Car trouble and how technology could help

So I took another long break between posts. This time around, major car trouble is to blame as I am putting all my spare time into a fight with an automobile giant.

To give you a bit of a background, here is what happened;

I own a mid size car which is recently out of warranty and which has less than 100 k km on the odometer. I have been maintaining this vehicle as indicated in the manufacturer's guides and until a few weeks ago, I had no trouble with my car. Other than changing parts that succumb to wear and tear such as break pads and the battery, not a complaint. That is until after a routine oil change, my check engine light lit up. On the day that I intended to get the issue checked out, the engine would not run.

So I called the garage that performed the oil change. The mechanic was nice enough to come to the place where the car was stuck to do a quick check on the warning light. He first checked the oil level and it was normal. Also there was no oil stains on my driveway after I brought the car home after the oil change first took place. My oil warning light never lit up since I bought the car in question.

At this point, other than mentioning that this car was bought in large part due to the fact that its manufacturer has a reputation for producing mostly reliable and durable cars.

You can see that I am not disclosing any details on this car at least for now, as I am still waiting on the conclusion of this incident.

So at this point, assuming that I did not bore you with the preamble, you may be wondering what a broken engine has in common with a technology blog. And your question is legitimate. If you take some time to familiarize yourself with modern automotive diagnosis, you will soon find that the two fields are quite related. You may also come to think that the automobile industry does not use technology to the best interest of the consumer nor the industry itself. Why? Read on to find out more.

Once the car got towed to the dealership for a second diagnosis, I asked the director of the service department this;

Can my car's computer indicate precisely what happened and when the breakdown began by using time stamps associated with the diagnosis codes?

To my surprise, the answer was " no".

So the conclusion is that in a car which costs over 35 thousand dollars when new, the electronic and computer system does not store data other than precise and predetermined codes which are triggered by the failure of certain components or systems.

Given the fact that a basic computer can be built for a few hundred dollars, I am surprised that one is not a standard part of any modern vehicle. The benefits of recording certain data such as speed, distance, date, time, just to name a few would be potentially helpful not only to the vehicle's owner but also the manufacturer and designated authorities in the event of a mechanical failure or accident.

Even though I am not sure if any car on the road today is equipped with such a device, given the relatively low cost and potentially huge benefits, I think it should be standard equipment. Just like assisted steering and electronic fuel injection.

In my particular situation, the presence of such a computer would have saved the car manufacturer at least a thousand dollars. How so? In order to determine what happened to my car's engine and ultimately decide on what or who is responsible for the damage,  they are asking the dealership to dismantle my engine and take pictures and scans of certain components. If a computer was recording data, they would be able to see in a short time that the car was driven within specifications and all maintenance was done as warranted for.

So as I wait for the manufacturer to decide what happens next and most importantly who pays for the major repair, I can only think about how in certain situations data records can be used to benefit everyone. Not to compare different scenarios, but airplanes are equipped with black boxes for a specific reason and have been for quite some time.

I understand that a plane and a car do not have the same value. I fully comprehend that a failing plane has a potential tragic impact that goes beyond a car accident. Which is why I am suggesting that cars be equipped with a simple computer and not a black box.

Enticing offer from Microsoft

So I took another long break from the blog. Since I am merely an amateur blogger, I don’t feel guilty for not writing anything in a few weeks. However a lot has happened in this time span and I have a few things to share with you, the readers. So what do I write about after such a long haitus? A great offer from a vendor of course!

A few weeks ago I wrote about the different offerings of Microsoft in regards to the line of Microsoft Office products. I have also in the past praised Google’s free alternative to the traditional office suite. However, sometimes a basic solution is missing certain features that you use on occasion but not often enough to notice until you really need them.

Such is the case with editing word documents and writing content for publication. A client of mine who is writing documentation for publishing has solicited my help with certain issues. I was required to section a document into various formats and this requires Microsoft Word as opening the original with any other application resulted in formatting discrepencies. So I had to get myself MS Office and fast. My first step was to install a free trial of Microsoft Office 2013 which was good for 30 days to see if all of the features were there. Once I determined that the tools I needed were there, I had to choose my course of action once the 30 day trial expired. Logically, I was debating between Office 365 and Office 2013.

Microsoft made the decision very easy for me given the promotion found in the Microsoft Store; for a paltry 99 dollars, I would be getting; Office 365 for one pc and one tablet, 1TB of cloud storage on one drive for one year. And a 7 inch HP Tablet running windows 8.1! Oh, and they also threw in a 25 dollar gift card to use to buy apps in the Microsoft Store! So, either I got a free tablet or MS Office 365 free of charge depending on how one looks at it! Given the fact that I needed the software, the free tablet was a sweet offer.

I will review both the tablet and the Office 365 Personal in separate reviews. But for now, I suggest that you check out the Microsoft Store. So far I got two solid deals from them. Given the fact that it’s microsoft we are talking about, I’ll take it!

Complete Backup Strategy

In the past few days I wrote about protecting your data and offered up some solutions for both the smartphone/tablet and computer. Given the fact that most people own at least a computer and one if not two portable devices, as a conclusion, I wanted to offer a cross platform solution that will ensure that all of your data will be safe, unless of a natural disaster that is.

This solution consists of a three stage backup solution which will do the following;

Backup the content of your portable devices to the cloud and computer.

Backup your computer to an external data storage.

Backup some of the files on your computer to the cloud.

This will ensure that your most important content is available to you from any device that has access to the internet all the while backing up the entirety of your computer to an external source so you can easily recover from a system crash.

Step one: Get a DropBox account here.

Step two: Install DropBox on your computer and portable device(s).

Step three: Configure DropBox to automatically archive pictures taken by your camera.

Step four: Buy an external hard drive that has at least 2TB of capacity.

Step five: Set up backup of your computer using Windows Backup (on a PC) or Time Machine (on a MAC).

By following the five steps above, you will have in place a backup strategy that will allow you to ensure that your most important files are backed up to at least two locations. How is that? By installing DropBox on your PC, you will have access to your pictures and videos from your portable devices on your computer and they will also be on the cloud. By backing up your computer to the external drive, your DropBox folder will also be included in the backup.

In the next few days I will explain in detail how to properly configure windows backup and time machine.

Backup a computer

So I talked about backing up a smart phone yesterday. But how about pc’s and macs? These also need to backed up regularly.That is is you care about your data and your computer's configuration. So how do we go about this? There are several options. However, all options except one require a common tool. An external storage drive. I recommend that you buy at least a 2 terabyte hard drive that connects by USB.

Once you have your usb drive ready, then we can go forward;

Option 1; Let the operating system manage your backup

Both Windows and Apple offer backup solutions embedded into the operating system. Windows Users will find Windows Backup in Control Panel. It is easy to set up. I will write in depth and step by step how to set up Windows Backup in another article. Apple offers Time Machine in OS X which also backs up your data and settings. This will also be the subject of a future article. Using Windows Backup and Time Machine is the easiest way of backing up your data and settings.

Option 2; Manual Backup

This option is good to backup your data BUT IT WILL NOT BACKUP YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM AND SETTINGS. This is useful to selectively copy files such as pictures, videos and documents. In essence it is to copy your files and folders to an external source. The disadvantage is that this is a manual and not automated process which can become time consuming. And it requires discipline to do it systematically.

Option 3; Third Party Application

This option may be good for you if you need to backup your entire hard drive and do a mirror copy of it. My favorite option is Acronis True Image. This application is available for Windows and Apple computers. The software allows you to take a mirror of your hard drive and then use the mirror as a recovery source in case of disaster or breakdown.

Option 4; Online solutions

This is good for backing up files and such but you cannot backup an entire operating system since you need a functional os to actually get online. An advantage of using a cloud solution is that integrating files from multiple devices becomes easy as you can backup several devices onto one cloud account.

Bottom line is, regardless of which method or combination of backup solutions you choose, backing up your data is essential.

Protecting your Data and Files

I never repeat this enough; BACKING UP YOUR DATA IS ESSENTIAL. In this day and age where records and all kinds of content is digital, keeping a backup of your most important data is essential. And with several low cost options available, THERE IS NO EXCUSE NOT TO BACKUP YOUR STUFF. I am writing about this as the aftermath of an event that happened last week. A family member came to me with a smartphone that , allegedly, reset itself to factory default settings. This resulted in the loss of family pictures and videos that dated back for over a year, not to mention their contacts and texting history.

So, how is it possible that this happens? Because people are careless and do not keep in mind that hardware and software can fail. Even more so, they do not realize the potential amplitude of damages. Some people don’t know how to, others think that it won’t happen to them. So what can be done? There are many options available, and I will lay out a few. Today I will look at backing up a smartphone and I will write a separate post about backing up a pc or mac.

So you have a smartphone, and you use it as a digital camera and as an mp3 player amongst other features. But what to do to save and secure your pictures videos and other files? There are a few options available, from the automated online backup solutions to manual or software enabled possibilities.

Option 1: Backing up to the cloud

There are many services that can be used to backup your data.automatically. From Drop Box to One Drive and Google Drive. Apple offers iCloud as well. Drop Box offers to automatically backup your pictures and videos to the cloud once your phone is connected to a wifi network. Google Drive does too. This enables you to have an automated backup of your pictures and videos. For Android based devices, synchronising with your gmail will save your contacts and calendar. For iPhone users, you can use iCloud. There are also third party apps available to backup text messages and other content. However, for most people the key is to backup pictures and videos.

Option 2: Manual backup

This is the most time consuming option as it requires that you connect your device to a computer and then copy over the content to a backup media. You also have to be methodical and systematic to do backups on a regular basis in order to not loose data.

Option 3: Use a software

For Apple users, this is really simple as you can use iTunes to sync all of your phone to your computer. For Android users it depends on the device. For Example, LG includes an app to sync your phone. But quite frankly I do not use any of those.

Best solution:

The best solution is to do a cloud backup and periodically back up manually. This insures a double backup and also you will not have to worry about backing up every week in terms of your pictures and videos. Keep in mind that your content is online and can be accessed so keep it clean and decent, unless you feel comfortable in potentially sharing your personal files with unwaranted users (there is very little risk to this BTW.)

Software as a service or traditional licensing?

So I had mentioned in my last post that I would discuss Software as a Service or SAAS. I was busy lately so I took a break from the blog. So what about this SAAS thing?

Software as a service is the fact of offering an application as a subscription rather than as a lifetime license. This has many advantages, but also several downsides. The perfect examples of SAAS are Adobe and Microsoft. As the most popular providers of enterprise and consumer software these two tech giants decided to offer their most popular software offerings such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop.

So, as a consumer am I better off to buy a software license outright or to “lease” the application? It honestly depends on your needs. If you need an application for a short to mid term timeframe, the cost of subscription may be more advantageous as opposed to the license itself. However if you intent to use the software in the long run, you are usually better off to buy the application outright.

A major advantage of SAAS is that you get access to the latest version all the time, whereas if you buy a specific software you get updates only until the developer is actively offering the version you bought. So if you tend to always upgrade to the most recent version, SAAS may be worth considering.

However, if you tend to work offline, SAAS is not a good solution as most SAAS subscriptions require a continuous online connection. So if you tend to work in a remote area or in an isolated environment this is not your best option.

And what about cost? In the short run, SAAS is less expensive than a license in the short to mid term. The perfect comparison for this is Microsoft Office;

If you compare MS Office Home and Student to Office 365, here is what you get;

Office Home and Student 2013 sells for 139.00 on the Microsoft Store.
A One year subscription to Office 365 Personal costs 69.00 from Microsoft.

Office 2013 includes Word, Excel, Power Point and One Note;
Office 365 adds Outlook, Access and Publisher with on top a 1TB shared space on OneDrive.

So which one to choose? If you want to save money in the long run and the apps offered by the Home and Student edition meet your needs, then by all means get the lifetime license. But be prepared that in a few years it will become obsolete as it will no longer be updated and patched.

If you want the latest apps then you can subscribe to the Office 365. As a bonus if you have multiple family members that use different apps, then you may want to consider Office 365 Home, which allows you to use apps on up to 5 devices.

Milestones: A Thank You to all who have read my blog

With yesterday's post, I reached two milestones;

I penned my 50th post and reached 750 visits on my blog. To me this is unbelievable and when I revived the blog, I did not expect this. I did not resume the blog in order to reach such heights. I just wanted to have a creative outlet where I can voice my opinion and share some experiences.

I want to thank all my readers, regardless if you read one post to kill some time or if you are reading my column on a regular basis.

The fact that I have an audience on four continents proves that social media knows no borders and that people far and wide share some common interests. l am thankful to each and everyone of you who has taken their time to visit my blog and I hope that you have found on it interesting and perhaps entertaining content.

I will return with a technical post later this weekend on the topic of SAAS (Software as a Service).

Once again, many thanks to you all.

Greg