5 Computer Tips To Save You Money

While ACI's mission is to help you maintain your computer systems, here are five tips that can save you a lot of time, money and heartache:

1. Keep all your data backed up. This rule is essential for anyone storing important financial or business data on their system. Files occassionally become corrupt and no electronic device lasts forever, so always back up your data to an external drive or CD/DVD.
2. Make recovery disks for each computer. Creating a recovery disk for your computer only takes about 1-3 hours. If your computer should happen to crash and you don't have a recovery disk, it can take weeks to get one from your computer manufacturer and cost between $10 and $50. Save yourself the time and headache and make a recovery disk as soon as you set up your new computer.
3. Pick only one anti-virus software. Running multiple anti-virus software programs on your computer can slow your system down to a crawl and is unnecessary. A worthwhile anti-virus program is self-updating and does a good job when run regularly.
4. Avoid toolbars in your browser. Several companies, including Google and Yahoo, offer installable toolbars for your web browser. These toolbars are a marketing gimmick and tend to bloat your system and slow down your browser's ability to do its job. If your browser is running slowly, check to see if you have one or more browser toolbars installed.
5. Avoid "Free" stuff. Everybody loves to get free stuff, and the internet is loaded with free games, movies, music, and programs. But much of this free software, as well as pornography sites and even free social networking sites, are riddled with viruses. Virus removal is expensive and can take hours or even days depending on the virus in question. Viruses are a software issue, and are considered private data, not covered by any warranties, so always be safe and smart on the internet.