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At the end of every year, I predict what are the big Technology developments for the next year. I will be putting out my predictions for 2010 soon but, let’s review how accurate my predictions from last year.

1.    More Ultraportable Laptops
Definitely happened, netbooks exploded this year and every major computer manufacturer, except for Apple!
2.    More Android Phones
This year showed major growth for Android with the introduction of the amazing Droid from Verizon and many other Android Phones.
3.    New Nokia Internet Tablet
The Nokia N900 which is not only a tablet, but a phone as well was released this year! Although it is not as good as the iPhone or even an Android phone it is out and has some potential.
4.    Affordable 3G Modems
Modems have become cheaper and sometimes free with a contract but, contracts are still ridiculously expensive.
5.    All-In-One Desktops become standard
This was a little too much forward thinking! Maybe in the next 5 years!
6.    Nationwide Wifi
Hopefully, this is still in the works!

Copying or ripping your DVDs to your computers is something everyone should do not only for backing up, but also for a copy that you can take with you anywhere you take your computer. Back-ups is the biggest thing for me, because what if a fire destroys all my DVDs, that would be awful. So, one of the first things I do when I buy a DVD is rip it to my computer using Handbrake and keep it on my external hard drive. This way I can watch it on my computer if I choose or just make sure I have a copy of my movies if disaster strikes. Also, as a extra precaution, I have the external hard drive backed up using Backblaze so my movies are safe even if my hard drive breaks. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act permits you to make a digital copy of your movies for “Personal Use” so I recommend getting a external hard drive and ripping all your DVDs so, you know your movies are safe. I actually don’t take any DVDs to school and just use the digital copies to watch movies when I am at college.

Security for a personal computer has become essential because so many things have had to go digital. However, computers are still very new technology and have issues and one of the largest issues is keeping you information safe. Here are some tips so can keep you computer safe.

1. Change Your Passwords

With all the accounts you need to keep password protected, including your user account that you need to login. But it is a good idea to change your password regularly. When choosing a password, make sure it is not a word or something easy to guess. It is best to use: lower case letters, upper case letters, numbers and symbols in your password. If you don’t want to make your own password, then there are password generators like the one made by GRC. I recommend that you change a few letters in the password so that you can be sure the password is safe.

2. Encrypt Your Hard Drive

If you want to keep your data extremely safe then, you should encrypt your hard drive so even if your hard drive is stolen, your data will remain safe. Both Windows and Mac OS have encryption tools built-in to the operating system, even though it is only in the business versions of Windows. If you don’t want to spend more on your operating system, then you could use Truecrypt which can be used to make an encrypted volume or just encrypt the entire hard drive.

3. Disable The Guest account

To make sure unwanted guests don’t log into your computer, you should turn off the guest account and make sure all your user accounts require a password.

4. Enable the Firewall

Firewalls are essential for keeping hackers from being able to gain access to your system from the internet. The Firewall will, control who and what can access the internet and the computer.

Since the year is almost over, you might want to have a fresh start with your digital life and get rid of all the digital clutter that has been accumulated on your computer. The best way to do this is reinstalling your operating system and clearing off your entire machine. This is incredibly easy thing to do, but, very few people in my experience actually do it! Before doing anything, make sure you backup all your data and make sure you have your hardware drivers easily accessible, I like to keep them on a external hard drive or thumb drive so that I can just pop it in and install everything I need. You will also need to have either a Windows Installation Disk or a Restore disk that should have come with your system!

You might wonder why, you want to spend the time to do this. Well first, especially on Windows, the disk drive gets fragmented which causes the computer to run slower and make the read and write speeds with the hard drive much slower. There are also all those extra files from things you have downloaded, or programs you may have had installed and uninstalled. Buy reinstalling your operating system, you can get rid of all the junk on your computer. I try and do this at least once a year with my Windows computer, although I have yet to do it on my Mac! One tip, if you really want to get rid of all your just is to run a Hard drive wiping tool such as Darren’s Boot and Nuke to completely wipe the drive making sure nothing remains after the reinstall. This is just a great way to eliminate all the junk slowing down your computer and it really only takes about an hour and then however much time it takes you to restore all your data, The computer will definitely run better and you can have a fresh start for the new year!

Ok it was true that in my younger years, I was very hateful towards the Mac and Apple. It was a long time ago and Apple changed it’s way and has now become my platform of choice. It all started in Grade School, my school used old Macs, still running OS 9 and using a Power PC processor. In addition to all that, they also used Mac Manager to allow students to log-in, but control what they had access to. The worst part was that it was totally slow, applications took forever to launch and a lot of the software was very outdated. For example, until High School, the primary Word Processor they had us using was Apple Works and the browser was Netscape Communicator 4. Needless to say this added to the slowness issue and made it very unpleasant. The PowerPC platform was much weaker than the Intel which came with most Windows machines at the time and Mac OS 9 was extremly outdated making the more Modern-looking Windows XP look to be the better platform.This hatred towards the Mac continued throughout all of  Middle School.

Then, in High School, we switched over to Windows XP and they were just as slow and had just as many if not more than the Macs and continued to have problems. Apple had also upgraded their operating system to OSX and made the system much better and more evolved than Windows. Then in 2006,  Apple moved to Intel Processors in their machines using a much more powerful platform and making their computers a lot faster. It was around that time I began to follow Apple and consider changing my mind about Apple. I realized that with a Mac, you get a much more reliable system, with few if any errors, and Macs take much less work to setup and manage. Plus, I began tv become more interested in video production and podcasting both things that Macs can do amazingly while Windows machines do poorly with it.   Apple also makes computers that aren’t just the average beige box, the computers standout becuase they don’t just use plastic, and they always put a big glowing Apple on  the computer. Then after seeing the power of Final Cut Studio compared to other Windows editors I knew that the Mac was the computer for me. Now having a Mac for almost a year, I have had much fewer problems than my old PC and am very happy for switching to the Mac. Yes, they are more money but, if you want a computer that you just turn on and it works, the Mac is the computer for you.