windows Vista has been out for quite a bit and although there has been much dispute on whether or not XP is better, it’s safe to say that there are tons of users who are using Vista, whether they want to or not.
One of the problems I had when I was buying Windows Vista was what version to get. There was Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, Ultimate and a lot of others most people never heard about. Although I wanted all the awesome tools in Windows Vista Ultimate, I was stuck with Home Premium because I didn’t want to shell out the extra cash.
Good things they say come in small sizes. The Amic free email backup utility proves this idiom to the letter. Behind this 1.3 MB tool is Alexandru Marias, a computer programmer whose belief lies in creating easy to use Windows tools. After using the tool, Alexandru has my vote at least. I am surprised it didn’t make to earlier published 5 Ways to Backup Email.
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