Slashdot Mirror
4 Tips For Your New Laptop
Yes, a lot of this will be obvious stuff to techies, but I've found that if a human asks a techie "I just got a new laptop, can you give me any advice?", the answer frequently will (a) not cover these crucial bases, and/or (b) include a lot of unhelpful stuff to impress the listener. The following is a baseline for what I think a useful answer should consist of. (And if you're the techie, you may want to walk the laptop owner through following these directions, since I'm not actually spelling out what icons you have to click on, etc.)
(1) If you don't want to pay for an anti-virus program, at least install a free one.
Your PC probably came with a trial version of an anti-virus program that will stop working after a month unless you upgrade to the paid version. Of course you can do that if you want. Especially if you ever think you might want phone tech support for your anti-virus software, I expect it's better for a product that you've paid money for.
On the other hand, I know people who thought that if they didn't want to pay for the upgrade to their PC's default anti-virus program, their only option was to let it expire and let their computer run unprotected. If you don't want to pay for a non-free program, install a free one -- Wikipedia has a list of 15 different free or freemium anti-virus products for Windows. PC Magazine gave their "Editor's Choice" award for best free Windows anti-virus to Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 1.70 in 2013 and AVG Anti-Virus Free in 2012, so either of those will work.
(Yes, I know you guys know this. But pass the word on to your Mom or kid brother with the new laptop.)
(2) Save files to a folder that is automatically mirrored to the cloud, for effortless backups.
The era in which everybody talks about backing up, but nobody actually does it, should have ended completely in 2013. Old-style backups, even the incredibly easy options, still mostly required you stop what you were doing for a minute, connect to a remote server or connect a piece of hardware to your computer, and twiddle your thumbs while waiting for some copy process to execute. So nobody bothered.
With cloud-mirrored folders, there's no excuse any more. I found out about Dropbox by asking a mailing list, "I would really like it if there were an online backup service that let me open and close files from a local folder so that there was no delay, but as soon as I made any changes, would automatically be queued to be backed up over the network to a remote host," and my listmates said, "That already exists." Windows 8 comes with the similar SkyDrive service already built in.
You can read a detailed comparison of Dropbox vs. SkyDrive vs. Google Drive, but the key point is to use one of them to mirror one of your local folders to the cloud, and get into the habit of saving stuff to that folder. Obviously this may not apply to you if you have something special going on (if you're creating large multimedia files that won't fit within the several-gigabyte limit imposed by these services, or if your privacy concerns are great enough that you don't want to back up files online), but it's good enough for most people. The horror stories about people saving months or years of writing, and then losing it all in a hard drive crash, should never happen to anyone again.
(3) Create a non-administrator guest account, in case a friend needs to borrow the computer.
Some of my friends and relatives have no problem telling people, "No, I don't care if you need to check the weather, you can't touch my computer!" But if you can't resist the urge to be helpful if someone needs to borrow your laptop for a few minutes, then eventually one of those people will mess it up somehow -- either by installing a game, or visiting a website that installed malware on your computer, or just changing a system setting that you can't figure out how to change back.
When the day comes when someone needs to borrow your computer, you may be too rushed or might not know how to create an unprivileged non-administrator account that they can log in under. So go ahead and do it when your computer is brand new, while the thought is still fresh in your mind. Then if people who borrow your computer sign in under that account, in almost all cases, nothing that they do while logged in should interfere with your user experience when you log them off and log back in as yourself.
That's not a completely secure solution to stop someone from accessing private files on your computer. (There are many pages describing how to boot up a Windows machine from a Linux CD, in order to access files on the computer -- they are usually described as "disaster recovery" options, but they can also be used to access files on a PC without the password.) However, it will stop most casual users from messing up your computer while they borrow it.
(4) Be aware of your computer's System Restore option as a way of fixing mysterious problems that arose recently.
I say "be aware" because, unlike the other three tips, this may not ever be something that you have to actually do. However, intermediate-level computer users just need to understand what it means: to restore your computer's settings and installed programs to a recently saved snapshot, while leaving your saved files untouched. This means if your computer has started acting funny in the last couple of days, you may be able to fix the problem by restoring to a snapshot that was saved before the problems started.
Intermediate users sometimes confuse this with either (a) restoring files from backup, or (b) doing a system recovery (which generally refers to restoring your computer to the state in which it left the factory). So if you're the techie doing the explaining, make sure they understand the difference. (A system recovery will often fix problems, too, but then of course you'll have to re-install all your software; a system restore is more convenient since it only undoes the most recent system changes.)
So these are the first four things I would tell people who were the recipient of a new laptop. What would you tell them?
News for noobs,
Stuff that doesn't matter.
and you are going to have to support it, buy them either an iPad or a Chromebook.
ERROR: Null
Augh! A mirrored folder to the cloud is _not_ backup! If you delete a file from the folder, that gets mirrored into the cloud so it's gone there too. If you overwrite a file in the mirrored folder, that gets mirrored to the cloud and it's changed there too. This is the same story as RAID drives. That's adding redundancy/resiliency. In the event of a failure of your local drive, yes, there's a second copy elsewhere. But in the event of "oops, I accidentally deleted a file I wanted to keep" you're out of luck.
If they may need Office... a Windows RT machine is pretty good too and requires the same low level of support as iPad or Chromebook.
This space for rent.
Create a non-administrative account for yourself, not just your guests. You are a security problem too.
Umm. Malwarebytes is a *removal* tool that doesn't offer real-time virus scanning. It's only useful after the machine is infected. It scares me when a "how-to" post has only 4 points, and one of them is so blisteringly wrong that it makes you suspect the OP doesn't actually know how to drive a computer.
1) If you buy a new Win 8 laptop, immediately replace with your favorite Linux flavor. Don't even bother with dual boot.
2) If you are unfamiliar with Linux or how to install it, then buy a Mac.
3) Don't ask me for Win 8 support. I don't know. I don't want to know. Windows 8 is dead to me :)
This reminds me of a computer tip that a non-computer savvy person will tell their non-computer savvy friends, who then end up calling tech support for a product that doesn't support their home setup, and then the person on the other end has to explain how real-life works (me). 1. Don't rely on an anti-virus program. Your primary defense is a. not being stupid (which is doing things like visiting pron sites, sites with tons of popups, etc), install noscript, and if you must, periodically install anti-virus and run a full scan. 2. Cloud isn't a backup. If you want a backup, spend a little bit of effort. If your stuff is important, back it up yourself. Use your brain and use redundancy if it's actually important to you. 3. Don't let pesky friends use your computer, especially unsupervised. You don't know what kind of sites they are going to visit and what malware they are going to install. 4. Never use system restore. Just backup your stuff, don't install malware (or "Free" programs that want to install themselves with your real programs) and don't follow horrible tips on slashdot (which I would have expected more of)
"(2) Save files to a folder that is automatically mirrored to the cloud, for effortless backups."
NO. Fuck off already. I never want to hear anyone suggesting/promoting "the cloud" again.
"The cloud" is newspeak for "somebody else's computer".
If you're buying a laptop for anyone competent, they won't be running Windows on it (or if the do, it's their problem). If you're buying a laptop for anyone incompetent, they shouldn't be running Windows on it. Patching a hopelessly insecure operating system with anti-virus and other bloatware is so twentieth century. Chrome OS is a far better solution for non-technical users.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
If your mom is that much of an evil person, just stay away, you will be happier.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If you don't have antivirus, you shouldn't have a computer.
Someone above said:
Editors, please stop pandering to the lowest common denominator end user who will never read Slashdot anyhow
Now here's living proof that there /are/ such people on slashdot after all, seeing this one even thinks Windows and computers are someone the same.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I always get them to buy good quality computer protection software like Norton 360
You lost all credibility with this sentence...
Please stop approving Bennet "stories." He's a Roland Junior that everyone loves to hate. You're tech savvy, aren't you? Surely you know this submission is some pretty rank tripe.
TYVM HAHNY
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.