Do as I Say, Not as I Do

You've heard it many times over: Practice what you preach. Those who can, do. Those who can't, write columns.

This month, I decided to evaluate my actions to see if I was following my own advice. Listed here are a few things I did right and wrong.

All Backed Up
As I watched the cars floating in the floodwaters this past August, I was secure in the knowledge that even if my office flooded (it did) or was unreachable (it was), my data was safe and accessible.

It is essential to have at least one copy of your data at an off-site location far away from your main office. You can save the data via a hosting or Internet service or, if you are disciplined, do it yourself via USB drives or other media. Some people prefer to take the data home, trade it with business associates across town or use safety deposit boxes. But be careful when transporting and storing data. We've all read too many cases of data being lost or stolen from an employee's car or laptop.

Two other backup practices I repeat ad nauseam are to do it regularly and occasionally restore the data. I was able to work remotely while geysers shot up through the sinks in my office and cars floated down the street. Therefore, in my opinion, I scored big on this one.

Cyber Swindled
However, I was not as successful with the next issue. Back in the day, registering a domain name cost $35 per year. But now there are many less-expensive options. Since I work on a lot of different Web projects, I often search for available domain names and lock them in for under a sawbuck.

But this time I made a mistake that, in fact, is often made by thousands of others, too. There are unscrupulous people out there who monitor domain names that were previously searched for and then scoop them up. For example, if you are considering the site address www.newventureabc.com, you'll want to search for it on one of the domain-name registrars. If the name is available but you decide to wait to purchase it (maybe you want to think it over), the domain weasels may swarm in and grab the name, hoping that you'll be willing to pay them big bucks for it.

So on that wet August day, I searched for an obscure, very specific name (really of no use to anyone else), but got distracted by a few phone calls. By the time I checked back the next morning, some weasel (a company in Texas) had grabbed the name and a few variations of it. That company, I'm sure, has no intention of using it, but will gladly sell it to me for a ridiculous premium. No thanks.

This happens frequently, and I have warned clients and readers about it for some time now, but even I got burned this time. The lesson here: Make sure you are ready to close the deal on important domain names, and don't just check if your clever creations are available, because they won't be for long.

Fresh Start with Vista
I did score points on my own advice regarding Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007. I strongly suggest buying new hardware to do a clean install of Windows Vista instead of trying to upgrade a Windows XP PC that is a few years old. This is the case because Vista needs modern hardware to work optimally, so why upgrade if you don't have the components to make it sing? The video card, for example, must be a name-brand screamer with 512MB or more to really experience the cool Aero interface.

I followed my own advice on this one and built new, powerful PCs for my Vista systems. And, yes, I am happy with the results.

Another piece of advice is to upgrade to Vista or Office 2007, but not both at the same time. XP users will pick up on Vista fairly quickly, but there are differences. Office users will definitely have a learning curve with this new version. Office 2007 doesn't use the familiar menu system to which everyone is accustomed. It uses a context-sensitive Ribbon interface that you'll hate for the first week of use, but you'll soon come to wonder how you ever got along without it. And Office 2007 saves files in a default format that is not natively compatible with older versions of Word, Excel, etc., so don't just jump into the transition.

By upgrading to either Vista or Office 2007 and spending time learning one before upgrading the other, the transition will be smoother. As “Alpha Geek,” I did not follow my own advice and had some heated arguments with the PC. However, I did have the foresight to not upgrade my main production PC right away. This way I could still get work done as I wrestled with the new systems.

Suckered by Symantec
I used to be tech giant Symantec's biggest fan and recommended Norton products to everyone. But after being burned far too many times by bugs and terrible support services, I started weaning myself and others off Symantec tools in favor of other brands. But in the end, I got a “good deal” on several Norton SystemWorks programs and ignored my own advice.

I loaded the CD on a system with an earlier version of SystemWorks and after a while it not only crashed my PC, but made it unbootable. Luckily, I know how to recover from such situations, but many people would panic. Hoping it was an aberration, I tried another PC and had similar disastrous results.

I did not bother to spend hours on a tech-support call that would lead nowhere as usual. Instead, I simply removed the offending software and installed a competitor's product — seamlessly. 

I strayed from my own advice against using software that wants to be king of your PC (that means you, Norton, Real, QuickTime, AOL, etc.), but it won't happen again.