CR5 Issue 161 Oct 2018
A local community magazine delivered free to 11,600 homes every month in the CR5 postcode. Contains local business advertising, interesting reads, Competitions, What's on in the Community and puzzles.
A local community magazine delivered free to 11,600 homes every month in the CR5 postcode. Contains local business advertising, interesting reads, Competitions, What's on in the Community and puzzles.
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Technology<br />
AVOID TECH HORRORS<br />
THIS HALLOWE’EN<br />
What to do with a watery phone and how to protect your photos…<br />
Not everything that goes bump in the night is a<br />
ghost or a ghoul. Sometimes it’s a crucial bit of<br />
kit getting damaged. Unfortunately no piece of<br />
technology lasts forever, any device can be stolen<br />
or damaged and any digital file can be deleted<br />
or corrupted. If it contains something that really<br />
matters to you – your priceless family photos<br />
or home videos, perhaps, or your university<br />
dissertation, or the book that’s going to make<br />
you a superstar – then any problems could be<br />
catastrophic.<br />
So how do you prevent problems from becoming<br />
Halloween horrors?<br />
The first thing to do is to ensure that you have<br />
more than one copy of anything important. For<br />
example, if you store all your photos on your<br />
phone you should make sure you have copies of<br />
all of them on your PC too: if your phone was to<br />
be stolen and you didn’t have backups of your<br />
photos, they’d be gone forever. You can also use<br />
online services such as Apple’s iCloud or Google<br />
Photos to store your snaps on Apple or Google’s<br />
computers. Other services from the likes of Flickr<br />
and DropBox can do the same. That means if you<br />
lose your phone or PC, you can still download the<br />
photos to a different phone or PC later. Those<br />
services aren’t just limited to photos, either. You<br />
can use them to store and share documents of<br />
any kind.<br />
A really good way to have backups is to get an<br />
external hard disk. If you have a recent PC or Mac<br />
you have USB 3.0 ports, which are much faster<br />
than the USB 2.0 ports in older computers.<br />
That means you can take advantage of superspeedy<br />
USB 3.0 drives. You don’t need to spend<br />
much to get a good one: for example, Toshiba’s<br />
Canvio Basics is currently £44.99 for 1TB of space,<br />
more than enough for even the biggest photo<br />
library. Even a massive drive such as the 4TB WD<br />
My Passport is less than £100.<br />
There are other ways to copy files, such as USB<br />
sticks and DVD discs (if your computer has a DVD<br />
burner), but we wouldn’t recommend them.<br />
USB sticks aren’t really made to last and they’re<br />
easy to lose, while DVD discs take ages to burn,<br />
don’t have much storage capacity and aren’t<br />
particularly well-suited to long term storage.<br />
So far we’ve talked about prevention. What<br />
about cure? One of the most common computer,<br />
tablet or phone disasters is a liquid spill. If that<br />
happens to you, turn the device off immediately<br />
and if it’s a laptop, turn it upside down so the<br />
keyboard is facing down. Whatever you do, don’t<br />
turn it back on until you’re sure it’s completely<br />
dry inside. If it isn’t, you could cause a shortcircuit<br />
that’ll ruin the computer.<br />
Have you heard the one about putting a phone in<br />
a sealed bag of rice? That works, because the rice<br />
draws out the moisture – but it takes at least two<br />
days to work. As with laptops, keep the phone off<br />
until it’s completely dry.<br />
Images left to right - Generic USB drive, WD My Passport<br />
external drive, Toshiba Canvio Basics external drive<br />
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