Don't forget about backups

Just wanted to share a lesson with you...

Whether you are a small business, individual or large organization, remember having a backup plan is essential.

Business Example:
My company lost its email server a few weeks ago. Quite a few mailboxes were corrupted. These users lost all the emails in their IMAP accounts. These emails contained important customer conversations, customer agreements, passwords and well it email you know how essential it is. And remember for you users email is a primart form of communication but is also essential business communication. Many of our customers submit purchase orders, signed invoices and credit references via email. No company can survive without purchase orders. A few weeks later it crashed again, before we had time to set up the backup strategy. This time we were able to restore all the emails. We have also started backing our systems up. Hopefully we won't have a glitch again, but at least this time we will be more prepared.

Personal example:
A friend of mine signed up for a nifty photo storage/sharing online service. He stored all of his baby pictures and other picture's from the first year of his son's life there. He thought since they were located remotely they were safe. Well after about 2 years the company went out of business. He didn't get to save his photos locally..and he lost all of those memories. Now he saves them on a web service, his computer and on an optical disk.

So I recommend you backup to a DVD, email account, .Mac account, external hard drive. Well everywhere. Try to cover all the bases. Since we use our computers for everything from photos, movies, address book and bills be sure to keep your info protected.

Airport Express: that was easy

So I was finally ready to set up a wireless network at my house. I have set up a couple with Netgear and Linysys routers. In each case it took anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours to set up wired or wireless networks.

When I went to my store I went back and forth on the airport express for the print server or Netgear for a fairly cheap price. Eventually the print server and wireless music won out. (Later in the day I was trying to set up wireless with a powerbook, netgear router and a new DSL connection....let's just say it was unsuccessful. Oddly enough the powerbook picked up the correct settings from the router, but could not administer the router)

So I went home, opened the box, loaded the CD into my ibook. Well I didn't need the CD since I had recently run software update and upgraded the airport utilities.

After that I plugged in the ethernet cable from my modem, plugged in my airport express and waited for the green light to come on. When I looked in my available networks and saw "Apple Network XYZ."

I ran the setup wizard, created a network and applied the settings. Then I connected to my renamed network and I was online. It took 10 minutes, including the time to take off the plastic wrap on the Airport Express. I couldn't believe it was so straightforward.

Next time my friends are asking me about wireless networks...I think Airport Express is the wat to go.

Forced Obsolecence..Boycott the iTunes Store

Well I decided to update my iTunes. I haven't synced my iPod for a bit because I hadn't added any new songs. Today I purchased a few songs, imported a couple of CDs and decided to connect my iPod. Well my recent purchased apparently are too new for my 3G iPod. when I attempted to sync the iTunes told me "your ipod software is too old for some of your songs, please update at the Apple website." So I updated my iPod software and so on. Too bad it didn't do anything and I got the same message.

So that means I won't be buying any more tracks from iTunes since I can't even sync them too my iPod. Isn't that the point?

I'll be shopping at some other download sites with Mp3s...since my iPod is no longer supported by the iTunes store. And people wonder why legal downloads are not that popular.

If Apple won't support my ipod, I won't support their store.

More switcher notes

So explain to me why no one wants to believe 1M people switched. I mean if apple adds 1M units in a year...somebody new has to be buying. I mean it isn't live the same people are buying year after year. And you gotta explain why 90% of the people strolling into the Apple store are not mac users. And well less than 10% of people leaving with a Mac have a mac. So it is a no brainer, people are coming from windows...(well unless it is from DOS..and I talked to some one a couple of weeks ago running AutoCAD on DOS)

Fast Company Blog

Switchers Everywhere

So why is everyone switching?

In case you haven't noticed for many computer users out there (my self included) we are in our 20+ year of computer using. so what does that mean? We have lived through DOS, jumbo floppies, frogger, Apple IIe, Commodore, Windows 3.1 windows NT, Windows 95, the dotcom boom, being the goto guru for our friends computers. It is enough to cause a computer using headache.

I switched because I needed some Tylenol. And OS X cured my headaches (in cute packaging to boot). If you notice, the switchers coming out say something like
"I've been using Windows since 1.0"
"I remember DOS"
"I was on the original internet"
"I was the first hacker"
"My first computer was a radio shack special"

Pretty soon you will see it...the long time computer users will switch. And then the masses will follow. (you know once they get to computer 3, 4, 5 +)