As someone who deals with RS232, still, on a very normal basis, don't you remember the null-modem pin swaps? I still carry several DB9 null-modem adapters around with me in my backpack for testing. There is even a meme about it... something along the lines of "don't panic! swap pins 2 and 3 and carry on!" or something. So yes, even rs232 can be "backwards" (unfortunately).

I see others have replied that it could be an older router. I wanted to add that I've seen this issue on newer routers too, due to bad QOS settings. Many routers have QOS settings these days, and some automatically determine your max bandwidth, and others you have to put in manually. I've seen this when you put in a manual bandwidth number that is lower than your actual bandwidth. I found this out when I enrolled in a higher teir with more bandwidth, but my speed tests weren't showing the increase. Had to fix it to the the new tier and presto. Or turning off QOS all together will fix the problem too.

My younger daughter uses Bandicam, on a lower powered laptop. She learned of it from a lot of youtubers using it. Seems to work fine for that kind of thing and is popular.

Not only read the entire email, but respond back with more than one word answer to a multi-part question. It only makes me have to re-ask the same question again when they answer the first question part and ignore the rest of the question(s).

2 spaces is the norm. Taught in typing classes when we still had those. Of course, that was when people still typed using all their fingers and not just their thumbs. I took typing class in my High School, freshman year. It was mandatory to take at some point during Freshman/Soph years (it was 1 semester). This was in the 90's, and 2 spaces is what I was taught. Along with when to properly use indents vs. flush formatting and how to address formal letters and other typing standards. After the class I could type by touch at about 50wpm (after mistakes subtracted). One of the most used skills I use daily I learned in HS.

I'm sure there are going to be more sophisticated answers, but get a better router would be mine. I have a nicer Asus router, and it shows bandwidth used, and you can sort info by device (so you can see what device is using the most) and you can sort it by generalized web-traffic (ie: hulu, netflix, internet browsing, etc), so you can see what services are using the most bandwidth. I'm sure some of the nicer routers will give you similar info. It's not super in-depth like some dedicated monitoring/analysis tool is, but when I had the same problem, I was able to see that I was burning up 10's of GB of Netflix, as it was the elephant in the room bandwidth wise. I went to the site, and told it to lower it's quality to the next lower tier, and checked back after a few days and the usage amount was more inline. I think it was sending me high bitrate feed since my internet speed was so good, but it was causing a problem with the cap. I also was able to pinpoint a specific computer that was using more bandwidth than made sense. I believe the online backup was stuck in a loop and causing it to run constantly for a period of time. Rebooted the machine, and the usage went down to normal.

I'm sure there are going to be more sophisticated answers, but get a better router would be mine. I have a nicer Asus router, and it shows bandwidth used, and you can sort info by device (so you can see what device is using the most) and you can sort it by generalized web-traffic (ie: hulu, netflix, internet browsing, etc), so you can see what services are using the most bandwidth. I'm sure some of the nicer routers will give you similar info. It's not super in-depth like some dedicated monitoring/analysis tool is, but when I had the same problem, I was able to see that I was burning up 10's of GB of Netflix, as it was the elephant in the room bandwidth wise. I went to the site, and told it to lower it's quality to the next lower tier, and checked back after a few days and the usage amount was more inline. I think it was sending me high bitrate feed since my internet speed was so good, but it was causing a problem with the cap. I also was able to pinpoint a specific computer that was using more bandwidth than made sense. I believe the online backup was stuck in a loop and causing it to run constantly for a period of time. Rebooted the machine, and the usage went down to normal.

I do lots of work on different jobsites and am constantly changing IP/network settings. Try NetSetMan, I think this is what you are looking for, and has been great to use over the years. Found Here: Windows IP Freeware NetSetMan: Network Settings Manager (LAN & WiFi)[^] It's freeware and has lots of options. I think it is only windows though, so if you have Linux/Mac, you are out of luck. -jason

I recently in the last year or so had to pick up python syntax as well. I have similar background, with C, some C++/C#. I can usually read and follow other derivatives like Java as well. Python is described as being "easy" to learn for beginners, but for those of us used to "normal" languages, it's not so easy. My personal description is that it's a 'loosy, goosy' language to me. It seems that some syntax can be what ever you want, the interpreter just figures it out. The not having {} and ; chars drives me nuts. The data structures like tuples, and the fact that everything is a dict can be confusing. Add in that it's not strongly typed, and instantiates vars on the fly, and it's like a recipe for disaster for someone like me who is used to working with RULES! I know you can compile it in some cases, but the fact it's not compiled is even worse, as unless your IDE of choice is REALLY good, you can't even rely on the compiler catching trivial syntax/typo errors. I often find myself trying to do things in Python like I would do it in other languages, it works usually, but then the Python religious will call out, "but that isn't pythonic!". When was the last time you heard someone say that about C or C#?..."You can't do it that way, it's not C-thonic!" As someone who doesn't use it all the time, and still goes back and forth between Python and C languages, my only suggestion, is just "throw out what you think you know of programming, and learn Python like a beginner". While I didn't do that, my only conclusion is that it would help. Good luck, I still am not 100% comfortable with it.

I used to love Maxtor drives. Never had a problem with one (we are talking way back in the day). I think toward the end, the reliability might have went down, and I don't personally think their reputation followed them to Seagate when they were absorbed. I don't care for Seagate personally. I normally go with WD drives, but don't have the brand loyalty as I did with back in the 90's with Maxtor.

I also have a Synology 4-bay running WD HDD's with no problems for over a year so far. In addition to backup to local drive, I would really look into also using an offsite cloud backup service for the NAS as well. To be protected from theft/local disasters. I currently use CrashPlan, but with them ditching their personal accounts, I'm moving over to iDrive. What ever your cloud backup provider is, make sure it does file revisions. This will prevent ransomware from knocking out your local drive and your backups. Crashplan supports individual file histories, and so does iDrive, not many other backup services do, so check. But if your drive gets encrypted, and that gets backed up, it's not a problem with these 2 services, as you can just restore from a date prior to the ransomware attack and you have your original data back. Plus these options support real-time backups as well. With Crashplan, file revisions get backed up every 15mins if there are changes (maybe less if I want it to). And any of those versions are recoverable. I don't worry about my data anymore with the redundancy of the Synology NAS, plus off-site backup solution. And it satisfies the best practice of 1-2-3 backup plan (at least 1 local backup / backup to at least 2 different physical locations / at least 3 copies of all data).

KeePass and KeePass Mobile = Free Password DB stored in Dropbox Folder and synced between all devices = Free ...Nobody else controlling or having my collection of passwords = Priceless! With all the hooplah around encryption backdoors, companies working with 3-letter agencies, and cloud companies keeping access to supposed "encrypted" content of thier customers, I'd rather my passwords be encrypted locally, and then synced rather than trust that the companies running the servers can't access the data. The fact it's a free solution to the problem is icing on the cake.

I pronounce it "jay-sawn". Mostly because Jason is my name and it drives me to know end to attempt to say it like my name when it is clearly spelled different. Can also get confusing in conversation as non-techies might think I'm talking about myself in the 3rd person or something. And I pronounce GIF as "jif" with a soft 'G' and consider anyone that pronounces it with a hard 'G' a hipster that hasn't been around as long in the industry.

You must be single or have a small family. Either that or you need to turn in your "nerd card". :) A family of 5 could easily approach the 10 computer mark, if you consider each person having a laptop or desktop, and add in the fact that NAS appliances are now popular, as well as other possible computers like HTPC's being used for TV viewing/streaming. Even if you don't have 10pc's to backup, if you have more than 1 or 2, then plans that charge "per pc" get expensive quick. Paying per PC on Crashplan's new SMB plan would cost me 4X more than it currently does, and each new PC I added would get more expensive, instead of now, where I wouldn't sweat it if I had to add another computer to the mix as I have left over slots from the 10 avail in my plan.

While I would normally agree with your sentiment of giving data to 3rd parties out of your control for most uses of the cloud... Offsite backups is not one of them. I was skeptical at first too, until I started using them for this purpose (still having local backup sets, and only relying on the cloud for off-prem storage). I have seen many posts similar to yours (in other forums), and would like to know what suggestion you have for that off-site location that is both convenient enough to travel to several times a week (or even once per week) to drop off new backups and yet remote enough from your house that a regional flood/fire/earthquake wouldn't put them in jeopardy? I get having them anywhere else but your house will mitigate loss from theft, but not any of the other possible scenarios that off-site backup is supposed to cover. I work from home, so taking one to work isn't an option. Most friends/family are within a small drive that many local disasters are likely to effect their location the same as my location. And safe deposit boxes are in not only close location, but a pain to drop off to and cost about the same as an online backup solution per year. If I use an online backup solution, my offsite backup is not only kept (probably) in a completely different state than where I live and it is kept up to date every 15mins or so, verses updated maybe once a week (or maybe less if it's a pain in the but to physically swap drives often). Don't get me wrong, I'm disappointed that Crashplan is getting out of the personal backup business, but I do not regret using them (and continuing to use them for the next year at least until my current subscription ends). While I'm not happy about having to use a more inferior solution at a higher price to fill the void, I'm not out any data, my data is still safe, and the only other issues with my data that I'll have is that I'll have to re-upload it all again, which is not that big of deal to me as I'm not "out anything". It's not like the data I was storing with them was compromised by hackers leaked or used against me or anything.

The server/NAS backup is important to me as well. It's also nice to have the same software that does offsite backup do the local backup as well (which many of them don't offer that feature). That is how I currently use Crashplan as well. I have all PC's backup to the NAS, as well as individually to Online Backup (currently Crashplan for another year). Then the NAS also backs up to the online account as well, so I have local backups (mirror raid), as well as online/offsite backups and the NAS backed up (minus the backup folder for local backups). I iDrive is one of the few that also does file versioning as well (like Crashplan) which has saved my but a few times for individual file restores. And it's affordable for multiple computers compared to Backblaze, Carbonite and the like who all charge separately per PC. When you have a family of 5, plus NAS central storage, paying per PC can get expensive.

After looking around, iDrive seems to be the next best thing for an affordable price. The only downside is they don't offer a home plan more than 5TB, so if your backups are bigger than this, it either won't work, or you may have to pay for multiple's and have sets of computers use different account to keep them all under 5TB. Backblaze does not support many of the Crashplan features, and they also charge for a file restore, so they get you comming and going so to speak. I don't think I'd every pay for Carbonite, just personally, but they seem to be a half hearted, sleazy company. Maybe it's just the image I get from their radio and TV commercials, but they seem like they try to gouge people who don't know any better. Their "tiers" of service are strange as well, as they only give some basic functionality unless you pay even more for each PC. They don't even backup video files by default, apparently home video's of your family aren't considered "important" to backup.

Actually the home plan for 10 PC's was $150, not $200. So it's an 800% increase, not 600%... which is even worse. Still your point is valid just the same.

Take a look at CrashPlan. Their client app is free to download and use on local drives without needing to subscribe to their cloud backup. You tell it what directories/files to monitor, and any changes to files in those locations get backed up at what ever intervals you want (every 5,10,15 mins, whatever). You can create multiple backup sets that backup different sets of files at different intervals to different destinations if needed as well. You can also tell it how long to keep file versions, so you can roll any file back to a any previous backed-up version. You can tell it to keep versions for a month, or year or forever. You can also set whether it keeps deleted files in the backup set or not as well. I use it and it works rather well. I have a backup set that backs up locally to a NAS drive at daily interval, and another set that does backup to their cloud service at a 15minute interval. I've had to restore small groups of files and it's as easy as browsing the backup file structure in their software, selecting what version (day) you want to restore and where you want the file restored to (specific location or original location). Since I pay for the cloud backup, the software is full featured, and I do know that it lets you use it locally for free without the subscription, but I can't speak to whether all the fine/detailed settings are available for free or if some options are locked out, you'd have to check that. But at least you can try it without loosing anything, and decide if you like it. (I'm not affiliated with CrashPlan, just a happy customer).

I used Cobian for years to backup to external drives that I would rotate through. It does direct copy, which is nice for retrieval and compatibility, but was slow doing full backup sets. I've since switched to CrashPlan about a year ago. I use CrashPlan for both cloud backup and local backup. While initial cloud backup can take a while, it's much faster afterwards, and also keeps file history so you can get old versions of files easily. The same software for online backup is also used for local backup to a NAS drive (mirrored) for the "golden 3-2-1" backup rule. (3 backup copies of data, 2 onsite and 1 off-site).