Yup, an IT phrase I hadn’t heard before! ‘Digital Life’ is apparently the mixture of photos, mp3s, downloads etc and things like stored logins, messager histories, bookmarks and email that all home users have. None of which gets backed up of course.
I first heard about the ‘Digital Life’ name in a PC Pro article I was reading about the lack of disk imaging capabilities in the ‘Home’ versions of Vista. Personally I thnk this is a good thing since I’m a big fan of trying to get people to learn from their mistakes and nothing makes them take care of their PCs a bit better than loosing everything.
The reason I take this ‘tough love’ approach to fixing the PCs of friends/family/random-people-in-the-pub is because I used to called on to do it EVERY weekend so I now have a new approach:
- When asked what might be wrong, spout techno-babble for a bit and say I’ll go round “at some point”
- Ignore any other pleas for help for two months to make sure it’s really urgent
- Go round and pull off easy to get at files using safe mode or by putting their HDD into my machine (encryption & file permissions on a XP Home machine – don’t be stupid)
- Wipe -> reinstall -> run away before they notice all their apps are gone and so are all their settings
The fact that Vista has a fairly competant backup programme included doesn’t bother me, unless it’s an automated process like virus def updates or a bother-you-until-you-do-it system, noone will use it and all will be as it is now. No backup in sight.
On the possitive side, a clean XP install does get rid of all the spyware and other nasties on their so the average user has a system that works for a week or two. Lets see if this situation is the same after Vista has been around for a while….
I'm a web developer based in the East Midlands, UK and if I keep up the current rate, I might have developed 3 million sites by the time I retire