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Home Computer

Bringing work home

Many people want to continue working on projects at home--but if you don't have a laptop, how can you transfer files back and forth? There are several recommended options. (Note: Many people save their documents to a floppy disk; however, we DO NOT recommend doing this. Floppy disks are unreliable and get damaged easily.)

• uRoam
• • (coming soon!)
• Email
• • Simple: email your document as an attachment to your own email address, then download at home
  • TIP: Always save an attachment to your computer before working on it.  Then, email it back to yourself as a new attachment.  Otherwise, your changes can be lost.)
• Websites
• • Some websites allow you to store files online. Pepperdine cannot recommend any of these services specifically. However, one example would be: http://briefcase.yahoo.com
  • TIP: Pepperdine School of Law Information Services has been testing hardware that might one day allow you to store documents like this on a Pepperdine server, so you don't have to go to an outside source.
• USB Drives
• • Like a floppy, but faster, bigger, and more reliable: A USB drive (a.k.a., "keychain drive," "flash drive," "thumb drive") is about the size of a thumb and snaps into a universal connector on the back of all newer computers. All Windows 2000 and Windows XP computers will automatically recognize the drive and make it appear as though it was a new hard drive on your computer. Save onto it normally. Very simple!
  • TIP: Don't lose it!
  • TIP: Advanced technique: Use Microsoft Briefcase to ensure that you'll never copy over the wrong file again! To use Briefcase, right-click on your desktop (or, better yet, in your My Documents folder), choose New, and choose Briefcase. Give the Briefcase a name, then double-click on it to open it. The Briefcase will give you the simple instructions for what to do next. Basically, every time you open the Briefcase, it will tell you what version of your document is newest, and then update both.
• CDs
• • If you have a CD-ReWriteable drive in your work and home computers (should say on the door of your CD drive), then you can save files onto CDs and bring them home that way.
  • TIP: Remember that CDs--even CD-RWs--cannot be erased one file at a time. For example, you'd have to take the CD with your work files home, copy the files you want to use onto your home computer, edit them, then erase the CD and burn the updated files back onto the CD. Or, one nifty trick is to burn your files into a folder with today's date and time as the name, then take them home, work on them, create a new folder with a new time/date as the name, and burn your updated files into that folder (without replacing the old folder); the handy thing about this technique is that you will have a long trail of backups in case your document becomes lost or corrupted.