Guides to making the most of your computing and online experience:

RA's Guide to Usenet News
What it is...How to get it...Why you need it!

RA's Computing History Guide will send you down memory lane.  Surf these great sites covering the history of computers and the Internet.

RA's Fine Tuning Guide for broadband users will help you make sure you're getting all the speed you're paying for.

RA's Guide to Drivers is our latest guide.  Start here to find your way to drivers for every conceivable device.

Have a weird, unusual or cool link you'd like to share?  Post it for all to see on the Your Cool Links page or visit My Favorites to see what sites I recommend.

All of the tips, tricks, hints, warnings or whatever you find here should be taken with the usual grain of salt.  What works great here at the RA site, may suck terribly for you, so beware!!!

Hot Tip: Backup your system regularly, and keep a copy off-site.  Back up your data -- documents, spreadsheets, pictures, etc.  Your program files can always be reloaded from their installation disks.  In addition to data I always recommend backing up favorites, address books, and mail folders.  The basic rule of thumb is Backup anything you created.

If you are using WindowsXP, get in the habit of making manual restore points before installing any new software, hardware, or making registry changes.

It's also a good idea to keep a small notebook with your settings for Mail and News server addresses, passwords for your various accounts and web sites, ISP phone numbers, and other key settings in case you ever have to reload everything from scratch.

For one reason or another, usually a hard drive replacement, I do a complete reinstall at least once, sometimes twice a year, sometimes unexpectedly.  That notebook comes in handy when you can't get to your settings.

If you're a PDA user, then invest in a program like Code Wallet, and you can keep an encrypted, password protected electronic copy of all your settings wherever you are.  Use the backup program that came with your PDA to run a full backup both to your computer and to a flash memory card, if your system supports it.  Then you can do a full restore on the road.

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