Senator Obama declined $84 million dollars from the FederalPublicFinancing System, that would be available to his campaign in the general election.  As the first candidate to do so since congress passed the post-Watergate campaign finance reform, making public funds available, Obama not only underscores his commitment to change, but also takes advantage of his superior ability to raise private funds AND frees his campaign of the spending limits attached to public financing.  The Associated Press reports that in June alone, Obama raised $52 million dollars... more than twice as much as his Republican rival, John McCain.  That brings the Democratic campaign total to over $92 million dollars and climbing…

Look for the first Obama ad of the general election... a 60-secondspot called
"Country I love" which focuses on his American heritage through his mother's family roots.

Here’s my Tech tip today.  As our hard drives fill upwith family photos and or downloaded music collections, we have to be morecareful than ever about backing up the data.  Effective solutions rangefrom DVD data storage to sophisticated raid arrays.  Here are some of our favorites:

1.		Iomega UltraMax Pro Desktop Hard Drive
	The Iomega UltraMax Pro Desktop Hard Drive has a triple interface, integrates two SATA II hard drives (2HD x 750GB) to offer a massive 1.5TB capacity plus the power and reliability for robust storage needs. Hot swap drives allow business continuity allowing easy replacement. Flexible hardware RAID configurations: RAID 0 (pre-configured), 1, JBOD, and non-RAID are built-in.  We recommend this solution for small businesses with large amounts of data like multi-media files. Multiple connections with transfer rates up to 6 times faster than USB 2.0.
2.		Iomega Multimedia ScreenPlay
	The Iomega® ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive is a high quality multimedia player plus a high capacity storage device for your media library.
3.		Kingston DTI 4 GB USB Flash Drive
	The DataTraveler from Kingston helps budget-conscious users break storage barriers, allowing you to easily store and move files in a device no bigger than a pocketknife. As easy as click and drag, the DataTraveler can hold just about any file you can think of - reports pictures, spreadsheets or other important documents. It works with virtually any device with a USB port - even cross-platform from Macintosh to PC and vice versa. The DataTraveler also makes a great promotional item for your organization; it's simple to add your logo to increase brand-recognition. The DataTraveler is a reliable, inexpensive solution.
4.		Cavalry 2 TB 8 Drive SATA RAID 0 to RAID 5 System
	Preconfigured at RAID 5, it supports RAID levels 0, 0+1, 5 and RAID 5+hot spare, and offers automatic background rebuilding (in RAID 5). Its SATA interface provides a speedier boot process and faster loading of programs and data and enabling rapid sustained transfer SATA 2 data transfer rates of 3.0GBit per second.
5.		EMC Retrospect 7.5 Professional
	Retrospect Backup 7.5 offers complete protection for the used in small and midsize businesses. Your home and home office computers contain more and more personal, family, and financial data than ever -- what happens if you inadvertently delete a file, are attacked by a virus, or your computer fails? Don't lose your family photos or the only copy of your tax returns. Recover your information quickly to keep your home office running smoothly.

Until next time, I’m Dawn Whitaker