Sky Drive – Home Contents Backup

I recently saw a video about Joplin’s tornado and it said that people were being offered 50% of their contents insurance unless they could provide a written list of everything in the house. I have about $250,000 contents insurance. That means I could potentially take a $125,000 loss.

I decided to take a picture of my house and everything in it. I wasn’t that meticulous, but did open up all the doors and closets etc.

After about 1.5 hours and 477 pictures, I was done. I then downloaded the pictures to my computer – 2.7 gb.

I was taking high resolution (6000 x 4000 jpg – 350 dpi) pictures so that I could zoom in and identify all of my contents later.

The question then became – where can I put these pictures so that later I could retrieve them in the case of a calamity – my answer was SkyDrive. As a previous user, SkyDrive recently gave me 25gb for free as I upgraded my account.

While I could have used Google Drive, they only offer me 5 gb of space and they resize the pictures to 2048×2048. I needed original quality size pictures.

In SkyDrive, make sure you uncheck the box which says Resize photos to 2048 pix.

I made a folder in SkyDrive and then added all my 477 pictures to the folder. It naturally took a while, but I feel better now knowing that my pictures are relatively safe in the cloud.

Search Everything

If you have lots of files on your computer, you may want to install – VoidTools – Search Everything.

It will index your entire computer and help you find files in short order.  According to Paul from winsupersite.com, it’s much faster than using windows.

It runs in the background or you can just start it up and it will update its index.

Note – it doesn’t index the file contents – only file and folder names.

Remote Support for Free – Team Viewer

One of my tech-gurus, Robert Heron, mentioned that he used Team Viewer as a way to give tech support for his mom.

You could also use it to remotely access your computer.

Being free for personal use is great since I wouldn’t use this very often.

Garmin Nuvi 2460LMT Review

Setup

- After you connect, it’s supposed to open the MyDashboard – it didn’t.
- I had to go online to garmin.com/dashboard.
- You then have to download a Garmin plugin, close your browser, open your browser and then allow the plugin to run.
- Go back to garmin.com/dashboard – allow the plugin – Refresh.
- Finally I got to MyDashboard and downloaded some system updates and a British male and female voice.

The instructions now were:
1. Disconnect your device from the computer and manually restart it using the power button..When the restart process is complete, turn the device off.
3. Reconnect your device to your computer and wait 30 seconds.

Maps
- You have two options for maps – you can download a program to run in the background to automatically check for new maps or download a program to run and do this on a one-time basis. I did a one-time update – I don’t need more junk running on my computer.
- Even though I just bought the device, there was a new North America map update.
- It took about an hour to download and update the unit.

So in all it probably took 1 1/2 hours to setup the new garmin – not too bad, but not ideal.

Operation
- One of the first things I noticed is that this model doesn’t connect via the regular mini-usb plug I have, but a smaller micro plug – don’t lose this usb cord!
- The manual is online so you will have to download it.  I printed it out – 4 pages/page and I’m slowly going through it – 19 pages total.
- When you update, you can download different voices. We tried the British woman’s voice, but she was using words we weren’t familiar with, so we’re going back to the American voice.
-  The car base attaches to the window only. You can order a base for the dashboard for free. The cord attaches to the base – not the unit.
- One nice feature is the ability to change the Main Menu to features you like.
-  A number of people don’t like the Traffic Ads, but to turn them off you have to turn the Traffic feature off – Tools – Settings – Traffic  - Disabled.  For some reason this does not show up unless you have the unit plugged into the cars power adapter.

Note – I was comparing this to the 2555LMT model which is similar in price.
The 2460 has these extra features – Bluetooth, powered mount, and voice commands.

I bought this particular unit mainly for the larger 5″ screen and the free lifetime map updates.

Google Drive – I’ve Got my 5 GB

I just got my invitation for my 5GB of space of Google Drive.

It appears that they initially import over all your google docs files and folders.

The only question I have is – Why would I want to install one more thing onto my computer? Google Drive seems to work just fine without installing anything. I can still create and upload files, just like in the old google docs – which worked just fine for me.

Amazon Cloud Drive – Another 5GB for Free

I just noticed that Amazon has given me 5 GB of storage in their cloud drive.

It seems to work similar to google docs, but not google drive. You don’t have to install anything. Unfortunately, I don’t see anywhere to share a file or folder with anyone else.

Google Drive – 5 GB for Free

Drive. Google.com is finally up and running, but still not ready for business.
Click on the “Notify Me” link to have an email sent to you when it’s available.

They give you 5 GB of space for free.

An extra 25 GB will cost $30/year.

One nice feature is – you can now open thirty different file types – HD video, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop files etc., without having the programs on your computer.

You can share files or folders, start discussion,s and let others view, edit or comment on your stuff.

File Encryption – not available for you to encrypt before they get it – so be careful what your post. It is encrypted online, but they have the key.

You will have to install a program on your computer/smart phone to use Google Drive.

Below is a link to compare Google Drive with other online storage.

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