1 and 2 terabyte drive prices are now priced as commodities and they are easy to plug in and back up a hard drive on a PC.

They ensure those precious family photos and even the great American novel aren’t lost in a power surge or carelessly slopped cup of steaming coffee. The only hard part about back-up these days is remembering to do it. Second Copy has been around long enough now to be called a veteran at rescuing people from hard drive disasters. Instead of remembering to back the data up, say, every Saturday afternoon, Second Copy (not free but inexpensive considering its importance) is extremely easy to use. It solicits answers to simple questions: Which files? Copy them where? When and how? With about 5 clicks a back-up regime is created: daily, weekly, whenever. Plug the drive in, set Second Copy running and a faithful back-up of your important data is created whenever you told it to be. Simple.

I am an frequent traveler and I frequently find myself on all parts of the globe. I am also a geek at heart which is why I like to bring my toys with me. But which is the most vital and important toy I bring. My laptop? DVD cam? Digital Camera? Smart Phone? It is actually my flash drive.

I have a inexpensive password encrypted flash drive that I carry with me at all times. When I travel, my drive contains scanned images of my passport, drivers license, medical insurance card, travelers checks, all my credit cards (both sides), and of course my flight and lodging information. Right when I check in, my flash drive is usually hidden in my belongings or locked in a safe upon my arrival. It is my ultimate backup for everything. The information that it contains is absolutely priceless when you most need it.

Generally speaking, if you do wind up needing it, you are most likely in a time of crisis. I also store some photos and video from my home, just in case something happens when I am gone, I then have a current inventory of my belongings. You will appreciate this if you ever have to deal with an insurance company. Another handy feature is a current list of phone numbers. This may sound a bit too simple but if you own a cell phone as most people do, most people program numbers in and never actually dial them anymore. If your phone was lost or stolen, how many numbers do you remember. These are just a few new ways for you that you may want to think about using your hand little flash drive like I do.

A long standing condition of Microsoft operating systems is the loose control of memory for applications.

Use of a third party application to reduce memory use or reclaim unused yet unavailable memory is fairly commonplace. One such program is Minimem, a freeware memory optimizer developed by Kerkia. Originally, the program was developed to help deal with memory issues related to Firefox. Later it was expanded to optimize unlimited system processes with full user control. Minimem runs in the background and uses pooling to keep CPU use at a bare minimum. Users running multiple applications or programs with large memory footprints will definitely see an improvement in their system resources. It is also really handy to tame programs with memory leaks. The interface is very easy to use and requires no advance level of technical knowledge to choose processes. Specify an amount of memory to filter out smaller processes and decide which ones you want to optimize. A threshold of minimum available memory can be set before Minimem will even take effect. You can also set it to ignore processes that are in the foreground to limit any possible performance issues.