Gareth Jones

Dropbox is software that syncs your files online and across your computers.

Put your files into your Dropbox on one computer, and they’ll be instantly available on any of your other computers that you’ve installed Dropbox on (Windows, Mac, and Linux too). Because a copy of your files are stored on Dropbox’s secure servers, you can also access them from any computer or mobile device using their website.

I use the software to sync files between home and work, and if I want to show someone what I’m currently working on then I can send them a link to that file from within Dropbox too. I can also invite specific people to share files and folders like in Google Docs.

You get 2GB of storage free initially, but there are payable options if you want more space. This limit also increase by 250mb for every successful referral, so if you do sign up then please use the above link!

My girlfriend, Nicola has recently decided to go it alone and has set up her own accounting services company in Burscough, Lancashire.

Harrison and Company offer accounting services at very competitive rates with a friendly and approachable manner, and they’re very flexible and happy to work in whatever way suits your business.

Nicola is very experienced. She joined her previous employer in August 2002 as a Trainee Accountant and successfully qualified in February 2006 with first time passes in all papers. She was made an Associate of the firm in April 2008 following her valued contribution and effort within the Practice and continued as Practice Manager until leaving the Practice last week.

She’s currently running an introductory discount that makes her pricing even more attractive than usual, but you’d best be quick if you want to take advantage of it as places are limited!

Around a year ago now I was working at my computer one night. Suddenly it made a few clicking sounds and immediately I knew that this was bad news. Unfortunately, while I considered my immediate backup options and tried to decide how best to save all of my files before my computer finally died, it blue-screened on me and refused to start up again. Yep, catastrophic disk failure. It hadn’t even given me enough time to make some essential last-minute backups.

I spent the next hour or so researching the best way to get my data off a broken hard drive and found a forum where one guy had frozen his drive in the freezer, arguing that the extreme cold would slightly shrink the parts inside and bring any contacts closer together. Why not try that? The disk had already refused to yield anything to the six different bootable recovery disks that I had tried so I felt that I had nothing to lose.

I wrapped the drive in a plastic bag to prevent moisture from getting inside it and placed it in the freezer. The next morning I removed the drive and found it to be so cold that my fingers stuck to the metal. I connected the drive to my computer and turned it on, not really knowing what to expect. Amazingly, it booted into Windows. I managed to move everything of any importance off the drive onto a second drive before the disk finally warmed back up to room temperature and failed again.

After buying a new drive and re-installing Windows and all of my other software, the first thing I did was look for a backup solution. I found one in Carbonite. Carbonite automatically and securely backs up the contents of your hard drives for roughly £30/year and offers unlimited storage. It’s continuous and automatic, secure and encrypted. It’s also available for Mac. The peace of mind that I get from knowing that even if my flat was to burn down to the ground, all of my music, my photos, my work – everything – is all backed up off-site on secure servers.

As a happy customer I’d recommend it to anyone.