DIGITAL PHOTOS STORED IN COMPACT DISK; No Hard Copies made, Computer infected with VIRUS, all IMAGES GONE – STAR, Today, Pg 22

It must be hilarious reading this report filed in the STAR (Pg N22) not available on line but see above. This virus must be damn powerful with a built in Nero that can wipe out your images burned in compact disc. This report should be categorized as BON (Believe it or Not). Either the reporter is clueless or the Federation of Commercial Photographic Society members are confused between a Hard disk and Compact disk. Yes if you are NOT smart enough and stored all your images in MS “My picture” folder, a virus hit can render those files in accessible when the disk is formatted. We should inform Microsoft in their new operating system “Vista” to automatically partition a hard disk and placed all the My documents, My pictures , My email, My data folders etc in the D drive and not the stupid default C drive so as to save so much hardships encountered by so many new users world wide.

And why must the Society bring up these complaints of all people to Datuk Michael Chong of MCA famed in solving Ah Long’s problems and other inter alia cheating cases? I think the Society is feeling the pinch; nowadays with everyone turning to digital photography, their business must be really badly affected that they have to seek the services of the Datuk. But they are still making a tidy sum of say RM6 for 4 small “passport size photos.

And in the pretext of losing images they are asking all to make more “hard copies”. With Digital images (so much more are taken), it is madness trying to print all of them to show who? They should be downloaded onto the Computer Disks and easily shared with one and all through emails or projected to TV screen for slide shows viewing. Copy them to Hard disks (in partition D and not C), Or copy out and burned in CD Albums and distributed to families and friends for viewing in VCD, DVD etc. . A CD cost less than a Ringgit when you compared to a Print digital image. Some would want a service charge for less than 10- copies of print etc.

Do not waste your money printing them. Svae them and buy more betteries to take more digital ones. And they claim the print copies last much “longer”. The curtains are closing for these photographic shops just as the cinemas halls had its heydays. Open up your drawers and cupboards and look at those faded out “colored prints”. Nothing last forever.

Alternatively, if you worry about your compact discs would not last, make full use of the web storage like Picasa or Flickr and many others.