5 Areas You Can Look Into To Help You Lower Your Utility Bills Against Cost Of Living Raises

1. Kill Vampire Appliances

Turn off all electrical appliances and power mains when not in use or they could be "electricity vampires". Appliances continue to consume small amount of energy even when they are "turned off". It is estimated that standby power ranges from 10 and 15 watts, and sometimes more.

Alone, the standby power wasted by a single appliance may seem small, but an average home easily has more than half a dozen of such "vampires". Although figures vary, studies in the United States, France, Australia and Japan have estimated that standby power can form as much as 7 to 13 percent of total household consumption! Given the recent increased tariffs on electricity, isn't it sensible to turn off unused appliances and power mains?

2. Time Your Cooling

During summer, many household will turn on the air conditioners to cool down the houses. Well, a good suggestion is to use its timer function and set it to turn off after a few hours - you'll be asleep anyway. The fewer hours you use, the greater the energy savings. Don't know how to work the timer? Read the manual, or enlist the help of a techie friend. To ensure you'll sleep in comfort, set the temperature no lower than 25 degree Celsius, but use a fan for additional cooling.

3. Watt Savings

Another energy saver is to swap incandescent light bulbs to energy saving compact fluorescent light bulbs which use 70% to 80% less energy. While they are more expensive, they can outlast regular ligh bulbs. Because they burn brighter, you only need a lower wattage, thus saving energy. For example if you replace 10 of your 60-watt light bulbs at home with 10 15-watt compact fluorescent light bulb, you can save an estimated $280 a year.

Other bright ideas. Arrange lighting around you the house to maximise efficiency and use light reflectors in your lighting fixtures to make the most of the light. Also consider using dimmers to control the amount of lighting required. Compact fluorescent bulbs also run coolers so it won't heat up your home too much and resulting in using more energy to cool it.

4. Wash Wisely

There are lots of small things you can do, such as turning off the water when soaping in the shower or keeping bath-time down to 5 minutes. You can also use a thimble in your shower head to cut water use down from 9 litres to 7.5 litres in a minute. When using the washing machine, ensure that it's a full load or set the water level to match the amount of laundry. You may also want to pre-soak heavily soiled garments before washing them. You can also save the water from the final rinse cycle to mop the floor.

5. Cook Smart

It's often cheaper to eat at home, but cooking too can suck up a lot of wasted energy in gas and electricity. Make sure that you choose the right sized refrigerator for your family size, and where possible, buy an energy efficient brand. Also make sure that the gasket is tight to prevent warmer air from seeping into the fridge.

When cooking, plan well so that the stove is not turned on when it's not being used. And to make the best of the heat from the stove, use sturdy flat-bottomed pans that have high conductivity. It's also a good idea to keep your stovetop clean as blackened ranges absorb heat and reduce the efficiency of your burner. When making soups and stews, use a pressure cooker as they require less energy for heating.

Hope those few tips can help you shave some money off your monthly utility bills. In the process, you can also helping to conserve the environment and doing your part of in the fight against global warming.

Getting Your Monthly Bills Down

Paying your bills is never fun, they always seem to high. Well they don't only seem to high, they are to high! There are many ways to get your monthly expenses down. Here are some good tips that can save you at least 20% on your bills.

• The research and technology of the present makes it possible to have a more powerful shower while using less water. Showering 5 minutes less is always a good idea.

• Compare the different phone companies. There are sites online where you can even compare them without doing the research yourself.

• It can be a lot cheaper to get your internet, phone and tv in one package from a provider. They often offer packages and that can save you a bunch of money each month.

• Instead of a normal heater you can use a heater without a tank. These heaters warm your water when you need it instead of storing the hot water. This saves you a lot of money because you are not using hot water 24/7 so why have it hot 24/7.

• Leave the room, lights off. You can be amazed how much money this can save you on a yearly basis. It doesn't take a lot of effort and can still save you money. Also buy florescent light bulbs instead of the conventional incandescent bulbs. They use about 25% less electricity!

• Buy an LCD monitor for your computer. It doesn't only look better J It also uses 25% less electricity than an old CRT monitor.

• Turn of your computer when you don't use it. I know that it is very easy to have it on all the time, because it takes time to boot up. But you have to make a choice do I want to wait 2 minutes when I want to use it or do I want to use 300 watt when I am not using it. There is a road in between . Your PC has a sleep mode, you can set it to go to sleep after being idle for 10 minutes, or just put it in sleep mode when you finish using it.

• Switch to satellite tv on your pc. There are some great software providers out there and you only have to pay a onetime fee to receive it. The quality is very good and you will have 3000 channels to choose from. You will not have to pay any monthly bills to watch tv programs. If you have a laptop you can now watch tv wherever you want, as long as there is an internet connection.

Put these tips into action and I guarantee you, that you will save a surprising amount of money on your monthly bills.

Protecting Your Valuable Data

How to protect your valuable data, you will know after you read below:

Set up your computer in a safe environment. Your computer should be in a dry, cool, controlled environment that is clean and dust-free. Placing your computer in a low-traffic area will protect your system and storage media from harmful jarring or bumping.

Backup your data regularly. Creating regular backups is one of the most effective ways to protect yourself from losing data. Back up data at least once a week with reliable tapes or other storage devices, always verifying that the correct data is backed up.

Use an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). In the event of a surge of electricity or lightning strike, an uninterruptible power supply protects your computer from being fried. In addition, a UPS has a battery backup that keeps your computer running for a short time in the event of a power outage, giving you time to save your work and avoid potential data loss. If UPS is not an available or economical solution, a surge protector is also a good investment.

Run a virus scan regularly and update it four times a year. Computer viruses are one of the worst enemies to your computer. Good anti-virus software tests your system for sequences of code unique to each known computer virus and eliminates the infecting invader.

Be aware of strange noises. If you hear a strange noise or grinding sound, turn off your computer immediately and call an expert. Further operation may damage your hard drive beyond repair.

If you do experience a data loss, Data Recovery Wizard can help. Even the best maintenance program cannot always prevent system crashes or data loss. Data Recovery Wizard offers a wide array of data recovery solutions.

Data Recovery Software

It can happen in a variety of ways. Your data can be lost for many different reasons. Virus or malware attacks can lead to lost files and information for unlucky computer users. Power spikes are also capable of leading to data loss, especially for computer systems without surge protectors or voltage regulators. And of course, all of us are possible victims of accidental file deletions or disk reformatting. Fortunately, even in these seemingly disastrous cases, there is still hope.

Due precisely to these untoward incidents, data recovery software have been developed extensively. Recovery software may be designed for many different specific cases, but they all aim to help mitigate the effects of the mistakes or accidents that lead to data loss.

The worst case scenario would be that the entire hard drive getting damaged or corrupted. In this case, hard drive recovery software would be invaluable. The software should be downloaded onto another storage device and not the crashed or damaged disk; putting new data onto the damaged disk might lead to overwriting and data loss. The hard drive recovery software may then be executed from this second storage device and used to scan the damaged hard drive.

This scan will analyze the crashed disk and determine what data, if any, is recoverable. It should be noted that depending on how exactly the hard disk was damaged, not all of the data on it may be recoverable. Different software may be tried, but there is no guarantee that any of them will be able to fully recover the lost data. After this scan, it is then a simple matter to confirm and have the hard drive recovery software recover the data that it can.

Different operating systems (such as Windows, Mac, Linux, and so on) may use different formatting systems for their hard drives. There exist different hard drive recovery programs that are designed for almost all operating systems and corresponding formatting systems. Some of these are available for free, while some would require purchase.

Another scenario would be that only a specific file or group of files is damaged. This may occur when a power surge or other event causes an unexpected shutdown. Open files with unsaved changes may unluckily be damaged by this shutdown.

Depending on what file needs to be recovered, there are different data recovery software options. There are those that are designed to recover Microsoft Office documents and files, for example, and these would be useful for those who use MS Word, Excel, and so on. Users of Microsoft Outlook who accidentally lose email messages will also find some recovery software specializing in email recovery due to client failure. There are also database recovery software programs for those who lose information from MS Access files, Palm Pilot databases, or SQL databases.

Data loss is no longer an irreversible process, thanks to today's software. Depending on the particular file or files that need to be recovered, and the circumstances of their loss, there are corresponding programs available for download or purchase.