Passwords and backups are two of the unfortunate necessities of life today if you use a computer and do anything online. I'm curious to see what kinds of solutions people use for managing these.
Here's what I do:
Passwords
Like many people I try to use just a couple of passwords for everything in my life (one easy-to-remember one for low-security things and a more complex one for online banking and other sites where you really want a secure password), but the more online sites and services you use the more conflicting password requirements you run into (site A requires a password of eight characters with a combination of letters and numbers, site B requires a password of 12 characters with a combination of capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols, etc.), and the more passwords you accumulate. Plus I'm using some systems now that require you to change your password every 90 days, and your new password cannot resemble any of your last three passwords.
The Mac has an excellent built-in keychain that allows you to store and open all your passwords by using one master password. For Windows I use a free similar product called Password Safe. I use Microsoft's free Windows Live Sync to synchronize my Password Safe file between my two Windows computers so the file is always up to date.
Both the Mac keychain and Password Safe also have a password-generating feature, so you can have it create a secure password and memorize it for you. I've been using this and it's great; I don't even have to remember my passwords anymore, just my one master password to unlock the keychain.
Backups
A lot of people don't bother to do backups, but they tend to be people who've never lost anything in a hard disk failure. Once you lose all your files you learn your lesson for life. I used to work in a small nonprofit where our system crashed several times a week and people frequently lost everything they'd done since the last crash, so I got into the habit of saving my files every few minutes and making daily backups.
Again, the Mac has a great built-in program (in the latest OS, Leopard) called Time Machine; you just hook up an external USB hard drive and the computer automatically takes snapshots of your hard drive. If you need to recover anything, it's a cinch to use the Time Machine to go back to how your hard disk looked yesterday, two weeks ago, or a year ago and find the file you need. For a complete hard drive failure, I'm told Time Machine works also for restoring your files to a new hard disk.
For Windows I just copy my documents and other key files (e.g., web browser favorites and cookies) onto a removable drive (I use Iomega's Rev drive, but now that 16 gig and bigger USB flash drives are available I'm thinking of using that instead). I alternate between two of these disks, keeping one at home for a quick daily backup and giving the other to my girlfriend to store at her office so I have an offsite backup in case the house burns down. I've thought about using an online backup service, but the initial backup of many gigabytes takes several days, and it can take a long time to recover your files if you need to download them. So I use physical offsite backups instead; more work but faster in some respects.
Here's what I do:
Passwords
Like many people I try to use just a couple of passwords for everything in my life (one easy-to-remember one for low-security things and a more complex one for online banking and other sites where you really want a secure password), but the more online sites and services you use the more conflicting password requirements you run into (site A requires a password of eight characters with a combination of letters and numbers, site B requires a password of 12 characters with a combination of capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols, etc.), and the more passwords you accumulate. Plus I'm using some systems now that require you to change your password every 90 days, and your new password cannot resemble any of your last three passwords.
The Mac has an excellent built-in keychain that allows you to store and open all your passwords by using one master password. For Windows I use a free similar product called Password Safe. I use Microsoft's free Windows Live Sync to synchronize my Password Safe file between my two Windows computers so the file is always up to date.
Both the Mac keychain and Password Safe also have a password-generating feature, so you can have it create a secure password and memorize it for you. I've been using this and it's great; I don't even have to remember my passwords anymore, just my one master password to unlock the keychain.
Backups
A lot of people don't bother to do backups, but they tend to be people who've never lost anything in a hard disk failure. Once you lose all your files you learn your lesson for life. I used to work in a small nonprofit where our system crashed several times a week and people frequently lost everything they'd done since the last crash, so I got into the habit of saving my files every few minutes and making daily backups.
Again, the Mac has a great built-in program (in the latest OS, Leopard) called Time Machine; you just hook up an external USB hard drive and the computer automatically takes snapshots of your hard drive. If you need to recover anything, it's a cinch to use the Time Machine to go back to how your hard disk looked yesterday, two weeks ago, or a year ago and find the file you need. For a complete hard drive failure, I'm told Time Machine works also for restoring your files to a new hard disk.
For Windows I just copy my documents and other key files (e.g., web browser favorites and cookies) onto a removable drive (I use Iomega's Rev drive, but now that 16 gig and bigger USB flash drives are available I'm thinking of using that instead). I alternate between two of these disks, keeping one at home for a quick daily backup and giving the other to my girlfriend to store at her office so I have an offsite backup in case the house burns down. I've thought about using an online backup service, but the initial backup of many gigabytes takes several days, and it can take a long time to recover your files if you need to download them. So I use physical offsite backups instead; more work but faster in some respects.