Home

About Us

Contact Us

Application List

Recommendations

My Docs

Home | About Us | Contact Us | Application List | Recommendations | My Docs

Just Ask Computer Services

Serving the Kansas City metro area since 1995           Phone: 913.963.5197

I’m just starting to develop this list.  It is hardware/software and businesses I’ve used and recommend.   Let me know if you’d like more information.

The links on this page take you to external websites.  Please let me know if a link doesn’t work.  Thanks. 

Graphics/Photo Management:

Photoshop Elements  - great for organizing and enhancing your photos

Picasa  - good free application from Google for those who don’t have as many photos and don’t want to do much editing

Utilities/Backup

Acronis True Image - allows you to backup your computer to an external hard drive and restore your computer if your hard drive crashes

Backup for Workgroups - I use this for backing up Windows 2003 Small Business servers.  It is designed for hard drive based backups with off-site mirroring of backed up data using external hard drives.  BFW is reasonably priced, very easy to use and is reliable.  Restoring a few files takes just a minute or two.  Also includes disaster recovery although a reinstall of Windows is first required.

Securely erase a hard drive

These utilities will permanently erase a hard drive.  These are normally used if a computer with sensitive data is to be given away or sold.  Data recovery is nearly impossible for either of these methods (unless someone really, really wanted to access the data - Secure Erase is supposed to be the more secure of the two methods).  As an extra precaution, you could physically destroy the drive after erasing it and removing it from the computer (a hammer is very satisfying but be careful - pieces of the drive like to embed themselves in your eyes).

For drives made on or after 2001:

http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml

For drives made prior to 2001, Boot and Nuke works well:

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Online Backup:

Carbonite - inexpensive, easy and automated online backup service that allows “unlimited” storage - they evidently have an abuse policy if you use too much space

MozyHome and MozyPro - also inexpensive backup services.  Mozy has more features than Carbonite and keeps 30 days worth of backed up data so you can recover prior versions of files.  It requires a little more work to setup though.  The home version is free for up to 2GB and $4.95/month for unlimited.  It will automatically backup the data on Windows XP & Vista computers.  The Pro version is for business use.  It is $3.95/month and $0.50/gigabyte (as of 11/6/07).

Xdrive - as of August 2007 they offer 5GB of free online storage.  You can increase that to 50GB for $9.95 per month.  You can download a desktop utility that gives you a mapped drive to your online storage area (normally shows up as drive X) and you can setup automatic backups.  I’ve found the backup program to be unreliable though.

Online photo sharing/processing:
Kodak Gallery or Shutterfly

Dymo or Seiko label printers

Favorite online computer retailers:
www.buy.com
www.pcconnection.com
www.newegg.com
www.crucial.com (memory)
www.stikc.com (refurbished Dell servers, workstations, parts and accessories)

Local computer retailers:
Micro Center - 93rd and Metcalf - 913.652.6000
BE Tek - West side of 73rd & Wornall - 816-444-4424