We have tried twice today to contact the Birmingham Bullring store, first time took us 40 minutes to get through, second time we gave up after an hour and 25 minutes. If by any slim chance someone from Apple ever sees this post, that kind of ’service’ is unacceptable.
Backing up your Mac is one of those jobs we all know we should do, but one that many of us find at the bottom of the to do list, after all backing up doesn’t pay the bills does it?
With so much of our lives and businesses existing in digital form, and living on a hard drive, it is more important than ever to have a comprehensive and effective backup strategy in place. I have lost count of the times I have been faced with a distressed user who has just lost all their work or family photos. Its doesn’t need to be like that. An automated backup system doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive, so there really is no excuse.
The weakest part of the backup chain is always you, the end user. We all live busy lives and thats why the best backup strategies are those that don’t requier much end user interaction.
In this post I seek to give a brief overview of backup solutions for Mac users, whether you’re a home user or have a large network of Mac’s.
One of the cheapest, and most simple backup solutions you can use is the hard drive backup. This relies on an external USB2 or Firewire hard drive and some backup software to handle the automation. My application of choice is Qdea’s Synchronize product, but there are similar products such as Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper. Qdea do a Pro and non Pro version, and which version you go for depends mainly on whether you want to do a full, bootable system backup or just your data. The Pro version costs $99 and the non Pro version is $49. Synchronize can trigger a backup based on a number of criteria including my proffered option of when you plug the drive in. Synchronize recognises that you have plugged your external drive in and runs the backup.
If you are backing up a lot of data this can take a while the first time the backup runs, subsequent backups only backup those files that have changed or are new, these backups run very quickly. Once completed, Synchronize can be configured to quit, unmount the drive and display a message that the backup competed. Sychronize has many features and this isn’t intended as a review, but it is very configurable, easy to use, and will provide a simple but very effective backup strategy for most users. With external storage so cheap, you can get a drive and the software for a little over £100, a small price to pay to know that all those family photos or business data is safely backed up.
You can do more than one backup too, with iPod capacities getting so big these day, why not get an iPod that is bigger than your needs and use the extra capacity for a backup. Lets say you get the new 160GB iPod classic and your music etc only takes 100GB, well you can backup at least 60GB of your data. This can be good as syncing your music is something you may do on a regular basis and makes sure that even if you haven’t remembered to plug your hard drive in for a few weeks, chances are you will have plugged your iPod in.
That’s all well and good but, what if you are a business and you really can’t afford the downtime, you need your data accessible all the time. There is a new product on the market called the Drobo storage robot. Despite the silly name, this product gives you the protection of a RAID system without the complexity or expense. Essentially the Drobo allows you to plug in 2 or more SATA hard drives in to its 4 drive bays. Should one of your drives fail, the Drobo intelligently manages your data to ensure none is lost and you don’t even have to stop working, your data remains accessible. Lets say you add 4 500GB drives, this will give you a usable capacity of 1.4TB. Unlike RAID, if you want to add capacity or replace a failed drive, just pop it out and drop another drive in, the Drobo figures the rest out. I must stress that I haven’t actually used this product but if it does what it says then this looks like a great solution for those looking for a scalable fault tolerant storage solution. For a 1.4TB spec’d Drobo, expect to pay around £600 plus VAT.
Of course none of these solutions cover you against theft or fire. Again, you have a number of options from simple and cheap to complicated and expensive. You could just have a second hard drive, once a week you plug both drives in and the second drive backs up the backup, you then put this in a fire safe or leave it with a neighbour, for business users you could take it off site of an evening. The next step up is a tape drive but these are expensive and tend to be complicated. However they do offer a great deal of flexibility and scalability. Tape drives are the established standard for enterprise level backup. Most Mac users that have ever used a tape drive will be familiar with EMC’s Retrospect software. Retrospect is one of those applications that seems to go out of its way to make things complicated and difficult. I have recently come accross a piece of software called Bru that seems to make a much better job of things and does it with a lot less fuss.
So what solution do I use? I run Synchronize Pro and backup my work folder every 4 hours to the server in the office. Every morning it also does a backup of my entire home directory, and once a week it backs up my entire machine. The server backs up the backup drive to a second drive once a week. This means that if a file corrupts, I have a week to discover the corruption before my backup copy also become corrupt. I also backup my home folder to my iPod whenever its plugged in.
Please feel free to contact us if you wish to discuss your backup requirements.
So after months of hype and endless speculation, the worst kept secret in the tech industry is out.
It came as no surprise to those who follow these things, that 02 would be Apple’s carrier of choice in the UK. It also comes as no surprise that the spec is unchanged from the one our American cousins have been enjoying since the end of June, and yes, that means no 3G. I have to say I’m not sure I’m too worried about that, surely EDGE can’t be any slower at browsing the net than a Windows Mobile based Orange SPV M3100. Seriously, browsing the net on one of those things is slower than a dog with no legs wading through treacle…..in slow motion. So perhaps the iPhone will make a better job of it, even over a slower connection.
The iPhone has been reviewed to death elsewhere, so I’m not going to do that here, besides I only played with one for 20 minutes in the North Shore Mall in Boston on the day it was released, and I’m not sure that makes me qualified.
I’ve owned quite a few smartphones over the years, and its only when you’ve had them for a month or so do you truly understand their strengths and weaknesses. My girlfriend and I currently have SPV M3100’s, hers is pink, mine is black (only kidding, mines pink too). I remember when we got them, my girlfriend loves and appreciates technology almost as much as I do, and I remember her excitement at getting it. This excitement has turned to hatred over the last few months as it constantly crashes and acts erratically, she now says she just wants a phone that can make calls reliably, she can often be heard saying ’stupid f*ing phone’ when attempting to complete some routine task. Although when in the Windows world I guess you just get used to erasing the thing every few months and starting afresh, when in Rome and all that. Its the simple things that get you, the annoying way it nags you all the time because the battery is getting low, I know its low, now just let me finish writting this message before it runs out.
I remember an incident just after I got mine, it was around the time of the new Superman movie, and I had downloaded the Superman theme tune as my ringtone (I know, I know), anyway I was in a meeting and forgot to set it to silent, a call came in and I tried to divert the call but the phone crashed, leaving the phone playing an endless loop of the Superman theme. Only removing the battery finally shut it up. Lets just hope this kind of thing doesn’t happen with the iPhone, with its unremoveable battery, otherwise our only option maybe to hit it with a a hammer or throw it down the toilet.
Now lets talk about pricing. I don’t mind paying £269 for the phone, but I do object to being tied into an 2 year contract with 02. 02 want £35 a month for 200 minutes, 200 texts and unlimited data. For the same money on Orange, I can get 800 cross network minutes, 100 texts, and unlimited calls to landlines. For an additional £5 I can get unlimited off-peak data . Granted, the 02 package also gives you access to 7500 wireless hot spots but its worth noting that if you get a Blackberry from 02, the same package without the wireless hotspot option is £10 less. o2 have simply bolted on the aditional cost of accessing the clouds hotspot network on to the tariff.
This brings us on to the debate about hacking and unlocking your iPhone. The needs and motives of those making technology are often at odds with how users want to use their devices. I for example want to use my phone on Orange and install a VNC client, or some other such cool function that I haven’t thought of yet. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the reasons Apple have locked the thing down, I just want to unlock it and play. The main reason for locking the phone to one carrier is that Apple have manged to do what no other handset manufacture has managed, to convince the carriers to give Apple a slice of their revenue. Seriously, only Apple could be so ballsy, and the fact that the carriers have agreed must have the likes of Nokia scratching their heads wondering just how Apple did it. Its rumored that in the UK 02 have agreed to give Apple 40% of revenue, surely this can’t be true. However, if it is, Apple is going to be very keen to keep people tied in to those carriers. In the end though, playing cat & mouse with the hackers is a fruitless task, if its software, it will be hacked Sony’s fight with the PSP hackers is proof, if any were needed, that its a war that can’t be won.
Will the iPhone be a sucess in the UK? I’m not so sure, many will be put off by the high cost, fewer by the lack of 3G. I’m a classic early adopter and self confessed gadget freak, and even I don’t know if I will buy one. If I do, it will be unlocked an run on Orange. I guess the coming months will tell, but if you see the price drop to £199 in a couple of months don’t be surprised.