If you run windows and want help, this document is for you.

Running any computer costs money and time. You obviously want to maximize the benefit for your investment into your computer. Many people don't fully consider the total cost of ownership when they start in. In addition to the hardware and software you purchased with the computer, there are three other costs that are often not fully understood and therefore not dealt with. Those are

If anyone has any sources for how much time or money people invest in these problems, I'd love to reference it here. I'd guess that people spend $50 / yr in software, but more importantly 3-4 weeks worth of hours in time. That doesn't even factor in the mental frustration caused by these problems. When it comes to loosing files, many people would pay quite a handsome fee if someone could wave a magic want and recover your important documents. Unfortunately sometimes there is no amount of magic that can bring back your lost files. If you were convinced that addressing these problems early would mitigate these problems significanly, would't you agree that it would be worth it to do so?

Applications / Data

Just as many users buy a computer with windows and don't understand the cost with operating it long-term, they also decide to use applications without understanding the consequenses of using that application.

It's important to understand that applications are built to store and process data. Data may be your pictures, emails, video, or accounting data. Data is always saved in files on your hard drive, unless they are stored online.

Now that you understand that, these are the important questions to ask yourself about every application that you use.

Microsoft Word stores your documents in files located in the My Documents folder. In that case, the application gives you the choice as to where you save your files. My Documents is just the default location. If you run Outlook, you probably don't know that your data is stored in a PST file and I bet you don't know where it is. In many programs like outlook, you just start entering data and you don't know in which files the data is stored. How can you backup your data if you don't know where it is? If you don't understand the directories, it would be in your interest to read Directory (file systems) and File systems under Microsoft Windows on Wikipedia.

Let's say you do know where the file is. Do you know if the format of the file can be read by other programs? Is the file format standardized? Is there an industry format for the data that is saved in the file, and does the application support it? If it can not, then you're only going to be able to open it with the same program you always have. This is called vendor lock in. Do you want to be stuck paying for every $100 upgrade of every program that you use? If the file format is standarized, you'll be able to take your data to a cheaper alternative if one should become availabe. You be able to backup the files and you'll be able to access your data. You can email files to people and ensure that they'll have the software to read them. Here are some examples of commonly used standardized file formats

Extention Format Created by Open Standardized
pdf Portable Document Format Adobe Yes submission to ISO
gif Graphics Interchange Format CompuServ No no, but widly supported
jpg/jpeg Joint Photographic Experts Group JPEG Yes ISO 10918-1
png Portable Network Graphics PNG Development Group Yes ISO/IEC 15948:2003
doc Word Document Microsoft No No
doc Word Document Microsoft No No
odt OpenDocument Text OASIS Yes ISO/IEC 26300

Read We Can Put an End to Word Attachments to get more information about the importance of the format of your files.

Some programs may require a proprietary format, but standardized formatted data can be exported. This is less than ideal because now to backup your data, you may have to export it periodically.

In the case of online applications like GMail, they already have very redundant backup systems in place so daily backups aren't the issue. You can export the data such as your addressbook when you need to if you decide to switch programs later.

Many people believe that the software you use should be Free and Open Source. It's hard to disagree with this statement if there are free viable alternatives out there. There is a good article worth reading called Why Open Source Software / Free Software.

If you don't understand these issues, you need to find someone or some company that can help you use the applications you want. Otherwise you may find yourself in an awkward position and you may be forced to spend money you don't want to or lean on you disgruntled geek when they don't have time to help you. Take their recommendation on an application to perform a task. Ask these questions to them so that you understand these issues for each application you use.

Applications / Installers

Many people are confused about applications. Applications are files too, so why can't they be backed up? For most windows programs to run however, they need the files in the Application's directly (usually installed in "Program Files"), but they also need files in the windows directory that may be shared with other applications. Knowning which of those files it needs is very difficult. Programs also depend on registry entries. The registry is a place designed to store program settings and programs can't work with out that. Not only is it very difficult to find the registry entries that a specific program uses, it's a manual process backing those values up.

This complexity is why programs have Installers or setup programs. Installers are programs too, but they don't need registry settings or non-standard files in the windows directory to run. They copy the files that the application needs to the correct place and they setup the registry. This is why if you purchase a program online and download the application, you need to save the Installer somewhere so that you can re-install it later.

Backups

The backup problem is easy enough for you to deal with own your own. There's only one question to ask. Do you have files that should be stored in another city so that you could keep your files in case of a flood or some other natural disaster? If so, you need an online data backup system like Geek Squad Online Data Backup. If not, then you can get setup ntbackup to send data to an external hard drive. See Windows XP Backup Made Easy. Regardless which method you choose, you need to check periodically that your backups are working.

Windows Degradation

I refer to Windows degradation as the slowing and mis-functioning of computers that run windows over time. This is mostly due to two problems:

It's important to talk about protecting against viruses. Virus scanning software is an option, but it's only effective if the virus scanning software is 100% up to date and and it's only effective against viruses that it knows about. Another disadvantage is that your system will run quite a bit slower with it installed. An alternative approach is to:

This method of virus protection is risky, but has proven to be effective as many geeks use it. Also I assert that ultimately being able to restore your system from an image mitigates any risk of viruses and also allows your computer to run at maximum speed.

The Methods

There are two camps of thought in dealing with windows degradation.

Install more software that claims to help the problem

While this may help in the short term, it will hurt in the long term. In my experience, windows runs faster with less programs installed. Furthermore, virus scanners, add blockers, and spyware detectors serve to slow things down by a factor of 2 or 3. I will not help people implement this method, because I don't use it and so I don't keep up with it, and because I don't think it's any many people's best interest.

Reinstall everything as needed

Your computer will simply run better and faster if you choose this method. Most geeks use this method (or run Ubuntu Linux). However, if you're like most users dealing with this problem requires extra help. There are two key areas of help that you need.

You may be able to do parts of the work on your own or you can pay geeksquad. Geeksquad is setup to help people do both methods, but you need to be able to tell them what to do.

Your Decisions Effect Cost

It's important to understand that the decisions you make impact your cost of ownership. To fully understand this, you must understand a little about applications and the data that they store.

Example Costs

To illustrate that choices effect cost, I'll show you reinstall costs based on a fiew decisions.

Typical Decisions

If you are like most people, you run Windows, some form of Outlook, store everything where it says to by default, have no backup of any of your files. If your computer became slow or completely non-functional, this is what would have to be done if a reinstall was necessary.

The cost of that at geeksquad would likely be ~ $400 in store or ~ $1,000 for home service. See the menu items you would need below and their respective costs. Lets say you did this once every year to keep the system snappy and you kept your computer for 6 years. The TCO on a $800 desktop would be $466 per year (5 reinstalls) for in store service or $966 for at home service if you don't like unplugging your computer to bring it in. The reinstall headache actually makes it cost effective to buy a new computer before upgrading even when the hardware doesn't need to be replaced.

Smart decisions

There are certain truths that have an impact on reinstall costs.

If you

This is significantly less to deal with and your cost should reflect that.

Imaging

This brings me to the point of what I belive is the final step. That is disk imaging. There are many tools out there that image disks. Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, and Microsoft imagex. If you had an image of your main disk and all of your data was separate, then reimaging the disk would be one step. If the image included Windows, Office, Firefox and they were all setup the way you wanted, you can retrieve all of that with one step. You would likely pay $29 for in store service or $129 for at home service. Restoring from a disk should only take 15 minutes!

The main hurdle is that you have to setup the computer with two drives, and create the image. If your computer already has important files, you first need to back them up. (see solutions above) Here are the steps:

If you have someone help you with the initial setup it will cost about as much as a a reinstall, but subsequent re-imaging can be done for MUCH less.

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