Ricky Says

So you're a proud owner of a new iPhone 4 - maybe you were even in the same line I just stood in to get mine this morning.

But now you realize you have a considerable investment in apps and music sitting on your old iPhone 3G or 3GS, and don't know how to transfer them over to your new iPhone.

The trick is to first backup your old phone to iTunes, and then you can restore this backup to your new iPhone, which will transfer everything over.

Here's how to transfer purchased apps and songs from your iPhone 3G/3GS to your new iPhone 4 in 5 easy steps:

1. Connect your old iPhone to your computer and open iTunes.

2. Transfer your purchases by right-clicking your iPhone in iTunes and selecting "Transfer Purchases" from the shortcut menu.

You'll see iTunes transferring your apps and songs from your old iPhone to your computer:

3. Backup your old iPhone.

Right-click on your iPhone again in iTunes and select "Back Up" from the shortcut menu.

4. Connect your new iPhone 4 (after disconnecting the old one of course).

5. Restore your iPhone 4 using the old iPhone's backup.

Right-click again on your iPhone 4 in iTunes and select "Restore from Backup".

Choose the backup you created in the 3rd step above:

Click "Restore" and wait for iTunes to restore from the backup (which also transfers over your purchased apps and music):

I've been snapping pictures left and right with my new Canon Powershot, especially now that the holiday season is underway and I've been on vacation all week - plenty of photo opps with Thanksgiving dinner and the kids helping me put up Christmas lights.

I wanted a way to share these pictures with friends and family using all free tools (preferably a single software program), and what better place to do that than Facebook?

Google's free Picasa photo editor can import photos from your camera's SD memory card, and you can install a plugin that will let you upload photos directly from Picasa to Facebook (notice the Facebook button in the Picasa toolbar shown below).

Here's how to install the Facebook plugin in Picasa so you can upload photos directly from Picasa to Facebook:

1. Open Facebook in your web browser and click "Applications" in the lower left side of your Facebook home page. Then click "Browse More Applications" in the popup menu.

2. Enter "picasa" in the application search field on the top left of the page, and select the first match named "Picasa":

3. Click on "Go to Application" to configure the Picasa plugin.

4. Install the Picasa plugin, which will install the Facebook button in Picasa.

Question: I recently purchased a Motorola W376g camera phone from Tracfone, and I'd like to get pictures I took on it over to my computer. Is this possible?

Answer: The Motorola W376g from Tracfone is basically the Motorola KRAZR phone with the same built-in 1.3 megapixel camera. The KRAZR is a Bluetooth-enabled phone that has a USB port for file transfers between the phone and a PC using software like Motorola's PhoneTools or DataPilot.

However, these features are disabled on the Tracfone W376g for data transfer. The USB port is only used for charging the phone and Bluetooth is only enabled for connecting with hands-free devices.

Tracfone offers this phone at only $29.95 with no activation fees, and you purchase minutes for airtime (ie. you prepay for only the minutes you want/need). They've disabled the data transfer features and force you to use airtime instead.

You can still transfer pictures from your Motorola W376g phone to your computer by sending them as an email.

Sending photos from a Motorola W376g to a PC using email:

To do this, open the picture by clicking the main center/menu button on the phone and then selecting Multimedia -- Pictures -- Additional Storage Device. Scroll to find the picture and select Menu -- Send in Message.

You can enter an email address to send it to your computer, and it'll show up as a file attachment in your email inbox. You can also enter a phone number and send it to any other mobile device that supports picture messaging, including other Tracfone W376g phones.

Question: My dell 8400 tower went down, replaced power supply and ..nothing. How can I get everything off the hard drive, install into another tower, or take it somewhere to download to external drive?

Answer: From what you've described, it sounds like your motherboard is probably fried. Since the Dell 8400 series run an old Pentium 4 processor, it's probably not worth bothering with trying to replace the motherboard and you're better off trying to get the data off the hard drive and replace the system altogether.

You have a couple options for doing this. You can hook up the hard drive as a slave drive in your new system, or you can use an IDE adapter that plugs into a USB port and treats your hard drive like an external USB drive.

Either way you'll need to remove the hard drive from your old system, which is easy to do. Remove the screws from the outer casing (some cases let you slide the side off without removing screws) and locate the hard drive. There will be a flat thin cable about 2 inches wide connecting it to the motherboard. Remove the screws holding the hard drive to your case (usually 2 on each side) and then remove all cables and power cords going into the hard drive.

IDE Adapter

The easiest way to get data from your old hard drive onto another desktop system or laptop is to connect it using an IDE adapter. The adapter will connect your hard drive with your other system's USB port, and will let you copy files over just like it was a USB flash drive.

The new iPhone 3GS has arrived, and I've had a chance to put it through it's paces over the last couple of days. I definitely recommend it - especially if you can get the upgrade pricing - and be sure to check with an Apple store for in-stock availability, because AT&T stores are currently backed up at least a week.

The first thing I did when I upgraded was to copy everything from the old iPhone 3G to the new 3GS. This included all the apps I had purchased, and all the music, photos, contacts, email, notes - the whole enchilada.

Overall the process went fairly well, and I'll rate it a B+ in spite of a few gotchas along the way.

Here are the steps I took to backup my old 3G and restore the new 3GS from the backup. These same steps can be followed to fully backup an iPhone 3G (and you might realize after reading this article that the backups you've been doing have not been backing up your purchased apps).

1. Backup the old iPhone 3G

Connect your iPhone to your computer with the USB data cable and open iTunes. Wait for it to recognize your iPhone, and then right-click on your iPhone in the left side bar. Select "Backup" from the short-cut menu to start the backup.

The first backup took about 20 minutes on my iPhone, which was loaded with about 4 GB of data. I say first, because I ended up having to do it again because the first run didn't backup my purchased apps nor my music files.

Instead, I received an error message indicating that not everything was transferred, and that my computer wasn't authorized to play the items (even though I had already authorized my computer).

Turns out you have to tell iTunes to transfer purchased apps from your iPhone to your computer, and Apple didn't put the menu option in a prominent location.

2. Transfer Purchased Apps