North Coast Connections

You wrote: "DON'T USE A SURGE PROTECTOR".

Better yet, use an Uninterruptible Power Source (UPS). Not only do they offer surge protection, if you have a power outage they keep your computer powered up long enough to shut it down safely.

You can buy a UPS at Staples for under $100, depending on how much power you need. The more juice your computer uses, the more power (and thus more expensive) you'll need.

Still, the UPS I bought for my high power Alienware machine cost something like $127, before sales tax.

Remember, they're only meant to supply a clean source of power and outage protection. They're not meant to continue running the computer (other than to shut it down) in a power outage.

I know a local businessman who bought a UPS for his shop computers. He was somewhat ignorant of how the UPS worked.

The power went out at his business one day and he was working on the computer. The computer kept running and he thought, "how cool!" and kept on doing what he was doing. After about 15 minutes, the UPS battery drained and the computer went dead.

He lost all his data and had to pay someone something like $5000 to restore his data.

If he would have used the extra power to just shut down his computer, he would have saved himself thousands of dollars. He didn't know that, though. He thought using the UPS was akin to running his computer on a generator. It's not.

Right you are, Fred. A good UPS is better than a good surge protector. My trouble is that I leave my computer on and unattended for too long, so I can only shut down the computer if I'm here when the outage occurs.

I also lost a UPS once during a particularly nasty power surge, but those are the breaks.

Indeed. Things can go awry under the best of planning.

I'm not sure, but I think the software that comes with the UPSs that I use will shut down your PC for you if you leave your PC unattended and the power goes out.

I've had a couple outages and was present to manually turn mine of when I heard the UPS beep (aside from the fact it's usually obvious when you have an outage).

But seems to me, back when I installed the accompanying software, there were all kinds of messages, alerts and functions you could use the software to perform. If memory serves me correct, one of the functions was shutting down your pc after power was out for a certain amount of time (you set the time limit).

Never got around to using them in an actual outage because I didn't install the software on my Alienware and uninstalled it from my other desktop.

It was just one more program to load at boot up and run and some of the messages I'd get from the program I found more of an annoyance than anything else.

But, if I were the type to just leave my computer on all the time, I'd reconsider and perhaps use the software to cover for me.

Get a Mac.

I bought my current PC after my last one had a "kernal" error - not something you want to see. I told the sales/tech guy I was the worst file back-up user ever. They got my data transfered from the dead box, thankfully, to this dual 250 gig, mirrored drives puter. No more worries!

Failing to back-up files (regardless of whether you use a Mac or Windows PC) is a huge problem. It's like failing to have batteries, flashlight, water and food in case of an earthquake or extended power outage.

Robb's "mirrored" drive is a good solution, but I got around this by an automated Internet back-up service called Ibackup.com. You can research other back up solutions at:

www.BackupCritic.com

I have an external 250 GB Firewire drive on my Mac. I use SuperDuper (shareware) to run scheduled backups of both internal drives to seperate partitions on the external.

Ironically in some 15 years I have never needed the backup. But I will never be without one.

Mike ... I have a Coleman stove with fuel stored in my garage that I've never used either, but in case of a days-long power outage or severe earthquake, it's there to make hot meals WHEN I need it.

I am a BIG Mac fan and used them exclusively in my early computing years. However, as I entered the IT consulting field, I had to use the machines my clients used. I don't recall ever having to restore backed up files on my Macs, but I have done so too many times to admit on my and my client's PCs.

THANKS for your comments!!

As a techie doing tech support for companies around the northcoast and in a previous life, a local tech support company, I want to thank you for bringing a bit of reality to users who may not otherwise give a second thought to their computer use.

I want to comment though, on the assertion that an 8-character letter-based password is easier to crack than a 4-character mixed letter and number password.

Assuming the 8-character letter based password is in either all upper or all lower case there are approximately 200 Billion combinations that can be used. 26 ^ 8 yields 208,827,064,576 according to google math
A four-character password with 36 options (26 letters and numerals 0-9) yields just 1.6 million combinations. Google says 1,679,616 I think we can agree that cracking a combination of 1.6 million would take less time.

While I agree with the thrust of your argument: that people need to use stronger passwords, it does not follow that merely combining letters and numbers in passwords will accomplish this goal.

With businesses, identities and our personal finances all at substantial risk from weak passwords it is without a doubt a necessity to choose strong passwords.

Most security experts suggest random combinations, but it's wishful thinking because who can remember them all?

A common trick I've found useful is using a phrase from a song or book replacing the first letter with either a letter, number, or character. For example:

Twas the Night Before Christmas And All Through the House ...

becomes:

(replace T's with 2's or 3's or whatever you like as long as you remember)

Is it perfect? No. Adding characters like #&$($)!@ is better, but remember there are a lot of sites and systems that disallow extended characters.

I figure if it's going to take some hacker 60+ hours (on the speediest networked supercomputer) or approximately 700 years on a personal computer using standard decryption standards -- they will have earned the priviledge of knowing they have wasted their time getting my financials ;)

Again, thanks for the tips and good luck to all out there in cyber.

R. Walker

Wow, Rob. Good comments ...

The 4 versus 8 character password recommendation came from a presentation I heard last year by Peter Tippett, a sort of cyber security contrarian and founder of what became Norton Utilities. Among the justifications he gave for this recommendation were the reduced risk of "social engineering," reduced help desk intervention for those who forget the passwords and the ease with which cracking software can detect dictionary words no matter the length. The group he was addressing were 75+ court CIOs from around the US, and his client list includes Fortune 500, government and military.

His main point was that no single solution would provide 100% protection, and adopting a mandatory 8-character password requirement did not yield a return on investment of headaches. Instead, he recommended a series of 85% solutions that, combined, came MUCH closer to 100% protection.

I should have elaborated on this point because on its face, you're correct ... the mathematical combinations to crack a 4-character password are less than those to crack an 8-character password.

Thanks ... I appreciate the discourse. Cheers !!