Mozy

If you’ve been living in an air-conditioned, hermetically-sealed bunker this week you may have missed the news that not only have we had record temperatures for Wimbledon week, we’ve also got a Brit through to the men’s quarter finals.

For those people who are genuinely working from home this week (and watching the tennis with one eye whilst checking your Blackberry with the other doesn’t count), the thought has probably crossed your mind to make the most of the weather and decamp to the alfresco office that is the back garden.

However, whilst we may love the sun, our computers don’t necessarily agree (by and large, they really would prefer to be in an air-conditioned, hermetically-sealed bunker).  So, before trailing the extension lead out to the lawn and setting up a deck-chair desk, here are Mozy’s top five tips for keeping your laptop happy in the sun.

1)      Shade is your friend

Most office-issued laptops come in a black case, which is just perfect for absorbing the sun’s rays.  Batteries will lose life forever if overheated and hard drives that expand in the warmth will be prone to head crashes.  Keep your laptop under 35 degrees Centigrade to keep your computer safe.

2)      Time is a great healer

Carrying a working laptop from blazing heat to the cool of your home, or vice versa, encourages sudden expansion or contraction of the parts whilst still in operation.  Shutting down your computer before you move in and out, and giving it time to acclimatise before rebooting, will help to protect your device.

3)      A watched computer never boils

Leaving your computer unattended in the sun is never a good idea.  That rings true if it’s in the garden or in your car.  If it’s too hot to leave a pet or a child, it’s too hot to leave your laptop.

4)      Don’t sweat it

High humidity can lead to condensation in the circuits of your computer so, if you’re feeling sweaty, the chances are that your computer is too …only the computer issues can’t be fixed by a wipe with a towel.  If the humidity outside is over 80 per cent, it’s advisable to keep your computer indoors.

5)      Back up

The whole point of a laptop is that it’s portable so you shouldn’t be afraid of taking it where you want to use it.  If you have an online backup of your files, should the worst happen and your hard drive stops working, you’ll always have a copy of them in the cloud.

So, enjoy some fun in the sun and remember to protect your computer and protect yourself – slip, slap, slop people!

Today is the longest day of the year in the UK and Ireland, where we get a full 8 hours and 49 minutes more daylight than we’ll be getting on the shortest day this winter.

So, why not use those extra minutes to do one thing that will save you time for the rest of the year?

Signing up to Mozy and setting your backup preferences takes only a few minutes – but it will automate your backup for the rest of the year.  No more manual backups to hard drives, tape or USB sticks and no more worrying about what might happen if you ever lose your files.

Simply visit www.mozy.co.uk or www.mozy.ie to get started.

It’s time to light the candles and cut the cake for mozy.co.uk and mozy.ie are celebrating their first birthdays!

That’s a year since Mozy launched a service based on:

-         Local websites

-         Local support teams

-         Local data centres

-         Local pricing

But we haven’t stood still over the past year!  We now also have:

-         An online support portal

-         Mozy 2.0 for Windows and Mac

-         2xProtect for local and online backup

-         25% faster uploads

And there’s more on the way with:

-         The Mozy app for iOS and Android

-         An enhanced restore experience

-         Synchronisation capabilities

To celebrate our first year in the UK and Ireland, we’re offering residents in the UK and Ireland a chance to win a year of Mozy protection for free.

All you have to do is follow @mozyuk on twitter and tweet and complete “@mozyuk Mozy is the 1 for me because…” between now and the end of May.  At the end of the month, three winners will be chosen at random.

The recession has meant that we’re all putting off some of the purchases we would have liked to have made over the past couple of years.  In our home lives, that’s likely to be cars and TVs and, in the office, it’s likely to be new technology.

After all, as everybody’s grandmother says (unless you’re Prince William, I can’t imagine the Queen saying it): “If it aint broke, don’t fix it!”  But those same lips (in between sucking Werthers and knocking back enough tea to float a battleship) probably also said: “a stitch in time saving nine,” – a lesson that many businesses are learning in 2011.

Three years after the recession hit, we should all typically have been through a workplace technology refresh – but according to our new research, just 40 per cent of companies in Europe, and 30 per cent of companies in the UK, have actually completed one.  Unsurprisingly, the poor economic climate was the most frequently cited reason for plans falling by the wayside.

But what’s the result?  40 per cent of employees told us that their computers were prone to crashes and data loss, which had a negative impact on their productivity.  With analysts putting the cost of a lost record at $214 – scrimping can be a false economy that ultimately costs many, many times the price a few new PCs.

Plus, if your upgrade policy is ‘wait until your computer breaks completely’ it’s not just one or two documents you stand to lose, it’s all of them. And, if you lose your data, you’re likely to lose your business too – 60 per cent of businesses go under if they lose their data for more than 48 hours.

Of course, there’s always a third way! If you can’t afford to shell out for new computers, you can protect the old ones with online data backup.

And, don’t forget, if you’re using a service like Mozy, the act of transferring your data to a new computer in the event that it gives up the ghost – or because you’re one of the 40 per cent of European companies that actually follows a refresh cycle properly – becomes simplicity itself.

So, to put it bluntly, if you can’t afford a new car, make sure you’re up to date with your payments for road-side assistance and, if you can’t afford a new computer, make sure you’ve got Mozy.

The MozyBlog likes to think of itself as your SatNav to what lies ahead at Mozy so we’re excited to let you know that our compass is pointing straight to mobile apps followed by sync functionality a little bit further down the track.

This week, Mozy was at CeBIT speaking about its iPhone and Android apps for the first time.

Mozy’s mobile app will allow you to securely access the stuff you protect with Mozy, share select files such as photos with others, or view them on your phone. The app will also include convenience features such as photo thumbnail display which allows you to preview the files you’re looking for before downloading them in high-res.

Mozy also spoke about its beta trial for its new ‘sync’ functionality at the show.

This feature will allow users to put a Mozy sync folder on each of their computers. Any files that they put into this folder will be automatically synchronised on any other computers that they’ve installed the application on. This way, they always have the most up-to-date version of their files no matter which computer they’re using.

The sync functionality is just going into beta with a group of customers in the US, whilst the mobile functionality is set for a limited launch soon.

We think that, these new features will help our customers make more of the opportunities presented to them once their data is backed up to the Cloud.

To stay up to speed on where Mozy is with the roll out of these features, or to find out where we’re going next, follow us on Twitter or subscribe to this blog.  Or, for more information on our latest features, check out our Q&A.

According to new research from Which? a third of British home insurers offer no cover for ‘digital information’, which means that, if you’ve bought music online and anything happens to your laptop or MP3 player, you could be listening to the sound of silence unless you’re willing to stump up again for the cost of replacing your music collection.

Which? also found that just four of the eight largest download stores allow you to re-download tunes in the event that they are lost or stolen.

One solution, if you’re at risk of losing your music, is to find an insurance provider that will reimburse you for the loss of your digital data, however, it’s important to remember that it’s not just copyright material that you could be losing.  Whilst an insurance company can help you get back the soundtrack to your life, they can’t help buy back the photos of your kids, the journal you wrote on your travels or the emails your wife sent you when you were still dating.

Securing your information with an online backup provider can help you with all of these things.  Keeping an encrypted copy of your information in the Cloud means that, should anything happen to the original, whether it’s on a laptop that gets stolen or an MP3 player that gets lost on a night out, you can simply download it again to another device.

So, if you want the band to play on forever, perhaps online backup will be music to your ears.

Mozy 2.0 for Mac, the recently-announced feature-rich update to the world’s most trusted backup service for consumers and businesses, is now available for customers of www.mozy.co.uk, www.mozy.ie, www.mozy.fr and www.mozy.de

Delivering a native-Mac experience, Mozy 2.0 for Mac makes it easier and faster than ever for Mac users to run and monitor backups and restores – whether they’re using MozyPro® for business information or MozyHome® for personal data.

Mac users will now be able to enjoy faster upload speeds generated by optimised bandwidth usage and faster file scanning as well as pre-transfer processes. Mozy 2.0 for Mac also has a new look and feel, offering a true native-Mac experience. In response to customer feedback, Mozy 2.0 for Mac also delivers greater visibility into which files are backed up, increasing transparency of the backup process and offering peace of mind for users.

Customers can find more information, and download Mozy 2.0 for free by visiting the Mozy website.

Christmas is all about tradition. And there is no tradition better instilled into office life than regretting everything that happened at the office party.

We all know that alcohol and office tasks don’t mix – which is why it’s usually frowned upon to swig from a bottle of scotch whilst handling customer calls – but, in some work places, rules (like staff) become a little fuzzy in the festive season.

So, if you’re entertaining clients, beware of the long, boozy, Christmas lunch. It might seem that all is going well until you get back to your desk at half-past three and discover that your fingers aren’t hitting the keys on your computer that you intended them to. This is when it’s all too easy to find out that you’ve not deleted that email you don’t need; you’ve deleted a whole folder of email. You may also find yourself more than usually cavalier when it comes to saving documents over one another (and totally unfazed by the realisation at the time).

The office Christmas party can also be as dangerous as an under-cooked turkey and just as likely to leave you feeling sick to your stomach in the morning. In the ‘age of austerity’, more businesses are eschewing posh hotels and restaurants to host their Christmas parties in the office itself. This means that the opportunity to find yourself merrily sniggering with a colleague as you boot up your computer, open a document and proceed to ‘find and replace’ your boss’s name with ‘Mr Bumface’ is stronger than any of us would like.

Fortunately, the wonders of modern technology mean that none of these blunders are irreversible. An online backup system, like Mozy, will allow you to retrieve anything that you’ve deleted by accident and, just as importantly, restore any documents that you’ve tampered with to their untainted versions.

Unfortunately, Mozy can’t do anything to help if you’ve kissed Sarah from accounts or thrown up in the recycling bin but, whilst your personal reputation might be in tatters, at least you’re safe in the knowledge that no harm has come to the company.

Enjoy Christmas responsibly with Mozy!

In 2010, Mozy worked hard to create local services across a number of countries in Europe, including the UK, Ireland, France and Germany – each with local-language support, local-currency pricing, local data centres and local-language websites. To help make our customers aware of the closest service to them, we’re now automatically pointing people to our new sites. This has prompted some questions from people who have arrived at a country site they weren’t expecting – we’ve collected them all together and answered them here.

Why does Mozy redirect me when I try to visit its websites?

At the moment, Mozy is building local offerings around Europe – but we can’t do everything at once! To save you from having to try and work out where your local Mozy service is, we’ve set up the system to take you there automatically.

Why can’t I just sign up to the .com website?

There are a number of advantages to signing up locally:
• Your data is hosted here so it’s subject to EU laws – as an EU citizen, this gives you much better protection than if your data was elsewhere. If you’re a MozyPro customer, there may be compliance requirements for keeping your data in the EU.
• You get access to local support – that means the support centre is open when you’re awake
• You pay in your own currency, giving you predictability of your costs – the fluctuating exchange rate means the monthly cost of MozyHome in dollars has varied by nearly a pound over the last 18 months for those with Stirling bank accounts
• Restoring your data will be easier – for example, if you’re subscribed locally, you can request a disk of your data for a restore, which we can courier to you.

What happens if I register now and you launch a local website in my country later?

If you’ve been redirected from a country that subsequently gets a more local service, we’ll be able to simply migrate you if and when you’re ready to do so.

Help! I’m already a Mozy customer but I’m being directed to another site. How do I sign in?

Your log-in details will work regardless of which site you’re visiting. Just log in as normal and you will be redirected to your account page where all your credentials will be recognised.

What happens if I’m in another country when my computer does a backup, will my data go to the wrong data centre?

No, your data will be treated in the same way regardless of where you happen to be when you perform your scheduled or automatic backups.

I signed up at www.mozy.com, will my account be moved?

If you signed up to mozy.com in the past and are based in Europe, you should have already received an email informing you that your data would be moving to a European data center that is closer to you. One of the advantages is that this will provide our European customers a better backup and restore experience.

What if I want to sign up in a different country, how do I do that?

In order to help our customers, in countries where we don’t have a local language/payment offering, we redirect people to the most appropriate match we have available. If your ISP is registered in Europe and you live in a country where Mozy does not have a local website in the local language, you will be redirected to another European website in English.