I am driving with the heater ON in my car.

Huh? Usually at this point in the MAY I am looking at the ramp up in heat to being human jerky even with the A/C at full blast.

I don’t think it’s ever been this cool this far into the month of May since I got to the desert in 2004.

It may not be A/C time yet – I even had to replace my wipers this week! Rain? in May?

Last month I also had the opportunity to earn certifications from Acronis. Acronis provides a wide variety of backup and data-loss prevention solutions.

I am ACE, ASP and ABS certified and between Acronis and iDrive, there is a backup plan for your computer, office and servers that I can

Going back to the car concept, my car will let me know when I have to change the oil. A giant yellow triangle with an exclamation point lets me know that it’s time to change the oil and have the car checked out.

Unfortunately, Windows and MacOS do not have those features built in to let a user know that the hard drive is failing, the main cause of serious data loss, and the downtime of a business waiting to get back to work.

While there are programs that can do that, when Windows actually lets you know that the drive is failing, it has about 30 nanoseconds and then it’s dead.

Having annual/semi-annual checkups of your computer systems is vital for disaster prevention. Are the backup systems are running – local and cloud?Are anti-virus programs are up to date and working?  Did anything get past the antivirus protection? I also make sure that the operating system is up-to-date with required updates.

Those external drive used for backup need to be changed annually for disaster prevention. If the internal drive has failed and the external backup drive is gone, it’s a huge chunk of change getting the data back. Much cheaper to invest in a new drive annually versus sending it in to Drivesavers for disaster/data recovery.

I also include cleaning out the cases for towers and cleaning out vents on laptops depending on the model.

Many clients bought laptops and desktops in the past five years that might be powerful enough to continue running Windows 10 and an upgrade the drive to an SSD is a huge speed boost.

SSDs provide faster boot times, and overall give a computer a speed boost, sometimes that needs to be done in conjunction with an upgrade the memory as well.

Quite a few of my clients have opted for an SSD in towers, laptops and even PS4s!

The speed boost is worth the effort!

Since Microsoft will be retiring Windows 7 on January 14, 2020, this is also a good time to start considering what the replacement/upgrade path might be for any of my clients still using Windows 7.

With this much lead time, I can help you determine the best upgrade path based on needs, usage and

The exception to that will be medical devices and equipment that require Windows 7 including testing equipment and industry specific software.