Ask Mr. Modem: Seeking go-ahead for backing up new computer
I bought a new computer that I can use an external drive with, which I’m anxious to use. The computer has both USB and Firewire ports, and therein lies my conundrum. I’m not sure which one I should use. Is one faster than the other so that it would make sense to use that one?
Congratulations on the new computer. As far as the ports you mentioned, Firewire is faster than USB, but the speed really doesn’t matter all that much. Both USB and Firewire are very fast, so either one should be fine. Depending on the amount of data you are backing up, it is probably only going to take seconds with either one, so if Firewire is five seconds faster than USB, is that a life-altering time differential? I think not. But yes, Firewire is definitely the faster of the two.
I have several Yahoo! Mail accounts that I no longer use. How can I close them out so they no longer exist? I have either forwarded or deleted any messages from the accounts, so I just need to pull the plug on them, but I have no clue how to actually remove the accounts. Because only spam arrives in these accounts now, I would really like them to be gone.
If you simply don’t log in, your Yahoo! Mail account will be deactivated after a few months. The key, however, is never logging in. If you decide to sneak a peek to see what you have in your Inbox after a month or two, the deactivation clock starts counting down again, as if it were Day 1.
If you want to be more proactive and manually delete an account, go to http://yhoo.it/1dhplsz and review Yahoo!’s Help instructions, or just go into Yahoo! Mail’s Help and search for “Closing Your Yahoo Account.”
When I’m in bed, before I go to sleep I like to surf the Web on my Windows 8 tablet. The problem I run into is that sometimes I’m awakened during the night by Notifications. I try to remember to mute the tablet, but sometimes I forget. Is there an app for Windows 8.1 that will automatically mute it during the night?
Even better than having to install an app, the app you need is built right into Windows 8.1. Go to Change PC Settings, click Search and Apps, and select Notifications. In the “Quiet Hours” section, you can set a time during which the system will not signal the arrival of Notifications. Nighty-night!
Mr. Modem’s sites of the week
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Inspired by Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton’s legendary bad opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night,” this contest features writing that’s so bad, it’s actually very good. Here’s an example of a previous winning entry: “The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land’s end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in their pints.” Need I say more?
NYPL Digital Collections
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital
This New York Public Library site provides free access to more than 840,000 digitized images from the library’s vast collections, including manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and sketches.
This story was originally published December 22, 2015 at 10:16 AM with the headline "Ask Mr. Modem: Seeking go-ahead for backing up new computer."