Over the years I have tried many different backup utilities. Historically I have never found one that included all the features I was looking for. The latest one I have tested is CloudBerry Backup. Overall, it does very well with the features available, usability of those features, ease of use and arguably the most important part–restore capabilities.

Below I have outlined some features I, along with many of my colleagues, look for in a backup system. For each item, examples of related features will be provided through the lens of CloudBerry.

Source/Destination Options

Many backup solutions only allow backing up of local drives.  This is very annoying as network storage is becoming increasingly popular, even in home environments.  Similarly, many backup solutions only allow backing up of internal/externally attached hard drives.

CloudBerry not only allows you to backup from network paths (UNC), but you can also back files up to the network path as well.  Furthermore, CloudBerry is known for its ability to backup to not only one but many different S3 platforms.  For testing this product, I chose to do my backups/restores though DreamObjects.

Compression

Compression is very important for a couple reasons.  First, it speeds up backup, especially when uploading to a destination on the Internet.  Second, it saves space.  Although hard drive space is not all that expensive any more, it is nice to compress  backups so they don’t take up too much space.  Third, compression is even more beneficial when you are paying for usage through an S3 service.

CloudBerry offers compression and it seems to do a decent job.  I’d like to see more options in this area where a user could select low, medium, or high compression.  Currently the only controllable compression setting is on or off.

Encryption

For me, security is a big deal.  With more services turning to the web, malicious hackers are actively hacking even the most trusted services throughout the web.  Backing up files to a “secure” location seems to be a thing of the past.

A safe way to ensure files are properly encrypted is to encrypt them yourself.  With CloudBerry, that is possible.  This is a feature that is simply awesome!  You can select your type of encryption, set a password, and even encrypt file names!

Ease of Use

CloudBerry is very user friendly.  There are wizards that guide you though configuring both backups and restores.  There are two modes users can go through–Simple and Advanced.  With simple, there are less options to configure but this makes it easier for general end users.  For more geeky users (such as myself) Advanced is the way to go.  The Advanced setup is still user friendly, there are just more options that you can configure.

Recovery

Finally, recovery.  Recovery is a very important aspect of the tool and the creators of CloudBerry know this!  If there isn’t a good recovery aspect of the tool, it is practically useless.  Similar to the backup wizard, there is a recovery wizard.

In the wizard, you are able to restore different versions of the file (if configured in the backup).  This is very useful, especially the “Point in Time” option that allows you to specify a time in the past that you want to restore the file(s) from.

Running Google Apps is very cost effective, especially if you are running 10 or less email accounts.  Below I have outlined 7 different reasons why Google Apps should be considered for small business use.

 

Reason #7 Maintenance
With Google Apps, Google handles all the maintenance.  I personally have not seen any downtime; the updates are pushed out seamlessly.  This also has to do with cost savings, plus all the hassle of updating the software if I were to manage it.

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Have you ever had issues burning music or data to a CD?  How about burning that movie to a DVD all to find out the burn failed?  Here are some tips for you:

Turn off your screensaver – if your screensaver starts while you’re burning a disc, it will interrupt the data flow to the laser. Defrag your hard drive before a burn - it will make it easier for your PC to locate the files. Slower burning speeds - they tend to make the best results. Handle your discs by its edges and keep it away from dust. Keep your discs out of the sunlight – this could ruin them!

 

I personally use ESET NOD 32, a paid version of antivirus software.  I was sold on this product based on how lightweight it is, how it constantly scans files being used, updates hourly, and overall is just engineered well.  I use it on all my machines and frequently sell it to people.  I have not used other virus protection regularly in a couple years now so I had no idea what to expect when running Comodo Antivirus.  The rest of this post will be broken up into different sections based on different tests that have been performed.  Below are the results in a table.  Under the table, each section is explained in detail.

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If you are looking to protect yourself from online profiling, there are some simple things you can do.  These steps will not completely solve profiling issues; however, they are a step in the right direction.  Today we will show three different methods on how to block advertisers from targeting you with ads.  First, we will cover a couple common questions.

 

How did they know!?
You may or may not realize but advertisements are everywhere!  How did the advertisers know you liked cars or clothes–or anything else for that matter?  In short, whenever you go to a website a cookie is stored on your computer.  Advertisers are now looking at your cookies to create a profile based on what sites you go to, what you search for, etc.  As they build this profile about you, they start targeting ads based off what they know you like.  This, in theory, helps bring you advertisements of products/services you would more likely purchase.

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