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Well my long suffering Dell all-in-one finally gave up the ghost.   Of course, I find now that what I thought was happening with cloud backups, wasn't.   (Kicking myself.   I know better than not to check things independently).     I've (for the short term) pretty much lost all the stories that were in progress (save what I could redownload from this site).   Notably, there's a whole new story that I'll have to start over plus lots of shorts that I've not posted waiting for ideas on how to develop them into other stories.

Crap... that and GoDaddy through some internal screwup failed to have all of my web stuff on the same credit card and trashed the WillNotWill.com site (though I have all of that backed up I'm pretty sure).    Still it's a big financial hit and even bigger of a time sink to get things going again.   Sorry for those of you who are waiting on new installments of "Visit from the Diaper Lady" or "Secret Lives of Altar Boys."   It's going to take a couple of weeks to get my IT situation back in order.

I may have to resort to a Patreon or other site.    Hopefully, the hard drive in the old Dell is still viable (at least for recovery purposes).   

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Never depend on the "cloud". Back the thing up locally on a drive separate from your OS or main drive (usually C:). If possible create a second backup on removable media (e.g. USB HDD; not a "flash" or "jump" stick. Go to removable media first, alternate non-system hard drive second, and "the cloud" lastly (or not at all). Copy the files manually or use a backup application (better idea than copying). Don't buy another all-in-one as these use cheap laptop components with a big screen. They usually are heavy because steel is used to try to cool the stupid thing as there are no fans. Stuff is "carved up" to fit and most of it is proprietary and complete junk. Hope this helps you recover in the futre.

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Yep, apparenlty the stupid onedrive doesn't back up SUBDIRECTORIES of the documents directory.     Blech, I hate MICROSOFT.

I had made a backup of the "in progress" directory, I THOUGHT, last week, but it seems to have not finished.   There's only six or so of the 30-40 files in that directory backed up.

At least my MAC backs up to the timecapsule (not that this wasn't problematic when the previous time capsule hard disk went TU).

No, no more All in one.   This one was a nightmare from day one (DAMNED DELL).   The hard drive has always had this bad habit of recallibrating itself at odd times.   This was a well known complaint of users but DeLL and the drive manufacturer refused to stand by things.       No, shopping for a decent tower.   What I need:

i7 8th generation (or better)
16GB memory
Preferably enough SSD for basic stuff plus a backing hard disk.,
GeForce 1600 or better.

Nice to haves:
Optical drive built in.
USB 3.

I intend to run multiple 4K monitors with the thing

 

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I hate Microsoft and DeLL TOO!!  :crybaby:  MS just keeps getting worse and is great at vioilating your privacy. Dumbed down peice of crap. DeLL just sucks. Sounds like you got things under control and got some valuable learning, though sorry to hear about the data loses. That always sucks. Don't install software on the SSD; if you can, put it on an alternate HDD. The SSD will last a longer. The downside is that things run slower. Dumbed down stupid software won't allow you to install the software somewhere else which is even stupider.

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Welcome to the club. I'm still reeling from a total crash and HDD replacement caused by a bad Windows update AND Verizon dropping it's email service which was about as stable as Trrump for over a year. Now I've lost my passwords to my facebook, Ebay, Paypal and Patreon accounts, which accounts I have to try and recover. Got back my google, DD, bank, Sweetwater and Arturia accounts

How old was the Dell AiO. I'm consdiering getting an HP AiO with a touchscreen, which was recommended by my computer tech

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It's about four or five years old.    Frankly, I hardly bothered with the touchscreen aspect of the thing and my wife kept inadvertently zapping windows as she insists on touching the screen while talking about things. 

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1 hour ago, Little Christine said:

Welcome to the club. I'm still reeling from a total crash and HDD replacement caused by a bad Windows update AND Verizon dropping it's email service which was about as stable as Trrump for over a year. Now I've lost my passwords to my facebook, Ebay, Paypal and Patreon accounts, which accounts I have to try and recover. Got back my google, DD, bank, Sweetwater and Arturia accounts

How old was the Dell AiO. I'm consdiering getting an HP AiO with a touchscreen, which was recommended by my computer tech

Please, please, please STAY AWAY from ANY All In One. All of them are complete crap. Just like in the old days, buy separate components. The best brand is one you build yourself. When you do that, you control the quality -- any "brand" uses the cheapest stuff they can find and often use proprietary components. They are usually expensive and have huge markups and expensive to fix. If you have the skills do it yourself. Get a password manager; I use Sticky Password; it's not free but if you like it, you can buy a lifetime license at a reasonable price.

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Do I look like I could DIY this thing?

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I'm comfortable with using a windows laptop - we've each got one in the family, which means mine can be strictly private.  Privacy & protection of my data from being harvested by others is of course a worry.  And so is the prospect of a disk failure.  I trust very little in the PC world.  I've got a network-connected mirrored disk drive purely for backup, & I take my backups by hand.  Not often enough, but at least I've got the confidence they will be there if I need them.  I've got a plug-in drive in the garage as well, & periodically I backup there too, in case of fire, theft etc.  I don't log on to Microsoft.  I don't use social media.  I don't use the cloud, apart from occasional use of Dropbox to give people access to files too big to email. I use Duckduckgo not Google, Firefox for browsing not Microsoft, Thunderbird for email not Microsoft.  I try to avoid Amazon, not always with success I must admit.

I know there'll still be vulnerabilities I don't know about.  My job used to be IT, & I can fix most things, but its still a nightmare sometimes when things go wrong.  If you're not an expert the whole thing can be a nightmare.

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Yup. My job too for 30+ years. Once you setup and follow data security practices, it's hard to stop. I do like you and don't use Google (even though DuckDuckGO uses Google search as its base). Now that net neutrality is gone, hopefully others will take up the mantle and create alternatives to Google that don't use any of its parts. A good antivirus will help too, but I don't really want to recommend one. Get the heck off of Facebook and Twitter (your life will be better without it). Try to minimize your exposure as much as possible. Don't get "click happy" on the web and check that the URLs begin with HTTPS; also check its name -- if it seems "off" to you, don't click it. Be safe.

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"The end of net neutralty" is the "Y2k" of our age. Which company do you think would want to be the first to go through the effort to monkey with the net and hand its customer base on a gold platter to companies that do not?

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On 6/13/2018 at 4:33 PM, Little Christine said:

Now I've lost my passwords to my facebook, Ebay, Paypal and Patreon accounts, which accounts I have to try and recover. Got back my google, DD, bank, Sweetwater and Arturia accounts

There are smartphone password manager apps out there, Some of them allow you to backup your password database to google chrome or onedrive in case you need to reset your phone or switch to a new one, Some of these apps even let you randomly generate passwords in-app.

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53 minutes ago, barnburner said:

There are smartphone password manager apps out there, Some of them allow you to backup your password database to google chrome or onedrive in case you need to reset your phone or switch to a new one, Some of these apps even let you randomly generate passwords in-app.

The apps are great but a lot of research is required before making a decision, you are giving an external party control of you acct logins, make sure they have good policies at the very least. An uncrackable password is trash if some database manager uses 1234 for their login or people fuck up with networking leaving things exposed to external networks that are supposed to be internal facing only.

On 6/13/2018 at 10:57 AM, willnotwill said:

Hopefully, the hard drive in the old Dell is still viable (at least for recovery purposes).   

I might be able to help on recovery, not right now though. I should have the time this winter.

Shot me a pm or dont.

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15 hours ago, Little Christine said:

"The end of net neutralty" is the "Y2k" of our age. Which company do you think would want to be the first to go through the effort to monkey with the net and hand its customer base on a gold platter to companies that do not?

Good comparison to Y2K. Innovation ran rampant in the old days of the net, but in recent times has shrunk and little innovation. Availability to web sites became less as Google and others controlled your search results and access to web sites. Many times, the only way you could get to some of these sites using their IP address. In the old days, there were published lists of IP addresses. The same holds true for the so called "dark web". I hope that smaller innovators can take on the big dinosaurs. The old ones are fat and slow; to get them to be more "open" is met with resistance. It's like turning around a ship in a small harbor while the smaller ones simply pivot. Under net neutrality, we were in a pot of water while slowly applying heat. By the time you realize you're cooking, it's too late. Well, the heat has been removed and the pot dumped out, dried, and put away. My hope is that there will be more competition and innovation, while the "big players' have to adapt or perish.

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Same thing happened to me a few months ago, my PC of 3 1/2 years died after a sudden power spike which my surge protector couldn't catch, sadly everything I had saved on the hard drive was lost as the spike fried the bios making everything irretrievable.  I mostly used it for gaming, and learned that quite a few of my games didn't use cloud (which I hadn't noticed) and so back to square one on quite a few games. Luckily some of it was saved on the cloud and a few screenshots I had wanted to keep from my games had been uploaded to the site one of my games unit hosts, lucky break there as we use those screenshots as proof of inter-unit achievements.

 

On a good note my new-er PC is better than the old one (though I may upgrade to a better one next year) as many of the games I want to play that are coming up will likely  require a faster processor (Running a 3.5 gig 6 core atm), will likely go with an 8-10 core for the next one, then offer this one up to either a fellow gamer or something if I do. So as long as this one doesn't die unexpectedly by next tax season someone either from FFXIV, MWO or here (if no one I play with in those games needs it). So keep an eye out next tax season. I may be doing a PC giveaway.

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On 6/14/2018 at 11:46 PM, barnburner said:

There are smartphone password manager apps out there, Some of them allow you to backup your password database to google chrome or onedrive in case you need to reset your phone or switch to a new one, Some of these apps even let you randomly generate passwords in-app.

That's why I use Sticky Password. It is seamless across platforms. I highly, highly discourage you from using ANY cloud service UNLESS your data is already encrypted or the cloud service encrypts it. Even then, I would only use it as another place to put it. NEVER, EVER rely on the cloud. It goes "poof" all the time! Sticky has encrypted cloud storage if you insist on using it. This password manager has no "back door", so if you lose it, it's gone. I am very uncomfortable with any "back door" mechanism because, in all cases, it is a "back door". I am exacting and very picky with software and this is the ONLY product I would consider.

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My tower died well over a year ago but it was the built-in video card so the HD shouldn't be hurt. That one has a huge number of business-related bookmarks and information on it. And a couple weeks ago my laptop started acting like the keyboard was dying again right before failed to even boot the BIOS one morning. Now on a cheap Android tablet which isn't compatabile with a lot of stuff I'm used to. I'm hoping to find something better soon. 

The loss of net neutrality will adversely affect everyone except those invested in the companies profiting from it. Only the super-rich corporations will be able to 'pay the ante' to get into the game before very long as small-timers won't have the money to compete against them. When you feel the pain from this, just remember who brought it to you. There could be a ray of light here if someone can develop something which somehow gets you past this but such things are well beyond me.

Bettypooh

 

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10 hours ago, Bettypooh said:

My tower died well over a year ago but it was the built-in video card so the HD shouldn't be hurt. That one has a huge number of business-related bookmarks and information on it. And a couple weeks ago my laptop started acting like the keyboard was dying again right before failed to even boot the BIOS one morning. Now on a cheap Android tablet which isn't compatabile with a lot of stuff I'm used to. I'm hoping to find something better soon. 

The loss of net neutrality will adversely affect everyone except those invested in the companies profiting from it. Only the super-rich corporations will be able to 'pay the ante' to get into the game before very long as small-timers won't have the money to compete against them. When you feel the pain from this, just remember who brought it to you. There could be a ray of light here if someone can develop something which somehow gets you past this but such things are well beyond me.

Bettypooh

 

The internet was a wide-open wild-west kind of town. Anybody can come in, produce a better product and people will flock to it. That's the beauty of the web. One place where size doesn't matter. Sure, the big guys always have an advantage. Yes, big companies may have slicker and bigger/better advertising budgets, however, big budges don't always win. Small companies often blow away bigger companies with superior quality products and good pricing. People flock to these companies. They become king of the hill until somebody else comes along and knocks them off the mountain. It's called competition and that's the last thing the big players want. The repeal of net neutrality takes the power away from the big guys. Under that regulation, the number of players actually contracted and fewer products seen. Yes, there was still a lot, but many were forced to offer duplicate products as innovation stopped or slowed.Now we're back to to a knock down, drag out fight which is goof for everyone. I know of several companies that didn't have the budgets to compete or overcome the regulatory hurdles and either went out of business or were sucked by by larger companies (getting bought and coming out with something is better than getting nothing). I know of some that "pulled the plug" and went out as a statement and/or as a matter of pride and accomplishment. Myself included.

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The thing is that for a product or service to be successful, it must become known. And if the big-money outfits buy the playing field (which they will) then nobody else will get to play on it. That game plan has worked for the oil companies, Microsoft, computer manufacturers, car makers, politics, and tons of other people whose product is marginal but whose pockets are deep. Net neutrality is about keeping an even playing field for everyone intact- nobody gets an advantage over anyone else at the start and anyone can play in the game if they want to. To create a buy-it system will cause even more regulations to be needed to administer it, so the end point will become a worse situation than we have now with a free and equally open internet even as crazy as it can sometimes be.

I haven't had the time to dig up another tower or laptop, perhaps this weekend. As addicted as I am to the internet I can't risak having this one last cohnnection die before then.

Bettypooh

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8 hours ago, Bettypooh said:

The thing is that for a product or service to be successful, it must become known. And if the big-money outfits buy the playing field (which they will) then nobody else will get to play on

As long as fallible human beings and their natures exist, neither anti-trust nor regulation will ever level the "playing" field. Why? In either case, someone or some group determines who wins and who loses. Reasons are as varied as the number of people: relationships, biases, bribes, size and more. In order to create and maintain a level playing field the best tool we have is competition. Is it perfect? No, but it is the best path we have for those with the drive, ambition, ideas and creativity to develop and market products successfully. They'll get big and be king of the hill until someone with the same opportunity knocks them off their hill. And it repeats. With regulation the same old ideas are recycled over and over again, expecting a different result. That's insanity. Not everyone gets a trophy.

I hope you're successful  conclusion to your computer adventures.

 

 

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14 hours ago, ppdude said:

I hope you're successful  conclusion to your computer adventures.

Thank You for the wishes, but me and computers together usually doesn't end very well. My dead laptop was only a few years old, bought new. It's predecessor was awesome, at least ten years old, quicker, and with great battery life. It was the best computer of any sort I've ever had but XP maxxed it out and nothing lasts forever. The HD and battery died together so it wasn't worth pushing it any further.

I'm with you on compettition being good, but it only works when it is fair to everyone, and not just a select group. When done that way it takes the least regulation to maintain order. When the select group only has access or ability to compete, it tends to become a mud-slinging hatefest with opposing your 'enemy' taking priority over advancing the art. Nobody really gains from that because so much effort gets spent fighting that less is available to move forward.

There has to be some regulation with everything, nothing goes well when it's totally ignored. If that is done wisely, fairly, and minimally you get the best results from it. That is why I don't want to see any part of the internet's operation being sold to the highest bidder, or for certain entities to be given priority over someone else. If it's not equal to all, then we all will suffer from the loss and only the preferred entity(s) will gain. Eventually only those preferred ones will be left with the ability to be in the game and at that point competition and the good it brings dies.

Bettypooh

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I used to buy PC after PC since honestly I believe we were experimental money-makers for the different major PC makers.  I finally moved away to the iMac which has lasted (knock on wood) literally forever compared, a vast improvement.  However, I did have to move to console games.  

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