It’s a new year, and I am using a new online backup solution. This time, it’s CrashPlan. So far, so good… but the year is still young.

I’ve tried a handful of different companies, from Amazon S3, Carbonite, Mozy, JungleDisk, to my MobileMe account via iDisk. So far, CrashPlan is the only one with zero issues. All the others I mentioned had some limitation. CrashPlan is also the most widely available, having versions for use with MacOS, Windows, Linux, and even the Solaris operating system. It’s FREE to try and definitely worth it. It’s only $54.00/year for unlimited storage, which makes it the cheapest service out there.

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Now that’s a version number!

So Apple’s new operating system, Snow Leopard, is out. In a word… sighs. Is it bad? No. Is it a breakthrough? No. Is it worth $30? Nope.

This is NOT a new operating system… this is a service pack. How to tell? Well, you need to have Leopard installed before you can “upgrade” to Snow Leopard. Want to do a clean (erase and install) install? You need to install Leopard first, then Snow Leopard.

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I have been a Photoshop user for many years. I currently have Photoshop CS2, but it runs very slow and is not optimized for Intel Macs. I’ve also used several versions of Photoshop Elements with mixed results. You get what you pay for and the full Photoshop software gives you everything and then some.

But what if you don’t want to spend $600.00 and still want Photoshop? Photoshop Elements may suffice.

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always liked Yahoo’s way of letting you e-mail the URL of web pages to other people. However, it seems now you have to login to do it, which is annoying. However, the latest version of Apple’s Safari web browser has this feature built-in.

To add this feature to your toolbar, simply right-click anywhere within the toolbar area and choose “Customize Toolbar.” Then just drag the “Mail” icon to the toolbar. That’s it.

Now when you visit a web page that you want to share with others, press the “Mail” button and your mail client will open with a new message which contains the link and the page title as the subject.

That was easy!

I’m so tired right now. After endless hours with iDisk, and all its timeout issues, I’ve decided to go back to Carbonite, even with the current issues. That is all. I’m out. Note to Apple… work on iDisk. What a Mobile Mess. Thanks to some online person for the Mobile Mess line. Nice.

Listening to Poker Face by Lady GaGa

After much thought and some help from the folks at Carbonite, I have decided not to pay for the Carbonite service. I decided to use the best FTP application on the planet, Transmit, and tap into the disk space that I already have purchased with Apple’s Mobile Me subscription.

It was kind of sad to uninstall Carbonite as I had high hopes for the application, but the CPU issues were too much for me to make a commitment at the moment. Maybe in the future the service may solve my issues. I’ll check back again.

Now, on to the solution. I already had all the pieces, it was just a matter of putting them together to make a beautiful picture. The three pieces were iDisk, Transmit, and Automator. Once fit together, these three pieces do everything I need, including keeping a 1:1 backup of my data off-site, and automatically uploading new changes every night. By scheduling, I save CPU resources by constantly having software checking and uploading files all day. I rather have this done at night when I’m sleeping.

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The moment of truth is now upon us. If you need the backstory, you can read my original post. You’ll be able to pick up the essence of my story without reading it however, but it is interesting.

So today was the day for the clean install of my Mac OS and my re-test of the Carbonite backup service. And day is a good description, as it took about 8 hours to get everything setup and back to where I left off before I wiped the drive. I do have about 40 programs installed, so that took the bulk of the time in re-downloading them. Luckily, I had all the preferences backed up to my Mobile Me account!

A Good Start

I started off by re-partitioning the disk to one GUID partition. I did have a Boot Camp Windows partition, but I’ll worry about that later. I hardly use it anyway. After that, I proceeded to install the bare minimum, which was 5.9 GB. No extras, no printer drivers, just the OS.

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I’m going to be at a location where wi-fi isn’t available, so I decided to give NetShare a try. I was one of the lucky few who were able to buy it from Apple last year (and then get a refund no less) and still have it installed on my iPhone. I was a bit shaky on setting it up, but I found a great site which illustrates this perfectly.

I was up in no time. To make changing to NetShare a seamless proposition, I created a new network location on my Mac so I don’t have to fiddle with TCP/IP and Proxy settings. I tested it and NetShare still works great. I now have internet access anywhere I have cell phone coverage. I’m using the slower Edge network, but any speed is a good speed when you otherwise have no internet connection.

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We all have seen them. They are those annoying agreements that we must either click through or scroll through before we can install our software. I’ve never actually read one, and I’ll go so far as to say that no reader of this site has read one either.

So I thought it might be interesting to post one here. If you had, say, an extra hour or so, you could get familiar with all the legal mumbo-jumbo that is the Software License Agreement (SLA).

This SLA is for the Apple operating system (Leopard). Enjoy!

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