Product Description

What would you do if the hard drive containing a year's worth of financial data and your wedding photos suddenly stops working? What would you do if Internet hackers run off with your credit card numbers and rack up several thousand dollars in 1-900 calls? Most people never even remotely consider the possibility of a computer disaster, but instead take it for granted that their computer will always work. Inevitably, disaster strikes in various forms, from hardware failures to hackers, fires, floods, and even simple human error. PC Fear Factor: The Ultimate PC Disaster Prevention Guide is the first line of defense in keeping safe from these all-too-real situations. This book provides non-technical computer users with the ability to prevent computer disasters wherever possible, and the ability to recover from unavoidable disasters quickly, easily, and completely.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #918733 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

From the Author
I am Alan Luber, author of PC Fear Factor: The Ultimate PC Disaster Prevention Guide. I would not be so presumptuous as to review my own work, but I did want to take this opportunity to provide a more detailed description of this book.

PC Fear Factor is a comprehensive, uncompromising end user’s guide to PC disaster prevention and recovery. It is written in clear, non-technical language that anyone can understand. It provides detailed, step-by-step instruction on how to prevent most computer disasters, and how to recover quickly, easily, and completely from unavoidable computer disasters.

Aimed at home users, PC Fear Factor addresses computer disasters users have come to know and hate – disasters caused by computer viruses, hackers, and hard disk crashes – as well as self-inflicted computer disasters (who among us has not trashed their computer by making some ill advised change?) and the ever-popular Twilight Zone disaster – the disaster of mysterious unknown origin.

PC Fear Factor is an important book because personal computers play a more important role in our lives than ever before. We use our computers to store digital photographs, digitized documents, music, videos, financial records and other critical documents. We depend on our computers to be available night and day to do dozens of things that were once considered to be conveniences of life and are now considered to be essential – things like e-commerce, bill paying, and stock trading. Most people have become power users of computers, but know very little about disaster prevention and recovery.

Computer disasters are gut wrenching experiences. Anyone who has ever seen his digital photographs, spreadsheets, or MP3s vanish into cyberspace can attest to this. Even if you have a recent backup of your data, you may have to labor for weeks to recover from a computer disaster if you are unprepared.

The central theme of PC Fear Factor is simple but powerful: that personal computers are unstable equilibriums, naturally prone to disruption and disaster. With each passing year, our computing environments – the hardware, operating system, and applications - have become increasingly more complex and more prone to failure.

It’s a sad fact that any change to your computing environment – even the most seemingly innocuous one – can disrupt your computer’s unstable equilibrium. By definition, when an unstable equilibrium is disturbed, disaster follows, because the system does not return to its previous state of equilibrium. If you are not prepared to deal with such disasters, your computer has become the world’s most elegant but expensive paperweight.

Amazingly, most people never consider the possibility of a computer disaster, or the terrible impact it will have on their lives until it is too late. Most people just don’t realize how complex and fragile their computing environments are. If you have been fortunate enough to avoid a computer disaster up until now and have done nothing to prepare for such a disaster, you are computing on borrowed time.

PC Fear Factor is designed to put you back in control of your computing environment. I can’t promise you that you will never have a computer disaster, but I can help you prevent most disasters, and recover from any unavoidable disaster that fate or felons throw your way.

I hope you enjoy my book.

From the Back Cover

What would you do if the hard drive containing a year's worth of financial data and your wedding photos suddenly stops working? What would you do if Internet hackers run off with your credit card numbers and rack up several thousand dollars in 1-900 calls? Most people never even remotely consider the possibility of a computer disaster, but instead take it for granted that their computer will always work. Inevitably, disaster strikes in various forms, from hardware failures to hackers, fires, floods, and even simple human error. PC Fear Factor: The Ultimate PC Disaster Prevention Guide is the first line of defense in keeping safe from these all-too-real situations. This book provides non-technical computer users with the ability to prevent computer disasters wherever possible, and the ability to recover from unavoidable disasters quickly, easily, and completely.

About the Author

Alan Luber is an author, journalist, computer expert, and consultant. Alan's first book, Solving Business Problems with MRP II, has been translated into Spanish and has sold well worldwide. He has also written dozens of articles that have appeared in both print and Web-based publications.

As a consultant, Alan helps companies implement Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Supply Chain Management solutions. He also helps clients to reengineer business processes and manage large, complex information technology projects. Recent clients include Koch Industries, Inc.; Imperial Tobacco Ltd.; Frontstep, Inc.; and GSI Lumonics, Inc.

Alan has a B.S. in industrial engineering from Penn State. He worked for General Electric, Management Science America, and Digital Equipment Corporation before establishing ADL Consulting Inc., in 1994.

Alan spends his free time writing for fun, playing the piano, restoring photographs, losing at gin rummy to his youngest daughter (who clearly cheats), and collecting and selling baseball memorabilia. (Alan and his much older, less handsome brother Phil own the copyrights to the best-known interior color photos of Shibe Park Connie Mack Stadium in existence.)

Alan is married, has three daughters, and lives in Roswell, Georgia. Alan would be pleased to hear from owners of small and home office businesses in the Atlanta area who require assistance in implementing personal computer disaster prevention and recovery plans. Alan can be contacted through his Web site, http://www.alanluber.com.

Customer Reviews

PC Help Guide
Excellent book which, as PC literate but not a "Techie" I found very useful in setting up my PC maintenance program.