Welcome to the Defensive Computing blog

This blog is aimed at people for whom a computer failure would be a huge problem, as in not being able to run a business or perform their job. Many such people are on their own and that's where, I hope, this blog will fit in. If you work at a small business, are self-employed or part of the growing home based workforce, then this blog's for you.

Defensive computing, as I see it, is about taking steps when things are running well, to avoid or minimize problems down the road. Rather than focusing on solving computing problems, it's about being smart and planning ahead to minimize problems and their impact.

I recently had to work on a computer where Windows XP wouldn't boot. Restoring the machine was a time consuming nightmare. Anyone schooled in Defensive Computing, would have a reasonably recent disk image backup to fall back on, thus saving hours of time, effort and expense. I expect to write much about backing up computers.

The blog will be much more educational than opinion oriented.

Only a few days ago, Paul Mulshine, writing in the Wall Street Journal, was making the case that reporters perform a more valuable service than bloggers. The heart of his argument about the difference between newspaper reporters and bloggers was this:

... whether the subject is foreign, national or local ... the writer [a reporter] in question is performing a valuable task for the reader ...  assembling what in the business world is termed the "executive summary." Anyone can duplicate a long and tedious report. And anyone can highlight one passage from that report and either praise or denounce it. But it takes both talent and willpower to analyze the report in its entirety and put it in a context comprehensible to the casual reader.

This blog will attempt to do just that, analyze things in their entirety and put them in context. Long on facts and short on opinions. As such, postings will generally be on the long side and they may not be as frequent as opinion oriented blogs. Hopefully, you'll find them useful. 

I've been blogging about Defensive Computing for a while now. My first blog, a freebie at Blogger, ran from January 2007 through July 2007. From July 2007 through November 2008, I wrote a Defensive Computing blog for CNET.You can get a good idea of what I write about from this short summary of all the CNET blog postings.

The target audience is not solely techies, but neither is it total newbies (this is Computerworld after all). Rather it's aimed at the great middle of the bell curve. I will do my best to minimize the technical background you need to get the most out of this blog.   

Welcome.