The information in your computer system is valuable, and computers sometimes fail to maintain its integrity or privacy for any number of reasons. To the extent that it is proper for / to do so, it helps you protect your information, but it is not within the scope of this sort of product to provide very substantial protection against the wide variety of problems with computers today. For that, we only offer advice.
One of the most important things you should do to help assure that your valuable information is not lost if and when your computer fails, is to make copies of your data on floppy disks. / helps you do this by asking you every month or so if you have made backup copies.
Most `tiny experts' take only about 250 bytes to store on backups, so by a simple calculation, a 360K disk (the smallest commonly used disk for /) can hold over 1,400 `tiny experts'. To keep performance fast, we advise you not to use / for more than this many cases.
Although it is advisable to backup your entire system at least monthly, if you only want to backup the / data files, use the / `export' selection. This places a file called `Export.Out' in the `Reports' directory. It can be read back in under the name `Import.In', which is the file name used to `import' new cases to / from external databases through the /// menu selection. You should also save the `Setup.Ca' and `MenState.Men' files from the installation directory.
Simply keeping copies of important information isn't good enough to keep your information safe. For example, a disgruntled employee could change the amounts of all the debts. It might take a long time before you even notice the change. This would cause a lot of problems and inconvenience, and might even lead to legal problems. A malicious software program could randomly change zip codes, and then all of your letters would go to the wrong places. This is only the beginning of the possibilities.
/ simply doesn't provide any protection against this sort of problem, but if you want to protect your / system, we do have another product designed to save you from many of these problems. It is called the / Integrity Toolkit, and is available from /. If you are concerned about protecting your system from this sort of problem, we strongly advise you to use this solution.
Most of the questions we get from customers are answered in this manual, and we strongly advise you to read this manual from cover to cover before using / in an important application. It may save you a great deal of time and money, and will certainly help you to be good at collecting unpaid bills with /.
A vital component of protecting your information is preventing power failures, accidents, and malicious people from doing physical damage. Several relatively inexpensive technologies are available to help in this regard.
An `uninterruptable power supply' can be purchased for a few hundred dollars to protect against power surges, brownouts, and power failures. In our computer area, we have almost 20 minor blackouts per year, and we calculate that our uninterruptable power supply saves us hundreds of hours of time and thousands of dollars in expenses per year. Not all power systems have this many problems.
Floppy disk locks can be used to prevent unauthorized copying and entry of data through the floppy disk drive. This prevents people from copying your data for their own use, and prevents the entry of programs and data that could introduce computer viruses, Trojan horses, and other problems.
Many /s also have power locks that can be used to keep people from turning the computer on or off. This is useful to prevent access at night by a janitor or someone who gets into the office when you are not around.
If you feed /'s tiny experts inaccurate information, they will act on that inaccurate information as if it were accurate! In the computer business, this is called `Garbage-in Garbage out'. Here are a few hints: