I have used computers for 30+ years, in every way possible: at home, at work, for fun, and in production. In that time, I've learned some things that have helped me run more reliable systems, maintain greater uptime, achieve greater performance, reduce time to complete tasks, and even enjoy them more.

There is a real art to computing, and by applying good technique and a few tricks of the trade, you can really propel your computing experience forward: do more in less time, fix problems in seconds that would have normally taken you hours, and just generally, be more prepared for mishaps, and more capable with your tools.

First and Foremost: Backup your data

There are many ways to go about this, and there are benefits and downsides to each approach. Do you want to spend $20 a month on offsite, cloud-based backup? Swap USB sticks, or a secondary hard drive? Do you want to fork out for a RAID array? Whatever you do, do something! Research backup options and make sure you are protecting your data.

Run a File Server

The files on your computer largely break down into two catagories: applications and data. If you separate applications from data (by say, putting data files on a local file server), you give yourself the ability to lose your workstation computer and not suffer too badly.

If you do all your work locally, what happens when a drive fails? You've got major problems: you need to look at drive recovery, and may need a second machine (and certainly another hard drive.) Now, what happens in the same situation if all of your data files are located on a file server instead of your local computer? Well, if you have a spare drive, you pop it in, re-install your operating system, re-install your applications, and access your data (which is waiting for you, patiently, on the file server.)

My workstations are all, more or less, disposable. I could lose one at any time, and I would not care, because all of my data is sitting on a file server. Some people will suggest the cloud. Personally, I don't see the need to trust a third party with my data, and don't want to encrypt. While convenient, I'm not really a fan of cloud based storage for my important files.

Keep Spares

At minimum, you should have a spare hard drive, with an already-installed copy of your favored operating system. If you happen to lose a drive, you can pop that one in and (assuming you have a file server) be up and running in no time.

Consider keeping a spare computer. Drives are not the only thing to fail, and you don't want to be caught with no computer. Always have at least one spare computer kicking around, even if it's a bit old and sluggish. The same goes for mice and keyboards: they fail, often at the worst time. Make sure you have spare input devices: this goes for anything you rely on. Maybe you need a second printer, or monitor: it will vary by person. Don't put yourself in the position of being unable to work because some tiny thing broke: be prepared. Be like the boy scouts.

Run your OS from a Solid State drive

You definitely want to be booting from a solid state drive. They are much faster and provide a noticeable boost in performance when compared to platter-based drives. If you have an old computer and want to breathe new life into it, this is a great way to do it! You can seriously take a computer that is ten years old, drop a solid state drive in it, and realize performance gains that negate your need to buy a new one. Do yourself a favor and boot from solid state only! Your old drive can be used for storage

RAM: Don't be cheap!

You can really never have too much. RAM can be viewed as your computers short term memory. When this memory fills up, any additional data must be written to your hard drive, and then swapped in/out of RAM, as required. This is called paging. Paging is an absolute killer to performance. That's why servers are often configured with gobs of RAM: any paging is unacceptable. Ideally, in both servers and workstations, you want no paging, ever.

How to achieve this is simple: have more RAM than you need, and make sure your utilization never exceeds what you have. If you start to exceed it, get more RAM, or reduce the number of programs you are running (at the same time.) You can have as many programs installed as you want: just make sure to close them down, otherwise they stay in memory, eating up RAM. If you have more RAM than you need, you can have as many programs open as you want and never really worry about running out of space. More is better. The faster, the better.

Get QUALITY Input devices, Monitor

If you spend a lot of time in front of a computer, you deserve a good keyboard, a good mouse (I mean trackball), and a quality monitor. Upgrading these three items can often be more exciting than upgrading the computer itself. That first mechanical keyboard .. the first full sized kensington trackball .. these things are like turning on light switches!

Learn a bit of Scripting/Automation

Scripting refers to small programs written to automate repetitive tasks. You can write them in many languages, in many ways, for different purposes. They can be very simple or very, very complex. For example, you could write a script to take all of your photographs, shrink them to a particular size, convert them to greyscale, and stick the time and date on them: with one click, you could process a thousand files. You could write a script that takes a word document, exports it to PDF, and then uploads it to a remote site. More or less, if you can do it, you can automate it. The extent to which this is true is 100% dependent on your abilities.

Start simple - figure out something repetitive you do, and then figure out how to go about automating it. Those of you running Open Source software (like say, Linux, or one of the BSDs) are going to have a much easier time, as UNIX/Linux operating systems are designed to be used this way at a very fundamental level. You can still do a lot of automation with windows but it's just not the same. Photographers would do well to read up on the ImageMagick tools, "convert", "ffmpeg". These are some command line tools that can help you do really neat things with both images and video.

If you take some time to learn a little bit of scripting, you'll put yourself on a path of becoming a much more powerful user. Why? Well, once you understand how to automate things, you'll start to look at all your tasks differently. What you used to just do, you'll now consider "can I write a script that will do that?" Over time, the WAY you compute will change. Over time, you'll look back on what you used to compute and laugh at how much WORK you did.

There you have it - seven tips from a computer veteran. I hope you find them useful. They've certainly helped me. Good luck in your computing adventures. And always remember, kids:

If Darth Vader were real, he would run Windows and the Empire would be fully "Powered by Microsoft." Be a rebel, and run Linux. Be a rebel leader, and run FreeBSD.

Or be a Jedi, and run OpenBSD!"

---

[ @xwalkran ]

Seeking truth, meaning and enlightenment.
Philosophy, Technology, News, Conspiracy, Homesteading, Fiction, $$ and more.

Check out my news/conspiracy aggregation site @ http://walkran.com