Moose Creek Center Editorial Views

News:

Get to work or loose all.

Only a few eight track stereos loom about auctions and garage sales any more. Close behind them follow cassettes, cassette players and VHS video.

Our technology is leaving many of us behind. Just as we got used to the CD and manically burnt all our favourite tunes and pics on dozens of these handy, shiny, compact little gizmos the DVD took over.

Just as the tape cassette overlapped with the CD the DVD overlapped the CD.

For now most computers have DVD's and all movies come in DVD. They hold ten times as much information as a CD but alas not all computers come with DVD burners.

Laptops and desktops went from the floppy drive to the DC Rom to the DVD and now many manufacturers are pumping out computers without a DVD or CD rom drive. Many computer programs, television programs, music and other media are downloaded now from the internet.

The 'flash drive', the 'stick' and the ipod revolutionized our computer, techno and musical experience. Now we can hold thousands of pics, tunes, video and documents all on a tiny USB stick the size of a lipstick. No more time consuming, complicated burning - just drag and drop or configure an automatic search of media.

So where does that leave that huge box of CD's and DVD's on your shelves?

 Years of your family pics, records, baby videos and hours and hours of making music mixes are all stored on CD's and DVD's. They are  getting dusty, scratched, broken and obsolete.

If you do not print your pictures (yes - on paper) and save your music on an external drive (physically larger than the USB flash drive - get a terabyte, which will also become obsolete) you may loose years of memories. CD's and DVD players will be eight track stereos in the near future and besides, they actually will deteriorate anyway. It is a myth that they will last forever. Do not test the theory and loose all your pictures.

Something will come after the flash drive but it may be some time, hopefully.

Of course devices becoming obsolete is only one way of loosing your pictures and music.

The most common way of loosing pics, videos and music is by simply by not protecting your computer and by never 'cleaning' it. Not cleaning dust bunnies but by cleaning out viruses, ad aware, trojans, cookies etc. BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP.

The computer in our homes are stealing memories. So many people never print out their pictures, or emails.

Pictures and letters to one another used to be something special, keep sakes and indeed our history. History

has relied on our letters and pictures to record much of who we are. But as our computer fries and ends up in the garbage heap so does a large part of who we are - never to be recaptured.

Will obsoletion be left to procrastination and you loose your family pics? Governments are storing our records and documents with modern technology but will they keep up or will they be bulldozed over by the the techno train?

Print your pictures and emails and email addresses You can take your CD, DVD or flash drive to Staples or Walmart and they may be able to give you good photo quality pics

Move music files and video to an external drive.

 Clean your computer and backup everything you have to an EXTERNAL drive.

 Views from Moose Creek Center

questions or help? wendy@moosecreekcenter.com