Why (And How) Should I Back Up My Web-Based Email?

It wasn’t always this way, but I am a big fan of web-based email.  I realize that all email, to some extent, is web-based, but I am talking about dedicated web-based email services such as Yahoo and Google give. They charge nothing and give us more email storage space than most of us will ever be able to use. I am a fan of these email services mainly for two reasons. First is accessibility. I can go anywhere and use anyone’s computer and access my email. Second is reliability. Although I have had hard drives crash and have traded one computer for another many times my email is always there waiting for me. When I have to reload a customer’s computer and find out they are using Microsoft Outlook I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. I know that unless they have backed up their email, which most have not, they have lost, not just their years of email, but all their email addresses also. I immediately turn missionary and try to convert them to a Yahoo Mail, Gmail, or Hotmail email account. But just recently I have been made aware that I may have made too much of the reliability of web-based email.

Web-Based Email Is Safe, Right?
My clients who use Outlook who have lost their email usually have lost it due to hard drive failure, a really nasty virus that destroys data, or to user error where they have accidentally erased their data. They can’t restore their email from the email server because in almost all cases they have told the server to erase email that has been downloaded (usually by default). These are things I have never heard of happening on Yahoo, Google, or MSN. But even if hardware failure is not a concern for the security of email storage I have learned that hackers are. That Atlantic recently ran a story about a woman whose Gmail account was hacked.(Read it here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/hacked/8673/) She was able to regain control of her email account, but found out that the hacker had erased all 7 years of her saved email. This was a tremendous blow to her and her business. This woman and her journalist husband (who knows important people) visited with Google engineers and learned that thousands of email accounts are hijacked not yearly, not monthly, but daily. To anyone who depends upon their Yahoo or Gmail email accounts this is alarming. It has knocked me out of my stupor of web-based email as being the ultimate service for accessibility and security.

How to Secure My Email
Since learning this I have rethought my position on web-based email. I still prefer the convenience of a web-based email account, but rather than turning up my nose at computer based email such as Outlook or Thunderbird, I have expanded my viewpoint to include them. I still need to access my email from any one of several different computers and my smart phone. But how do I secure my web-based email from being lost by hackers? Of course the first thing is to use a very strong password. That will help, but is anything but certain. The second thing is to back up my email.  I know of updates that allow Outlook users to backup their email.  To my knowledge there is no “backup” feature on Yahoo Mail, Gmail, or Hotmail. Yet backing up web-based email is relatively simple if imperfect. You can use Outlook if you own Microsoft Office to download your web-based email or you can use the free Thunderbird. Before you download email make sure you check the “Leave a copy of messages on the server,” otherwise your email will be removed from the server immediately and you will not have a backup (Click here to see how). Additionally your email will then exist on your computer and no longer be accessible on the web. The web-mail interface is still my main interface since I am always jumping from computer to computer, but I will open Outlook at the end of each day on my main computer so it will download a copy of all incoming email.

Not Perfect
This is not a perfect backup solution for a couple of reasons. First, Outlook only downloads what is in my “Inbox.” I have about thirty folders where I have sorted mail over the years. Because the mail was already in these folders before I started using Outlook as a backup the items in these folders are not backed up. I have it from a reputable source that Thunderbird will download the email in your folders and not just your inbox. This is definitely a "plus" on the side of Thunderbird. Another issue is that when Outlook downloads the mail my web-based interface shows the mail as “read” (non-bolded). This is definitely a bit of an annoyance. When weighed with the other options--having email accessible only on one computer or using web-based email and not having a backup—I find these annoyances as marginally acceptable.

Take It Up a Notch
I believe it is time for web-based email hosts to take it up a notch. When I worked for a mid-sized company we used Outlook exclusively and kept backups of our email files. Now that I am a small business man I do not have access to those kinds of resources and rely on web-based email for my business. I would like see a more matured way of securing email from hacking attacks. I want to know that I can get my email back should my email account be compromised. Perhaps I am asking a lot from a free service. I would even be willing to pay a reasonable amount for this email “backup” service. I can see that this backup service would quickly expand to cover things like Google Docs and other cloud-based data.

When Troubleshooting A Computer Enters the Twilight Zone

I have fixed hundreds of computers since I got into the computer maintenance business. Much of computer repair work is routine. Then again, much is not. In fact, I have seen so many strange occurrences that I cannot explain that it scares me. Sometimes I sense a little superstition within me born of these inexplicable computer behaviors--computer hauntings, if you will. I have to disperse these superstitions because they just don't have place in a computer technician. We must use logic and proven troubleshooting techniques to resolve computer problems! But I think every computer technician can tell you stories that defy logic. The story I am about to tell is one of these.

Company A purchased a telecommunication switching system from Company B. At any given time of the day or night hundreds of phone calls were wending their way through the computer circuits of that switch. A few weeks after the installation of this very expensive computer (six figures) Company A's technician noticed in the logs that the switch would reset itself over night. It takes a bit of time for this switch to recover from a reboot so not only are all current calls terminated, but no new calls can begin. This was serious malfunction to Company A. Company B got their second level technical support right on this problem. However, they could find no indication of the situation that caused the resets. The resets continued to occur each night usually around 11:00. Of course they checked power issues, but there were no other power issues reported in the building or switch room. Company A was was displeased with the performance of the switch they had paid so much for and demanded a resolution. The problem was escalated to the designing engineers. They dove into the problem fully confident that they could get this resolved. They studied all the core dump logs to find nothing. The logs indicated everything was running perfectly and then suddenly a system-wide reset would occur. This was not happening with any other of their switches in any other location. They swapped out power supplies. Reset. They swapped out memory. Reset. They swapped out circuit boards. Reset. The reloaded software. Reset. What made the troubleshooting so difficult was that they had to make a change and then wait overnight to see if it was effective. Company A's impatience increased and it was clear something positive had to happen soon.

The engineer's of Company B could not understand what the problem was. They were at wit's end. It was as if the switch was in another space-time continuum where physics do not work the same. Out of desperation one engineer was sent to the switch site to sit up and watch the switch one night. The reset always occurred around 11:00 so he know when to be watchful. This troubleshooting technique is not usually effective in a computer. Computer problems normally occur in the virtual world where the naked human eye cannot see. But desperation drove this highly educated engineer to do the illogical--sit and watch the exterior of a computer to see if he could learn anything about what was going on inside.

He entered the room about 9:00 pm, brought up some monitoring screens, and then took a seat and stared at metal and silicon. The air conditioning made it chilling and all the fans in the computers created a sleepy din on his ears. 11:00 pm came and his expectations were disappointed when nothing happened. The switch kept purring along. At 11:30 he was tired and was just about ready to go back to his hotel when the door opened and a cleaning lady came with a vacuum cleaner. This was not a typical switch room and a part of it was carpeted. Curious, the engineer watched the cleaning woman. In a hurry to get her job done she ignored him. She went straight to the electrical sockets where the switch was plugged in and unplugged the switch to make room to plug her vacuum cleaner in. The mystery was solved.

Traditional logic does not always hold the keys to solving computer problems. Desperation will lead to some very creative troubleshooting techniques. Insanity is often defined as doing the same thing again and again, but expecting different results. More than once we have fixed a frustrating computer problem by applying the insanity method. At first you go through the troubleshooting logically marking each thing you have tried. When the problem doesn't fix you sometimes try previously tried items again. That doesn't always logically make sense, but eventually we get the problem fixed. Clearly something must have changed while repeating procedures, but we don't always know what it was. But if it is fixed and stays fixed I'm willing to put a mark in the victory column.

I Miss the PC Golden Age

I can still remember buying my first PC. I was in college. I had already written a couple of term papers on a type writer. The problem with a typewriter was that I wasn’t accurate in typing and correcting errors was a real chore. Eventually I found my way to the writing lab in the Humanities building where they had a Macintosh computer. I was dazzled by how easy it was to make corrections and by fonts. Oh, the fonts were so fun. I wrote a letter home to my Mom using every font available. I know I wasn’t the first or last to do that.

Finally the IBM compatible computer became available at a price I could afford and I went out and bought one. It was an 8088 that could run at speeds of up to 8 Mhz. It had two 5.25” floppy drives, 640 KB of RAM. It had no hard drive. What an exciting day that was for me. I used that computer as a typewriter replacement. I had WordPerfect and typed all my papers on it. That was all. At the time I didn’t really know what else you could do with it. It sounds pretty boring, but actually that computer was more exciting to me than my current quad core with 8 GB of RAM.

I remember spending over $200 to upgrade to almost a megabyte of RAM. Spending that money was extravagant, but I ran into a program that demanded it and I had no choice. I remember buying my first sound card and being so thrilled with the midi sounds my computer could make. I remember my first CD-ROM player. It was an external and played at the original 1x speed.  I put in an encyclopedia disk and listed to Patrick Stewart say, “Welcome to” [pause as data buffered] “the exciting world of” [pause as data buffered] and this went on and I was patient and excited. My first hard drive was 10 MB. I could hardly believe so much room could exist for storage. I had the x286 processor, the x386, and nearly died of happiness when I was able to get a x486.

Networking came along and I got a modem and an AOL account. I remember my first email address and hearing those wonderful words “You have mail!” One night, after hours at the office, I was blown away when I entered the world of Doom with a friend. There I was, in a virtual world, and I could see my friend in there and interact with him. We slaughtered monsters (and got slaughtered). I wondered if Heaven could be as wonderful as that experience.

Those years were the Golden Years for personal computers. There was always some new development just around the corner that made such a difference in the personal computing world that even a regular computer user just had to have it. But all golden ages throughout history have one thing in common—they come to an end. PC technology finally grew up and lost that “what’s next?” excitement.  I’m not sure exactly when this happened, but I believe it started during the Microsoft XP era.  I remember buying a brand new Vista computer. It was my first dual-core processor and I mistakenly thought it was going to smoke my old Pentium 4 computer. I was wrong. It actually seemed slower and more error prone.  One reason for this was that they sold me the computer with 1 GB of ram in it when Vista really needs at least 2 GB to run. The other reason was that the pre SP1 Vista was buggy. I still have that computer five years later and it is running fine (upgraded to Win 7). Although I have newer computers at home I also have very active older computers still running Pentium 4 processors and Windows XP. In my shop I am constantly fixing computers that are five years old or older. It is this that tells me that the original golden age of computers is over. Back in the 80’s and 90’s I was buying new computer every year because I had to in order to run the newer programs. Now that PCs have matured a five-year-old machine can run this year’s software releases (except for some of the high end games). Yes, you can go out and buy PCs that are far more powerful than the five year old PCs, but they don’t seem to make that much difference in your day-to-day computing experience. Although this situation saves me money, I look nostalgically to those earlier, more exciting days of the PC.

Perhaps all is not lost. It seems that we are entering a PC revival. Well, not really a PC revival, but a computing revival.  Although PCs themselves are not making waves in anymore, the PC alternatives or what I call PC extenders, are. We are now in the age of mobility. The excitement of desktop PCs was replaced by the laptop. The excitement of the laptop was replaced by the extremely portable netbook. The excitement of the netbook has been replaced by the tablet and the smart phone. Ultrabook technology is lurking around the edges of the limelight. What all this means is choices for the average computer user. And choices mean excitement—at least a little. I still rely heavily on a desktop PC. However my laptop sees a lot of use too. I have a netbook that goes on house calls with me. I also have a tablet that travels around the house a lot. In my pocket I carry a smartphone that is a real workhorse.  I am having fun again reading about the latest in each of these areas and find a little excitement in trying to figure out how much difference some of these new gadgets will make in my life. But still, none of these things makes my heart beat as fast as the day I got my first one gigabyte hard drive.

The Computer Speaketh Not

A nice lady comes in and says that she wants to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP. We check her ram and find it minimal, but sufficient.  We check her current data and find that she had recently crashed and reloaded XP and all her data is gone. Well, this looks like it is going to be an easy installation of Windows 7. The operation is very routine. We repartition and format the hard drive and then load Windows 7. Windows 7 found most of the hardware drivers. We update those and find and install the others. We download all the OS updates and then load on the basic, free programs that she will find useful.

Somewhere toward the end of this process we notice that her audio is not working. The driver is loaded and says it is happy, but the control panel tells us that there is no audio device. The troubleshooting process begins: Go download the latest driver (again) and load it. Still no audio device detected. Download another driver that probably isn’t the right one, but we want to try it. Still no audio device detected. We uninstall then reinstall drivers and reboot. Nope, no audio device detected.  Actually, when scanning for new hardware it does see the audio device, but none of the listed drivers, nor others we try, will make the hardware work.

Okay, so we write off the problem as a hardware error or a Windows 7 incompatibility. I install a PCI audio card to get around the on-board hardware and run the driver installation. It doesn’t go well. There was something strange about the installation process—no error messages, but it didn’t seem complete. The result is no audio device is found. I double check and this sound card and driver are Windows 7 compatible.  So we uninstall, reboot, and reinstall. I get a “Platform not supported: error 0” message. Hmmm. I go to the company website and download the current driver for this platform.  Again I get the “Platform not supported” message.  This is getting frustrating.  I reboot and reinstall with an error message. I select the “diagnose”  and reinstall option. Hey, this time it says it loaded. Is there sound? Why, yes there is. Hurray! The computer wants to reboot to cement the installation and so we do. When it comes back up there is “No audio device found.”  Do I shoot the computer or shoot myself? Then an intuition strikes me. I take out the old modem that is in the other PCI slot and put the audio card in it. I reinstall the driver. I get an installation error, but diagnose and reinstall and it loads. Yes, I have sound. I reboot. Again I have sound. I reboot several times and play YouTube videos and music and have sound every time. I put the gun away and the computer and I live another day. Apparently we had a bad PCI slot. Computers, so simple yet so complex.

Tablets Vs. Laptops

I have been following tablets since the beginning. I was aware of the Windows-based tablets years before the iPad came out. Of course the Windows tablet was virtually unknown except to those few who had a need for them. Then the iPad came out and created a sensation. I played with iPads purchased by others and had to admit that they were interesting and nicely designed. However, try as I might I could not see how I could justify buying one. Also, it was an Apple and I just don't buy Apple. Yes, this is an ugly bias in my judgment. Um, now that I think of it I do have an iPod that I love, so add hypocrisy to my vices.

When Apple made it clear how much money could be made from tablets loads of other companies jumped into the market. Google's Android OS, first seen on smart phones, became the platform of choice for most non-Apple tablet makers. Unlike Apple, where there is one product, the iPad, there were a whole slew of Android tablets to choose from. For me there were two problems with these tablets. The first and largest problem was cost. At $500 to $700 they just cost too much for my budget. The second problem closely tied to the first was need. As interested as I was in tablets, as cool as they were, I just could not find enough need in my life to attempt justifying purchasing a tablet. I had a laptop at home and a netbook at the shop (for on-site calls). A tablet gave me nothing that what I already had could not do. Oh, I guess there was one thing a tablet could do uniquely--be used while standing up, but that alone didn't justify the kind of money they were asking for them.

Eventually an event happened that finally influenced me to pull the trigger. The Amazon Kindle came out for $199. The low cost of the Kindle Fire and my intense curiosity for tablets finally won and just before Christmas I pulled my Kindle Fire out of the box. It was an exciting moment for me. This blog entry is not a review of the Fire or a comparison against others so I will spare you details. Rather, it is a brief analysis of how a tablet has changed my life. In short I have found that it hasn't changed my life very much. The novelty is starting to wear off and my tablet is relegated to some bedtime reading and web-browsing. Oh, yes, it also serves well for the bed-time games of "Worms" with my kids. That is about it. I'm really glad I didn't put out $500 for a tablet. My table is really good for looking at things and for short entry input, but that is about it. The ease with which it can be carried to another room to show someone something is unsurpassed, but that is where its true usefulness in my life stops. A major problem with a tablet is that they are just too big to carry around all the time. They are no more mobile than a netbook. Even my 7" Fire is too big for my pocket. Fortunately there are smart phones that do fit in my pocket. My G2x has every function of any current tablet and is extremely mobile. I love it and use it constantly throughout the day. So in essence this phone, not considered a tablet, has changed my life where a tablet proper only entertains me.

I have found that when I need to get any serious work done I still reach for my laptop. Writing this blog entry is a good example. Other examples are editing my photos, creating movies, writing letters, paying on-line for my daughters school lunches or adjusting usage allowances for my mobile phone accounts (not mobile sites and kind of clunky on my tablet). I am aware that there are keyboard options for tablets which help solve the input problem, but then I basically have a laptop--and I already have a laptop that can still do more than the most expensive tablets.

So where does this put me in my opinion of tablets? I love them! They are so cool. They are here to stay and are making a difference in many people's lives. However, I don't see them replacing laptops, but only becoming a different kind of laptop--a laptop with a removable, touch screen. There will be at least three kinds to choose from: Apple, Android, and Windows. At this point in time, if I didn't already have my mobile needs taken care of I would choose a Windows 8 tablet (when released) because I like the 30 years experience behind the OS versus the new and still rather unpredictable Android environment. But that is the  subject of a different blog entry.

The Web Knows All

     There are many great developments in the past 25 years, but I believe that the one that has had the most profound effect on society is the Web. The Web and its side-effects truely have made the world a very small place.
     I remember back in the DOS 3.1 days. This long before the Internet was a household item. In fact I had not heard of the Internet yet. I had a computer and it was running from a command line like everyone's computer. On one occasion I remember having a technical problem of one kind or another. Technical problems are a part of my everyday life now. However, back then I was on my own. Today you wouldn't understand those words. At that time I had a problem. My resources to solve the problem were what I knew in my own head and a useless user's manual. I didn't have the answer in my head and the user's manual didn't have the answer. At that point the program was broken and that was that. I still remember the incredible frustration I felt. I was totally helpless. Luckily the problem was not life or death. I can't even remember the details. But something that should have worked didn't work and I had no resources to fix it.
     Today it is so very different due to the web. I was putting up a bulletin board on a web site once. I ran across a problem where a necessary feature wouldn't work. I had no ideas on how to fix the feature, but I began the search--online. I read through all the help for the bulletin board without success. I went through other avenues without finding the answer. I ended up on a PHP forum where I found people discussing similar problems with their bulletin board. After several hours of searching across two different days I finally ran into a post that held the answer.

"Open up the configuration file. On line 128 change the '1' to a '0' then restart the program."

I did this and the bulletin board was working. It was the most beautiful thing--not the bulletin board, but finding an answer to my problem. The problem was far above a non-programmer like me. In spite of this, because the Web's powerful communication ability someone out there who I have never met was able to help me solve a problem that was impossible otherwise.
     Since that time I have used the Internet, as most of you, to solve many, many problems. I believe I would not hesitate to call the Internet one of the wonders of the world.

Haunted House

                A man brings his brand new laptop to me and tells me it won’t connect to the Internet.  I test it and it connects to the Internet with no problem. He calls me soon after I sent it home with him to tell me that it won’t connect to the Internet. Clearly this is a problem with his Internet provider or with his router. 

        I take my laptop to his home. I connect with no problem, so there went that theory. I try his computer and sure enough, it will not connect. I make sure of all the settings and they are exactly like the settings on my laptop, but still, it won’t connect. I take his laptop back to my shop. There has to be something wrong with his laptop that I missed the first time. I turn it on and it connects immediately and we can surf like a pro. Hmmm. 

       Perhaps there is something odd about his router that his computer doesn't like. I take a different router to his home and set it up. My laptop connects immediately to the Internet through it. I try his with great hope, but it is a no-go. Not only will his not connect, but it tends to crash the computer when I try. One more time I take his computer back to my shop. It connects to the Internet and runs like a charm. So we have the situation where every computer (probably) but his will connect to his Internet through his router at his home, and his computer will connect to the Internet anywhere but in his home (it worked at his brothers house too). The problem seems to be a combination of his computer and his house. Go figure.   

       I suggest he send this computer back to the manufacturer telling them that it will not work properly (I suggest he leave off the part about it being only in his home it doesn’t work). Quite surprisingly they send him a new computer without question (same model).  Did the new one work in his home? You bet (whew). I have to put another mark on the wall for the ghost in the machine.