Shownotes
We are joined by tech experts Andy Landrum and Alex West from Nice Guy Technology.
We dive into the importance of rebooting your computer, the crucial practice of backing up data, and the precautions you should take with USB drives.
Andy and Alex share insights from their rich background, offering practical advice on diagnosing tech problems and differentiating between hardware and software issues.
We also explore how cloud services like OneDrive and Dropbox stack up against traditional backup solutions, and the benefits of using VPNs and secure Wi-Fi networks.
Top Takeaways
1. **Importance of Rebooting**: Rebooting a computer is a critical step for resolving a range of issues, as it resets all processes.
2. **Backup Necessity**: Regularly backing up data is vital to prevent significant data losses due to hardware failures or cyberattacks.
3. **Safe Tech Practices**: To avoid potential security risks, never use random USB drives found in public spaces and be cautious when connecting to public Wi-Fi networks.
4. **Internet Troubleshooting**: Common tech problems, such as network issues, can often be diagnosed and fixed by checking for Internet outages, updating drivers, or performing a network reset.
5. **Driver Updates**: Keep system drivers up to date using software like Driver Booster to maintain optimal performance and avoid technical glitches.
6. **Device Preferences**: Mac and PC each have their benefits and drawbacks.
7. **Home Network Security**: Consider using Unifi Ubiquiti products for better Wi-Fi coverage and enhanced security features.
8. **App Maintenance**: Ignoring app updates can cause functionality issues down the line.
9. **Role of External Components**: Issues can stem from external devices like monitors, internet modems, cables, mice, and keyboards.
Memorable Moments
00:00 Always learning from Nice Guy's tech videos.
05:51 Stay calm, assess the situation logically.
06:22 Reboot, update drivers, reset network, troubleshoot Internet.
12:34 Differences: Windows easier to fix than Mac.
22:29 Restart computer first, physical shutdown if necessary.
23:52 Driver Booster: identifies and updates outdated drivers.
32:36 Beware of public Wi-Fi for sensitive info.
36:08 Cloud services store information on the network.
37:15 Cloud storage is a more secure option.
41:38 Cloud services are convenient but backup crucial.
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Recorded in Studio C at 511 Studios. A production of Circle270Media Podcast Consultants.
Copyright 2024 Carol Ventresca and Brett Johnson
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
Transcripts
We are Looking Forward Our Way from Studio C in the 511 Studios in the Brewery District just south of downtown Columbus, Ohio. Hi. This is Brett. You know, our podcast guests always provide us with new information, whether it's for new to you, new to us, that's why we have them here and they always help us learn something new and interesting. Today's guests are very special. This team not only teaches us something new, they help to make our tech and virtual worlds so much better. Let's welcome back our Nice Guy Technology team, Andy Landrum and Alex West. Thanks for joining us again.
Alex West [:Yeah. Thanks for having us.
Andy Landrum [:Good. Yeah. It's good to be here.
Carol Ventresca [:Gentlemen, it's always good to have you. And and, audience, I take advantage of these guys while they're here. I always have tech questions. So after we turn off the mics, I'm like, now should I do this or should I do that? Or so thank you very much for continuing to show up even though you know I'm gonna put you on the spot. So, Brett, you know, we always learn a lot from Nice Guy when they're here, but I also watch their, videos. And so that's where I kind of get some ideas and when I bring them back. Those tech videos provide lots of great information, quick, informative, right on target. And as I said, that's why I've got him here today.
Carol Ventresca [:I viewed one of the videos, and I knew we had to discuss the magic of rebooting. How many of you out there know every time you ask somebody for help, they say, did you reboot your computer? But also they've always got other good tech tips and tricks. So, the team is going to help us solve all those little crazy tech problems that sneak up on us. But first, let's ask Andy and Alex to give us a little bit of an overview on their background as well as Nice Guy Technology and how it got started.
Andy Landrum [:So, yeah, Nice Guy Technology started as, basically a residential repair place for, like, your laptops and computers and stuff. And, then we slowly started moving Forward, business to business and now we're solely business to business helping businesses all across Columbus with their technology needs and helping them with those technology problems so that they don't have to worry about them, so that they can focus more on running their business. We've had years years of helping people with technology issues and we always like to provide, some helpful information to people who might be struggling a little bit.
Carol Ventresca [:You know too, I I think what I'm, I have seen happen in my different career places is that it's hard to find, number 1, a technology group willing to talk to you that you can understand, especially if you're a small organization. Oftentimes the the these folks would rather deal with larger organizations or just one person. You know, it's it's like you're hitting that middle niche group. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that that's great for small businesses.
Andy Landrum [:Yeah. We love to work with sort of that, group of, like, 10 or more employees, we like to say, is our sweet spot. We can go higher, but we like that sort of small knit group feeling of, like, working with, like, family owned businesses or something like that. And we always love that kind of, like, businesses who are, like, smaller in size just because we get to know everyone. We get to have a better relationship with everyone, and we get to know them on a personal level, which I, like to do as well.
Carol Ventresca [:Good point. Yeah. Yeah. So do you guys how long have you the the company's been around since 2011. Is that right? How how long have you both been working at Nice Guy?
Alex West [:For me in the fall, it'll be, I think, 6 years that I've been with them.
Carol Ventresca [:Okay.
Andy Landrum [:I I've been working with them off and on. I'd say in total about 5 years.
Carol Ventresca [:Okay. What where were you working before that?
Alex West [:I was working at a restaurant. I knew Andy in high school, and then, I was looking for another job. And my aunt was like, oh, the Landrums are hiring. So I was
Carol Ventresca [:like, how
Alex West [:do I see what this is about? And then I didn't think much of it of other than if I could get out of the service industry, but I've been there ever since.
Carol Ventresca [:Wonderful. So, Andy, you gotta give a shout out to your parents.
Andy Landrum [:My parents, Mason and Mary, they've owned the company since 2011, and I they're doing a great job. It's Yeah. It's It's a fantastic company. It's great to work there.
Carol Ventresca [:Yeah. It it really is. So we we we need to shout out to them and thank them for having you come and join us
Brett Johnson [:today. Yeah. Well, and I think it's also important to note, and this is more in the the the pivot of business sort of thing, that they recognized that they, you know, whether it was a natural evolution or not that went from the personal to business to business
Andy Landrum [:Yes.
Brett Johnson [:Straight out. And they weren't afraid
Andy Landrum [:to
Brett Johnson [:do it. I mean, of course, they would have their hold their breath and see if it's gonna work, but they did. Mhmm. You know, and it's working for them, which I think is great. Yeah. So, you know, we've all been through this this situation. 1st, your computer acts strange, then it freezes, then we freeze. Not sure what to do next.
Brett Johnson [:Calling a computer guru usually begins with the question, hey, did you reboot it? You know, turns out there is much more to that small step than we realized. And before we get to the fixes though, don't we need to identify the problems we're experiencing? It may be frozen, but possibly just slowing down or programs are not opening correctly or we can't get an Internet connection. Just what should we do initially to diagnose the situation even though we're in that panic mode and may not remember steps, but maybe, you know, as we take that breath and go, Way. How do we how do we help you?
Alex West [:Yeah. I I think the most important part is that breath. It's hard to get caught in that situation of, oh, everything's gonna be awful. I'm gonna lose all of my data. Am I gonna get my computer back? But it's just kind of breathing, Looking a step back, and then realizing, Way. Let's see what's actually going on. If it's an Internet connection, the easiest thing to do is see, is it only this computer or is everything else down as well? Because if everything else is down, it's probably an Internet outage or something like that. If it's only the computer, then that's kind of an easy thing of, like, okay.
Alex West [:Let's just do a reboot, see if that does anything. If not, you can always see if your drivers are out of date. If you're on Windows, you can do what's called a network reset, which just completely flushes the network settings that it has and it'll put them to what it was initially. And then you'll put in your Way Fi password or, you know, unplug back in your Ethernet Carol, and you should be good to go. But anything else, I mean, it could be a myriad of things with it being a computer. But just kind of trying to figure out what's the cause. Is it something is it getting onto the Internet? Is it a certain website? Or just kinda putting on your detective hat to try and figure Our. Just figuring out what the issue is.
Alex West [:Mhmm.
Brett Johnson [:I my wife just recently, went to a new iPhone 15. Of course, she had to, you know, take them, you know, what level phone she had at 13 or something like that. You know, all the stuff had to go on there. So she was having some problems with and speaking of rebooting some of the apps weren't working right. And I had heard, it's like, delete the app, bring it back up, bring it back on your phone. Tada. It works, which is you know, you you would not think it's simple as that. It's like, why am I, you know, that you're thinking it's I gotta bring the phone back, you know, and then we're kind of on a computer, but it's just kind of similar.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. But it's that sometimes it's just rebooting the app, taking it off your phone, simple things like that to get, you know and I think a lot of people don't realize that too if they well, if I remove the app, I don't lose everything. It's like, no. It remembers you have it. And they don't it's that learning curve. Yeah. Like, no. You're fine.
Brett Johnson [:Because she asked me, it's like, am I gonna lose, a Libby app? And she said, am I gonna lose all the books? Like, shouldn't because it's not stored on your phone. It's I bet it's the app. And she tries, like, Way. It's working now, you know, or some changes happened because it's now upgraded to another phone. I think she was trying to and, again, this is in the weeds, but Way were in the car trying to connect it up and she was asking Siri to start the app and Siri says, no. I can't do that because you're in the Carol. And she put it together. It's like, oh, wait a minute.
Brett Johnson [:You can also read books on Libby. It's not just audiobooks. And it's it must be trained to going, no. I can't I can't do that for you. You're gonna manually do it because you can actually read while you're driving, and I'm not gonna do that. Yeah. There's some stoppage there. And and she figured that out.
Brett Johnson [:It's like, oh, I because she's used to the app. Way, like I said, it's going in the weeds here a little bit, but it's those going the path of trying to figure things Our. And maybe when we're smart about it, then we realize.
Carol Ventresca [:You know, our computers are hundreds of pieces, and they can all be problematic at at some point. Is the bigger problem software or hardware? And is it always obvious, or are there pieces that are so integrated that we'll never be able to distinguish what's going on?
Andy Landrum [:Like the hardware stuff. Usually that is much more obvious and easier to tell what is going on. Like, we can run certain diagnostics that like say whether the RAM is having trouble or whether the CPU is having trouble. Usually that is much more obvious than issues that pop up because of software but the software issues are much more prevalent and usually take most of the time of what we do as a company, and, is usually where our efforts are pointed to most.
Carol Ventresca [:Every every time I get another level on, the package of Word and Excel and it never fails that they it's Outlook. Oh my gosh. It's just a problem.
Alex West [:Yeah. It's just huge. One of the biggest things that we have issues with is just issues with Outlook as people will call and say, oh, my email isn't working again, or I'm having this weird issue. And for a lot of features, there's one issue of where, if you're trying to schedule out something, it'll tell you, you know, you have x amount of conflicts. If you're going 6 months out, it's not telling you where all of those conflicts are. So it'll make you go through and be like, oh, okay. I need to resolve this conflict, this conflict, this conflict, so I can schedule this 6 months out. Like, if it's a recurring Right.
Alex West [:Thing for 6 months.
Andy Landrum [:Right. Right.
Alex West [:But the it's not something that Outlook can do is show you which conflict it is. You would have to manually go through and view all of the conflicts.
Carol Ventresca [:I know. Outlook is such a problem, but I still love the filing system of being able to hold on to emails. Yeah.
Andy Landrum [:Well
Alex West [:and even though it runs into all those issues, it's unfortunately still probably one of the most reliable email clients to use. I mean, we've most of the times when our client is on a third party system where it's not being ran through Microsoft servers, they're running into more issues that are bigger deals that, you know, not let them actually send or receive emails versus Microsoft using Outlook. It's always just weird kind of issues with viewing or just kind of how you want it to be better, but it's just it is what it is.
Carol Ventresca [:I use, Gmail and then and dump it into Outlook. And, boy, do you have to be careful. Oh, yeah. I can't tell you how many times I've gone back into Gmail thinking I'm cleaning stuff up, and then I go into Outlook and I go, whoops. It's gone. It's gone. You know? So yeah. Yeah.
Carol Ventresca [:You really you really do have
Brett Johnson [:to be careful with that. Yeah. Are you seeing as well that when an app let's just say it's Zoom,
Andy Landrum [:you
Brett Johnson [:know, for sake of of a of an app to talk about that you kind of ignore the update. It's it's it's telling you should. They just keep ignoring it. Is there a point where an app is just gonna say, uh-uh. You're done. We're gonna we're not gonna work for you anymore until you update.
Andy Landrum [:Well, yeah. There are times where that does happen. Sometimes Windows does that actually Really? Where,
Brett Johnson [:I'm guessing Apple iOS will as well too sometimes.
Andy Landrum [:Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Windows is more prevalent with that because, sometimes, you you can have it ignore updates for, like, 10 days days or something like that. You can just turn off those reminders. Eventually sometimes Windows forces those updates on you and forces it to restart and update and usually that's where problems come around. And sometimes we'll have to roll back those updates. But Mac is a little bit more forgiving in that sense.
Andy Landrum [:And actually the differences between Windows and Mac sort of going back to the hardware problems that sometimes might crop up, That's a little bit more problematic on the Mac side because with Mac everything is so integrated that usually you'll have to replace or take it to an actual store and have them like replace big components of the machine like, the entire keyboard or like, may even just need to get a new machine entirely. Most of the time with Windows machines you can very, or easily, more easily identify those issues whether those those problem components like the RAM or the CPU or the GPU, and it's much easier to like buy it yourself and replace it yourself than, a Mac is usually because they they like to keep everything, very integrated and it works well when it works well. When it doesn't, pretty much everything is Right.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. That makes sense.
Carol Ventresca [:But, boy, those Mac lovers, they always say that they do much better for Mac.
Brett Johnson [:I you know, I'm in both fields and that I understand the the the benefits of both. I get it. And and I've never been a both. Yeah. I I I'm I'm comfortable with both. It's just remembering how things react on the screen and that sort of thing. But I get it. I've never been team Apple or team, team PC necessarily.
Brett Johnson [:Whatever's in front of me, if it works, it makes my life easier. Let's go for it, honestly. You know? And and I get why people Yeah. Go crazy because of those problems. Mhmm. Way lot of it's based on that. That they've had an Apple and have never had an issue with it in their life, but they hear horror stories about PCs. Mhmm.
Brett Johnson [:So they realize they they think that if I ever have a PC, I'm gonna walk into
Andy Landrum [:that world. And then I hear people who have had horror stories with Apple and they just absolutely will not buy an Apple because the Windows is just more customizable in that sense. Exactly.
Carol Ventresca [:I I that was my experience with the first iPhone. I had more trouble with that iPhone, and I switched to Android, and I never went back.
Brett Johnson [:Oh, wow. Yeah. Interesting.
Carol Ventresca [:And, you know, like, in going back, I wanna do another step back here on equipment. I've been I was having trouble with a monitor and it was creating issues. Got a new monitor, which was wonderful, but it does little weird things. And and I've noticed, like, right now, I don't get all the pretty pictures. I just get a blue screen when I turn the computer on. So this morning, when I finished my email, I did a I'm gonna do a reboot, not a restart, but a reboot, and see if I could get those pretty pictures back up on my screen.
Andy Landrum [:Yeah. That's that's actually an important point going back to, how to identify those issues. Sometimes it could be those external components like the mouse or the keyboard or Right. A monitor that could be giving you issues. And, usually, it could be, like, a loose cable or something like that. It could be components of the monitor. So, like, just taking those steps to identify, or going sort of down the chain of, like, what could go wrong and testing those just to see you like Way so where is it failing? Is it the actual monitor or is it the Carol?
Alex West [:Just Yeah. We've had a lot of cases where we've gone out on-site somewhere to fix a computer, and the issue was the, monitor was unplugged from power.
Carol Ventresca [:Oh, right. Right.
Brett Johnson [:Oh, wow.
Carol Ventresca [:Well, it my old monitor, I basically, unplug it was like a rebooting of the monitor. Unplug it, plug it back on, and then it would work, and I got tired of doing this. So
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Well, let's stay on that equipment kick here. I've heard that we should likely utilize a booster with our Internet modems. Is that something we should look at? I mean, or is there some other way that we can maximize Internet speed or maybe even coverage in the home possibly? I know the 2 are different, but at the same time, people are using Way Fi at home and they want that Wi Fi as much as they can around the house to be as strong as possible. And speed is is is always an issue too.
Alex West [:Yeah. So with the boosters, the only thing to be wary of is it's not gonna give you any more speed. It's just gonna, give you more signal around wherever you are, if it's in your house or it's in your office. I use what we use at work, which is, Unifier Ubiquiti products. Those are great if you can just, you know you have your main router, and then you can attach whatever. There's network switches where you can see what's plugged into it. You can, get access points, which is what puts the signal around the house. Mhmm.
Alex West [:And then you can I mean, if you like to get into it, it gets you a lot of things? If you can see what devices are on your network, all the traffic that's going through it. And it's much more secure than just a basic router would be from Spectrum or BreezeLine or whoever your Internet, service provider is.
Carol Ventresca [:And and what's what's it called?
Alex West [:Unifi, u n I f I.
Carol Ventresca [:And is that the name of the company?
Alex West [:Yes. The company. Okay.
Brett Johnson [:And, of course, it has to be an I on the end.
Alex West [:It does. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:You know? Cool.
Alex West [:It's actually the people that started it, I think, were ex Apple employees.
Carol Ventresca [:Oh, well, there you go.
Brett Johnson [:There you go. Exactly.
Carol Ventresca [:So it so are there lots of different pieces of this to choose from? Or
Alex West [:You can really get into the weeds of it. There's, the most basic device that I think would be helpful for people is called the just the dream machine. It's kind of a little cylinder that just looks like a little r two d two, that has a little blue light at the top, which would just be a nice home router to do. I think it's about $200 that you could get at Micro Center, you know, online, wherever. And it has Way Fi within that device. And then you can, you know, get other components to either strengthen or whatever you wanna do with it. And then they have security cameras. They have door access.
Alex West [:They they have a whole lot of other devices.
Andy Landrum [:The whole the whole family of those devices is very customizable to whatever you might need. I know. And, they actually have a couple of apps you can download. That's where you can actually see that kind of information of, what actually is using those access points and what devices are actually connected to your network. That's where you can see all that information.
Carol Ventresca [:And and it makes your devices at home more secure then?
Alex West [:Yes. Yeah. It has, like, a better firewall Okay. Built into it, and it has just other pieces of software and hardware components that just stop, people trying to penetrate your network.
Andy Landrum [:Mhmm.
Carol Ventresca [:I I mean, I I live in a condominium complex. So I you know, if I pull up what Wi Fi is in my house, I'm pulling up everybody who's in the neighborhood too. Not that I can get into it. Mhmm. But you see it. You know? And especially if they, you know, they use their name. You know? So Sam's Way Fi you
Alex West [:Yeah. Well, there
Carol Ventresca [:you go. There's Sam. So
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. You kinda have to watch what you name your router too. I've seen some goofy psycho. Sure. If you realize other people could see the name of your you know, of that, it's like the yeah.
Andy Landrum [:I will say
Brett Johnson [:Like sexy kitten or something. It's like no no no no. I don't want that on my, you know, as an Johnson, you know.
Andy Landrum [:I will say some of those names give me life. Like, the one of my favorites, I think, where we live someone has a Way Fi called it burns when I pee.
Brett Johnson [:No way. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.
Andy Landrum [:Some of some of those names are wild.
Carol Ventresca [:There there you go. I what what did we say at the beginning of this? You guys would definitely give us a lot of tips. So okay. Alright. Okay. Now we we started this out talking about rebooting. We're going back. We're ready for that all important reboot.
Carol Ventresca [:I'm usually fearful to reboot when there a problem is occurring because if I have to turn it off manually, if you can't do, like, a control alt delete, go into the task manager and all of that, tell us what's really going on when we reboot. What does it do the computer and what is it really fixing?
Andy Landrum [:Yeah. So a reboot, honestly, I should preface, there are a few different things that people call it rebooting, restarting, shutting it down, and then restarting it back up. Usually Way we like to say to people, if you can do a restart, do that because a general reboot and just shutting it down and then restarting it back up, those do a little bit different things than a restart. A restart is, basically telling the computer: Way, let's shut everything down, let's, restart all of these different processes, make everything run fresh. Right.
Carol Ventresca [:It it's it's kind of like flipping a switch when you're walking in and out of your bedroom to put the lights on as opposed to flipping the switch with all of the electricity in your house.
Andy Landrum [:Right. Right. Kinda like a breaker would be a good Mhmm. Example. But yeah. So shutting it down actually doesn't necessarily restart all the different processes running in the background. It basically just says, Way, let's go to sleep for a little bit and then turn back on. A restart really gets into the weeds and restarts all of those processes that might be messing with you a little bit.
Andy Landrum [:And in terms of having to physically shut it down with, like, the button on the computer, That usually doesn't mess with the computer too much. We always, of course, tell people restart it on the computer itself not with, like, the physical button, as much as you can. But if something is really, like, stopping you from actually interacting with the computer, Shutting it down manually, not really an issue, but overall restarting solves a lot of issues that we have that come up in, at least our day to day, with helping people with their technology issues. But, it really it really is like sort of a Carol for, if something feels off, if something is going wrong try a restart see if that fixes it. If not then always feel free to like dig a little deeper see what could be going on.
Brett Johnson [:Well Looking of the digging deeper so are there other trips tips or tricks like the rebooting that can be done easily that can help the computer run more smoothly then?
Alex West [:We typically, use a piece of software called Driver Booster. It's nice that it'll look at all of the and this is specifically for Windows. It'll look at all of the drivers that are on your computer. It'll see what's outdated and what isn't. The only thing to watch out for though, which is a little annoying, when you are downloading it for the first time, it will spam you with a lot of, would you like this free piece of software? Would you like this other free piece of software? So you just wanna make sure you're not downloading all of these miscellaneous pieces of software that you don't need. But, that's a good place to start, especially, like, you'll see, oh, this sound driver is from 2014 or, you know, something like that. And then still for Windows, depending on what computer you're using, most major companies have their own driver software. So if you have Lenovo, it's something called Lenovo Vantage.
Alex West [:Dell has something called Dell Command. HP has HP support assistant, and that'll check for the HP specific or the company specific drivers that you wanna update.
Carol Ventresca [:So when you really are, like, literally shutting it down, I mean, completely turning it off, what what has happened? It it it you're looking at a computer that is freshly bringing everything back up. Is that am I on the right track there?
Andy Landrum [:Yeah. Well, shutting it down basically is saying Way we're gonna put everything on pause. Our is no longer moving through the machine and all the components are off. When we then turn it back on from a shutdown, It's basically saying Way let's resume everything back up. Whatever processes, it can keep how they were. It will and basically just saying Way running again. With a restart everything that Way happening on the computer basically gets reset. So if there were any problem programs giving you trouble, when the computer was running basically all of those processes are now completely stopped and then restarted again.
Andy Landrum [:Okay. But, yeah, with a with a shutdown, that's basically just putting everything on pause. And whatever was running that it can resume, it will. Whatever needs to be restarted, it'll restart that. But we we always like to tell people restart if you can because that really helps everything.
Carol Ventresca [:And, if if somebody is trying to hack your computer, a restart or a reboot, is it necessarily going to stop that? Is that right? And and if so, what should we do if we think somebody is trying to hack in?
Alex West [:Big thing is still just take that step back. Because a lot of times, as much as it may seem like someone's hacking your computer, it's not. Recently, one thing we've noticed was with when people were trying to go to Amazon's website, if you're on Google, you can have sponsored ads.
Andy Landrum [:And
Alex West [:someone was taking out sponsored ads where it looked like you were going to, you know, www.amazon.com. And it would take you to this website where there's a bunch of flashing images. It's saying, something along the lines of, like, there's something wrong with your Microsoft account. Please call this number to fix the issue. But, you know, with that, nothing's happened. You've gone to a web page and it's trying to fish you to get you to call someone or put in some sort of information that could then compromise you. With with a hack, I mean, turning your computer off will disconnect them from the computer. But depending on how they got into the computer, like, if they already have their software on the computer, once you turn it back on, they can still get into it.
Alex West [:If you think someone has hacked your computer, the best thing would be to typically take it to I mean, here, I would Way, Micro Center or try and find someone locally that knows something about computers that could help you out. Because that is always Way hard part of if you're just someone, you know, that's not necessarily affiliate with a company and has an IT person to work with, it's hard to find that support. So Mhmm.
Andy Landrum [:Right. Taking it to Micro Center and all those stores that could help you restore it to a previous point is very beneficial. One thing you can also do to help out with that process is, making sure you have a backup in place, making sure you have some place or some way that you are backing up that data, and backing it up regularly. We really love to push that because that really helps when anything could go wrong, with, like, the hardware or if someone hacks into it and messes and encrypts everything. That backup really saves a lot of time, a lot of headache. Yeah. That that is something I really like to recommend to anyone who can.
Carol Ventresca [:I I think that's the top tip that you all have given us in every program is that if we don't have backups going, there's the the the the issues and problems are much greater than just needing to reboot.
Andy Landrum [:That's for sure.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Well, staying on that hacker theme, you recently released information on what you should do if you happen upon a strange USB drive, which is amazing. We even have to ask this, but, many would just plug it into their computer to see what it is. I I probably already answered the question once I laughed. Way are your suggestions?
Alex West [:Please don't.
Brett Johnson [:Yes. That, you know, that I there it almost likens to the some of the b b b scams that you hear about or the scams reported by BBB. And you kinda go, somebody fell for that? Somebody fell for that. But it's like, you pick up a USB drive and you put it in your computer.
Carol Ventresca [:I know. Yeah. Well, you know
Brett Johnson [:But people, like, amazingly, people do that. I I just I'm surprised Way
Carol Ventresca [:It it used to be that USB drives weren't so common Yeah. And were more expensive. You know, today, they're
Brett Johnson [:A dime a dozen, basically.
Carol Ventresca [:Literally. And I give people give them away free. So
Brett Johnson [:I know. And I shouldn't laugh. I I know I shouldn't, but it just seems so obvious. Some things don't and some things don't, I guess.
Carol Ventresca [:So if we see one in the in the, parking lot of a grocery store, your suggestion is to
Alex West [:Leave it alone. Please don't use it.
Carol Ventresca [:Throw it away.
Brett Johnson [:Stomp on it and break it so no one else does. Throw it Way it away. Yeah.
Andy Landrum [:If you haven't seen the video already please go watch it. It has some really good information, but, yeah, don't don't even think about using a USB drive that you do not know what is on it.
Brett Johnson [:It's like finding a mouse on the parking lot. Hey, wanna Wanna come on in the house, little mouse? You know?
Carol Ventresca [:Come on. But, you know, the and we're sort of laughing because, yeah, you'd if you see something in the parking lot, you'd you don't wanna pick it up anyway regardless of what it is. But it could really be where somebody, want oh, would you look at this for me kind of thing. You don't know where that has been.
Alex West [:True.
Carol Ventresca [:I mean, it could really be in all innocence that you're putting somebody else's USB in your computer.
Brett Johnson [:Versus finding that somebody offering it up and Right. Right.
Carol Ventresca [:I mean put
Brett Johnson [:stuff in it. That's a true point.
Carol Ventresca [:You wanna you want to believe that it's Way.
Brett Johnson [:But Yeah. Yeah.
Carol Ventresca [:This is maybe too simplistic to ask, but I will. You put an unknown USB into your computer. Unless your computer's connected to the Internet, it could ruin your computer, but they nobody can get to you because you're not on the Internet.
Alex West [:Correct. Yeah. If if you're offline, there's nothing really the, software could do other than stay on your computer versus if it's online. If you have a network that's not secure, it could spread to the devices on the network and go from there.
Carol Ventresca [:Okay. So so let's carry this theme of hacking a a little farther. We've talked about this before. The the worst thing that's gonna happen, you know, our laptops and our tablets are in our hands and going with us wherever we're going. We need to have Internet access constantly for those, but then you're going into public Way Fi systems. How can we safely connect into a public Wi Fi system and are there situations which we should never go public even if we think we're safe?
Andy Landrum [:Yeah. So, in general Way like to tell people just because people like to make these Way Fi networks that look legitimate and look like they're, made by the company or the coffee shop that you might be at. Try to use your own personal hotspot if you can. If you absolutely know that this this network is safe and, like, I know this for a fact. I've talked to the owner and stuff like that. Then feel free to use it. One thing I will Way, to never do on public Way Fi is look at, like, things that would have your personally identifying information or, like, your bank account. Like, don't be checking that on public Wi Fi.
Brett Johnson [:So don't balance your checking account on at at a Panera or something. Yeah. Correct. Gotcha. Okay. Looking against Panera, but, you know, as an example, it's Right.
Andy Landrum [:Yeah. Of course. Exactly. But, yeah, in in general, when you're out at a public place, be just a little bit more wary of which networks you connect to because a lot of people like to make those fake networks that look legitimate and then can spread a virus or something that way or find some personally identifying information if you are checking those bank accounts and stuff. So, yeah, just be just be cautious.
Carol Ventresca [:I I think one other time when we talked about, using our personal hotspots, you had suggestions for which hotspot app to use. Am I right?
Alex West [:So typically with hotspots, it's built right into the phone. Okay. I'm not aware of any other apps you can use for a hotspot. You can purchase, like, other devices from, AT and T or Verizon that put off a hotspot network that you could connect to. But now, typically, with a phone, you just have the one that's built into it.
Brett Johnson [:You may have touched upon, VPNs. Mhmm. Could you kinda talk a Looking? Because that kinda goes with this a little bit. Sure. And what a VPN is and and what why it's something to consider.
Alex West [:Yeah. So a VPN stands for a virtual private network, and there's 2 use cases for it. The main one is if you're working somewhere, you know, in a business, you use a VPN to connect to the office to, you know, connect to the server, work on whatever documents are stored there, or just if there's some reason that you need to be connecting to that server or connecting to that network to use something on the network. The other reason to use a VPN is just when you're wanting to kind of shield yourself from those bad networks. It encrypts your, Internet traffic that you're using. It's much harder to see what you're doing on that network, and it just makes you safer in general.
Brett Johnson [:So that could be an alternative if you're at a a a coffee shop to to go on a VPN. Still don't do the private stuff, but at least, you know, you're a bit more secure?
Alex West [:Correct. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Okay.
Andy Landrum [:At least
Brett Johnson [:be a little bit smarter about it. But yeah.
Alex West [:Okay. Okay.
Brett Johnson [:Cloud services. Way we could do a whole podcast on that, but, let's touch on it, though. First of all, let's let's can you, give an example of, you know, definition of cloud services? But and also a few tips and tricks to meet our need to move to cloud services and and backup systems
Andy Landrum [:Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:And how they work and really kind of what is the cloud. It's such a misnomer, quite frankly, but it's just but we live with the word.
Alex West [:Mhmm. So typically, what a cloud service is, it would be something similar to OneDrive, Dropbox, Box, something that is storing some sort of information on the network that you can access from anywhere. You don't need to be in a specific location to access that data, and, you know, you'll have a login associated with that account. You can typically do it for multiple devices, and you can just see what kind of files or anything that's stored in the cloud. And why it's helpful is because we're moving away from needing companies to purchase, you know, 5 to $10,000 server equipment or, you know, if you're in the enterprise industry, it's even more than that. It's astronomical how much people used to and still spend on servers versus putting that information in the cloud where it's much easier to access, but you still have the issues of, you know, someone could gain access to the account. But you would still have that with the server anyway.
Brett Johnson [:Mhmm. Okay. That sounds good. Yeah. So, so you're not walking away from cloud services that's gonna be there. And and trust it. Let you know, you're getting away from hardware as a backup, but, you know, trust that it's that it works, that it Way. And then I know it's gotten better over time.
Alex West [:Well, it's easier too versus having, like, you know, a USB or a physical external drive that you're plugging into your computer, either you use a piece of software or you manually move whatever documents over to save it onto there so that in, you know, whatever. In the case that your computer breaks or there's a fire or something like that, then you have those files. But if you're a home user and you just have that next to your computer, then you're gonna lose the files anyway. So if you have it stored in the cloud, most of the time, there would have to be a huge issue at the server farm or, you know, something major with the company that you're doing it through. You typically aren't gonna lose your
Carol Ventresca [:And doesn't that go back to our whole notion of be prepared, have everything backed up?
Alex West [:Exactly.
Carol Ventresca [:It's a lot easier to do if you're using a cloud service.
Alex West [:It's a 100% easier. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Because So because my understanding is, you know, the cloud services, it's it's basically duplicated. It's not just like in one location. They can there's backups in many locations around the country.
Alex West [:Exactly. Yeah. A lot of companies will utilize different server farms that are in different states. Yeah. Typically, you're not gonna use it in different countries, but you can do that as well. And then the only thing to think about too is the services that I mentioned earlier, OneDrive and Dropbox and Box. Those are typically synchronization tools less than backup tools. For backup tools, you'd wanna use something like Backblaze or Carbonite.
Alex West [:That's actually making a backup of your data. Whereas OneDrive is more of just, I've got a laptop and I've got a computer at home. Let me use these files in both places.
Carol Ventresca [:And and Okay. To me, OneDrive, which is Microsoft. Correct?
Alex West [:Correct.
Carol Ventresca [:It seems like they make it harder for you instead of easier. And it and so maybe I'm approaching it incorrectly, and that's why it seems to be hard to use.
Alex West [:Yeah. Sometimes it can be confusing on how to set it up or what the purpose is. It's really of if you just have multiple computers or multiple devices where you're trying to view
Andy Landrum [:something on, that's where the best use case is.
Carol Ventresca [:I'm I'm also going through where I have a an external backup
Andy Landrum [:Mhmm.
Carol Ventresca [:Drive that unfortunately is already full. So I was like, no matter how much I try to get rid of stuff, it's like it's always full.
Andy Landrum [:Mhmm.
Carol Ventresca [:And and with cloud computing, it it could be a paid service, but it basically it's easier to add space. Exactly.
Alex West [:Yeah.
Andy Landrum [:So One thing I will add on, if I may, with those things like OneDrive and Dropbox. They sync the files between the computers, and that is almost another reason why to have another physical backup is it makes it almost more important because if you do get hacked sometimes that can sync over to those OneDrive and cloud services where it could end up encrypting the files that are on that cloud service.
Brett Johnson [:Really?
Andy Landrum [:So that is another reason why, again, having a physical backup is so important is, sorry. Go on.
Carol Ventresca [:So if I understand you correctly, then your OneDrive, that Microsoft all seen drive that's out there can be hacked even though you think that everything is locked down. If you're not locked down, it's not locked down.
Alex West [:Yeah. And then that's why I have it because, like, let's Way, you have that happen to you if you're using a backup service where it's like, let's restore data from 2 days ago before this happened, then all of the files will be fine. You might lose some, but if you're losing 10% versus a 100%, that's much better.
Carol Ventresca [:Could that happen with if you were using Backblaze or Carbonite?
Alex West [:That could happen. But whereas there are different instances that you can back up from, you can just choose an older version.
Carol Ventresca [:Okay.
Alex West [:Whereas, OneDrive, like, let's Way, I have a file on my desktop. That gets compromised, and then OneDrive syncs it. Then it's gonna be in the cloud. It could spread to other computers, and then you'd have a larger problem versus having that backup. Maybe that one backup is bad, but then you just restore from a different one. Way.
Andy Landrum [:No. Not saying that, like, those cloud services are bad for your security or anything. In fact, they actually are just very convenient help a lot with like if you do have multiple computers being able to find those files, and not have to deal with the hassle of moving them over multiple times. But just another thing to be wary of Way having a physical backup is so important and using those services like Backblaze or, just to be able to have that option of rolling back to a previous version of all of your files if need be.
Carol Ventresca [:Is in looking at OneDrive versus something like Carbonite, do those backup software or only data?
Alex West [:Typically, it's data. You'd have to look at what plan Carbonite or whatever backup service is selling. Okay. Typically, they'll call it, like, a data plan, and then there's a full image backup or a full disk backup, which would be, you know, all of your applications, all of your hidden folders, update, and everything like that. But most of the time, reinstalling the applications is much easier than losing all of those files, which is why it's typically files and photos and things like that that are backed up and not the software that can just be redownloaded.
Brett Johnson [:Okay.
Andy Landrum [:Yeah. And in in that sense, it's a little it seems a little bit redundant to backup software that you can just if you need to download it again somewhere else.
Carol Ventresca [:Okay. Our conversations always go so quickly with you guys. I say that for all of our guests, but really for you. We've had some fun talking about rebooting and and, you know, it seems so simple, but it's really not. And it's, not the computer folks don't tell us to reboot just to to aggravate us. It's there's really a reason to do it. In all of our conversation today, are there things that you really wanna make sure our listeners have heard? Any last words of wisdom?
Andy Landrum [:I mean, I would say, the the two big things, that I really want people to walk away with is, if there is a problem that is happening with your computer, first try restarting, and specifically restarting if you can. Since shutting down and restarting do a little bit different things, restarting is more all encompassing in possibly fixing some of the background services. And, at least for me, one of the other things is back up your stuff. If you're walking away with even one thing from this, back up your data because that can fix so many issues that you might have down the road. Great.
Alex West [:I I would agree with Andy. There's those are the two main things other than please don't use random USBs.
Carol Ventresca [:Got it. There you go. Yes.
Brett Johnson [:Well, many thanks to our Nice Guy Technology Experts, Andy Landrum and Alex West, for joining us again today. I think we we had the green jackets for them this time. Maybe. I'm not sure. There you go. Multiple multiple guest shots. I'm not sure. The golden mic, I think, is at 10 times something like that.
Brett Johnson [:Okay. Listeners, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to check out our show notes on the website for contact information and the resources we've, discussed today. You can find all that information at looking forward our way.com, and we're looking forward to hearing your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes.
