Pop Goes The Weasel
Or the internet computer, whichever.
I have two computers. One that I use for games and writing. To play games it has to be fast. To keep my writing in without a lot of concern it has to be stable. I get both those things by not connecting it to the internet. Once in a while I would hook it up to upload files to my backup server, but I kept it clear of all the constant pinging in the background messengers and such, and safe from viruses and worms. There is no firewall that can match unplugging the network cord for protection.
I said I have two computers, and talked about one. The other one I use for a paperweight. Up until yesterday it was my internet connection. E-mail, messengers and viruses mostly. Every month or so I would just reformat the drive and start over. It was about half a step above a dumb terminal. Now it is a dead terminal. Power failure, and when the power came back on, it didn't. Dead player.
I have a lot of spare parts, and I'm sure I can cobble it back together. Here's the real problem. I now know how great it is doing my surfing and blogging on my superfast game machine. I might have a permanent paperweight.
posted by Tim @ 8:54 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Ah, welcome to my world! There used to be only one internet computer in the house...about two years ago. Once we got internet, all of a sudden, both of my 'gaming' computers were on the web. Without firewalls. 'Nuff said. Lesson learned...
Now that I have a laptop, 100% my own, nobody else uses it, I'm even more paranoid about protecting it. But, transferring files over a network or even CDs...is a hassle. So, I just let it be; I update my antivirus every week and run Ad-Aware. I use Opera as my primary internet browser, my cache is dumped at the click of a button. I've got my HDD partitioned into three sections, one for games, one for programs and one for the OS. I'd like to think I'm safe...
Anyway, the last resort, the final bulwark against the 'enemy' is something I've recently been introduced to. Every now and then, whenever I feel a 'significant' change has been made to my PC (installing something...etc), I run this neat little program called Acronis True Image. It basically creates a backup image of my entire HDD (and compresses it somewhat, pretty well too...). Should anything happen and my computer become unresponsive, I can choose to 'restore' to an older image. It's much cleaner than window's built-in system restore.
And I recently got an external HDD, allowing me to disconnect my images from the network, keeping them on a separate HDD altogether...
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