Tag: Computing and Peripherals

Q) I appreciate your recent advice on keeping files backed up (the June and September issues of PCPhoto). I’d add one more caution: If you’re using an automated backup program (i.e,. one running automatically on a schedule), be sure that the program is actually running and that there’s still room on the drive to which you’re backing up...

We’ve come a long way from sharing photos with a slide projector over muffled yawns. Our digital photos can move from camera to computer to phone to iPod and be shared instantly with practically anyone, anywhere. With all of the options for sharing and displaying images, we’ve gathered the essential gear you’ll need for a variety of sharing situations. Here are some suggestions on how to bring it all together. 

Q) You mention the importance of backing up files frequently.  I’d like to share my solution to this “problem.” The cost of external drives has been going down as the size of these drives has been going up. (I recently purchased a 500 GB drive for about $200.) I do an automatic backup of my critical files to this external drive every day...

Though enhancing my images can be fun, especially when I’m working with a great photograph, it also can be incredibly time consuming. I like making my photos look better, but increasingly, I much prefer to be outside just making images rather than seeing the hours flash by under the glow of the LCD monitor.

Printing on CDs with the Epson Stylus Photo R300 was quite satisfying. I enjoyed creating CDs for slideshows or a DVD of video footage and then printing a professional-looking label directly on the disc. The photo prints looked great, too, but the R300 was limited in size of prints to 8.5x11 inches. Thankfully, the Epson Stylus Photo R1800 came along. It offers quality printing up to 13x19 inches (13x44-inch panoramas), a new set of inks and even disc printing.

I despise wires, but I love the devices they connect. On or around my desk, there are no less than a dozen peripherals, tools and gadgets, each of which requires at least one wire, and some, two or more.

Everyone knows to back up, right? But does everyone do it? The Maxtor OneTouch external hard drives offer an excellent solution. These units are big, with 80 GB or more of storage, so you easily can back up a couple of standard hard drives. They come in both high-speed USB 2.0 and FireWire versions, which expedites data transfer, plus they feature a special button that automatically backs up your data with a single touch (with the included software installed).

Backup is a little like flossing. We all know we should do it, but it just isn’t a particularly fun part of photography. We’d all rather be out taking photos or working on them in our image-processing program than dealing with the details of files and being sure we’ve backed them up properly. Who can remember anyway?