DOA

Needed a new backup drive to replace the failed 1.5TB one, and decided to go with the 2Big from LaCie, which is 2 x 1TB drives in a case where you can remove the individual drives in the case of a failure.

It can be configued as RAID 0, so both drives pretend they are one large 2TB drive, or RAID 1 so that it appears as a 1TB drive, and the second automatically mirrors the first, so in the event of a hardware failure in one of the drives, the second has an exact copy of the data, and you can simply replace the drive that failed and the RAID controller will ensure that the new drive mirrors the old one again.

Great, thought I, until it appears that one of the drives (or the RAID controller) is DOA.  So I’m still stuck without a replacement drive.

Perhaps I should have stayed with Maxtor.

(DOA – dead on arrival)

Time Capsule & Airport Extreme

Now before saying these are Apple products, and scaring 90% of the readers off seeing as they are Windows users, they are applicable to both, with different degrees of functionality.

Firstly for all users:

The Apple Time Capsule is a 802.11n wireless router for both Mac and PC, and my recent experience in setting one up gave me the clear feeling that this was the easiest wireless network device I have ever set up.  I know I often sound like an Apple convert (yeah, ok, that is exactly what I am), but boy, did they nail the end user experience spot on for ease of use.

It would have been just as easy if I was setting up a brand new wireless network at home, but in this case I was replacing an existing one.  It configured itself, asked a few brief questions (the most complex being – is the computer you are currently on needing access to the wireless network?) and told me when to turn off the old device and plug the new one in (1 power cable, 1 ethernet cable).

This is the same as setting up the Apple Airport Extreme (and presumably the Airport Express) – and in fact it is basically an Airport Extreme that is built into the Time Capsule.

Now if I wanted, I could plug in an external (USB) harddrive or printer, and have them accessible to all the computers on the network (wireless or plugged in directly to the router.

So far, the experience for a Windows or Mac user is identical – in fact on my network I have a Mac and a PC laptop, and both are running happily on this.  In addition, my mobile phone, and iPod Touch are also configured to use it and surf the web.  I could (if I could see a point), give access to the Wii as well (which also has a wireless capability).

Now, for PC users (and pre-OSX Leopard users) the Time Capsule is also an external harddrive, and can be used with your own backup software for wireless backup.  Which is cool, but isn’t any different in functionality to using the Airport Extreme with a USB external harddrive (ok, perhaps a bit faster, and you’d have to factor the cost of the separate drive into the equation).

For OSX Leopard (10.5) users on Mac, the TIme Capsule comes into its own.  This device, with either 500GB or 1TB (1000GB) of storage works seamlessly with Time Machine to keep a running history of files on your computer, allowing you to go back in time to any previous point to find a since deleted, or changed file and returning it to the current time.  It is very very cool.  It keeps a lot of history (up to the point that the drive is full, and then deletes the oldest points), but what is nice is it is doing this quietly, without fuss in the background.  It backs up ever hour for a day, then keeps the last 24 hours of backups.  In addition, it keeps a daily backup for a week, and a weekly backup for ever (until the disk is full, and the oldest get dropped).

Time Machine

msnbc.com Breaking News

If you have received any emails like the following, do yourself a massive favour, and delete them immediately.  There is nothing legitimate about the news item, or especially the included links, and by clicking on any of the links (including the unsubscribe one), you are inviting all manner of evils into your computer.  Our security officer will expand on this in the near future, but in the meantime – be careful out there!

(I don’t remember ever signing up to msnbc.com – did you?  So why would an unsolicited email from them be legitimate?  Apply this same thought process to all emails because it is a minefield, and you only have to step in the wrong place once.)

Email content to follow:

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Burnt….Again

I’m not sure how many times I’ve advised people about backing up – it’s like the property market “location location location”.  My catch-cry should be “backup backup backup”!

I have a reasonable backup regime in place, but obviously it is not perfect, and once again I’ve lost data, so let me just say this again for everyone’s sake, including my own:

Make sure that you ALWAYS have more than one copy of any file that is important to you.

Last night, I was cleaning up a number of files, and transferred about 12GB worth onto one of my main harddrives.  Unfortunately (stupidly), I moved the files rather than just copying them.  So that meant that I still only had a single copy of the file.

The drive that I moved the files to failed sometime between then and now, and has become unreadable, and so all the files that I moved have been lost.  The drive itself is rather large (1.5TB), and fortunately I have a backup of it, so the majority of the files are safe (but now at risk, seeing as they have become the only copy, and that is bad news.)So all that I have lost are the files that I moved (and 12GB is a pretty significant chunk even so).

So stop for a second and think – are there any files that are important to you that you only have a single copy of?  If the answer is “yes” then before doing anything else today, stop putting the problem into the “too hard” basket, and find out what you need to do to back them up, and do it!

Backup Drive

With the ever-increasing amount of data that people have (and rarely backup), the storage capacity of the backup solution is steadily increasing (or more precisely: exponentially where it comes to digital multimeda).

Once upon a time, a 1.2MB floppy disk was a significant storage capacity, then along came CDs, Zip drives, DVDs and I could go on and on.  There is a worrying trend that I am observing of people using USB keys, not only as a backup, but as the ONLY copy of their documents.  These devices are great for file transfer – they are compact, with pretty impressive capacity these days, and fast.  They also fail, and when they do so, there is very little that can be done to reclaim the data on them.

So use them by all means to transfer files from one place to another, but please, do not trust your only copy of a file to one!

Where it comes to backing up, there are a number of better options.  A high proportion of users would have less than 4GB of data in total, so the low cost solution of burning a DVD is certainly a good choice.  If you need larger capacities, (such as for large photo libraries, music collections etc), then an external harddrive becomes a cost competitive solution.

Something like this drive from Maxtor is a good choice:

Maxtor Onetouch 4 External HDD

It is small and light (around 170g, 125mm x 80mm x 15mm) and runs off the USB port of your computer.  It doesn’t need to be plugged into the wall, as it draws the power it needs from the USB port.

There are different models with different capacities, up to 320GB.  Inside is simple – it is a laptop harddrive, and that is why I regard them as being a good backup solution.  (Note I still say backup – I don’t trust any file to one location only – you should always have AT LEAST 2 copies of every file, (unless you don’t care if you loose it)).

This isn’t the only type of external harddrive that is available – I chose it to show here as it is a good example of this type of backup solution.

A (wireless) Logitech Mouse for Laptops

The Logitech VX Nano is starting to really win me over as a suitable mouse for laptops (in particular).  It is not bluetooth (for reasons I am not aware of), but it has a very small receiver that you can leave permanently plugged into a USB port.

Logitech VX Nano Mouse

The mouse is quite small, and initially I thought this was going to be a negative, as I have a preference for a larger mouse, but after getting to use one for a while, its size is not a problem in the least.  It has a number of user-definable buttons, and a scroll wheel that works either in the traditional click-by-click fashion, or it can be set to free-spinning for quickly navigating through long documents, web pages etc.

The mouse has an on-off switch, which is definitely useful for a portable device, and has onboard storage for the USB receiver (if you are not leaving it plugged into the computer)

The receiver it tiny.  Excuse the US coin, but this gives some indications of scale.

Logitech Mini USB Receiver

In fact, the size of the USB receiver has been steadily decreasing over the years, as can be seen in this picture

Logitech Wireless Receivers History

So if you are in the market for a mouse for a laptop (or just for a compact, very functional wireless mouse), the Logitech VX Nano is certainly one that is worth considering.

Ebay’s compulsory Paypal Move

This news is a bit old now, but still worth flagging.  Earlier this year, Ebay attempted to first make Paypal a mandatory payment option by sellers, then to make it the only payment option available.

For those that are not aware, Paypal allows buyers to use their credit card to make purchases from online sellers, without the sellers needing to establish a relationship directly with the Visa/Mastercard etc.  There are fees incurred by the seller for the service, incuding getting your money from Paypal.

Paypal is owned by Ebay.  Selling on Ebay also incurs fees for sellers (which are significant), so using Paypal as well, slugs the seller twice.  The problem for Australia is there is no other online trading site with anywhere near the same number of buyers, and obviously the more buyers, the higher the potential final price of an auction will be.

Once 100s of complaints were received by the ACCC, a draft ruling was drawn up, but before it could be enacted, Ebay has withdrawn its plan to make Paypal the only payment option.  It has managed to maintain the requirement for Paypal to be one of the options on all auctions, and as this is still a very convenient method for buyers to use, the sellers still have to deal with the double fee structure.

As an aside, if a seller stated that Paypal was not preferred in the text of the Ebay advert, their auction was pulled from the site, often with hours before the auction ended (after 7 days of bidding).

iPhone & Online Banking

Speaking of iPhone applications, the ANZ have already jumped on the bandwagon, releasing an ANZ Banking program for the iPhone.

iPhone & ANZ Banking

That’s pretty ‘hip’ of a bank.

Hopefully though (just playing devil’s advocate here), it will be a little more secure than one of the other iPhone applications (a game) that automatically uploaded all the contents of your contacts to their server unencrypted (and without even announcing that it was doing it).  One second you could be playing a silly Bejeweled-type game and the next all your business and personal contacts are getting hammered by phone and email spam.

The problem has since been corrected, but it just goes to show that anything you download onto your computer or mobile device, as innocent as it appears (or is intended), can still completely compromise your security and privacy.

Where it comes to computer security in the current era, the Howard Govenment’s “Be Alert but not Alarmed” message should simply be “Be Alarmed”.

iPhone / iPod Touch as a Handyman’s Tool

The iPhone 2.0 software upgrade allows applications to be downloaded and run on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Quite a number of these use the device’s accelerometer to varying degrees of success. They certainly provide a new twist on interactions with the device (he he – sorry).

There are a couple of programs out already allowing the device to be used as a spirit level, and hopefully soon there will be one that acts as a digital one, and the device then could be as useful as the Wixey Digital Angle Gauge. The programs that provide this functionality are free, and actually work surprisingly well.

Although I’ve mocked this image up, the screen shot of the program is the actual one provided by the programmers, and this isn’t April 1.

(It’s obviously a mock, as on my device, the lower bubble is at the top of the gauge when it is in that orientation.  It is surprisingly responsive, but perhaps these days not so surprising – technology is just a little mind blowing!)

iPhone & Spirit Level Program

ADSL Modems Need Lovin’ Too

Recently I upgraded the security on the home wireless network to a much higher level of encryption, and around the same time, I found internet pages and emails taking significantly longer than they used to to upload/download.

For a while there I thought it was because of the encryption, but I finally decided to do a little more testing.  First thing was to measure the internet connection speed (as I mentioned recently).  The speed was down to around 190Mbps, which is a bit under 1/2 what I was previously experiencing.  So before doing anything else, I rebooted the modem (pulled the power cord out, waited 30 seconds, then plugged it in again).

Did another speed test – hmm 430Mbps.  Guess the encryption wasn’t the problem.  The modem, like any other computer (like) device, benefits from the occasional reboot!

So the conclusion from all this, if there is something that seems to be going a bit pear shaped, and unexpected in the device’s performance, try a simple reboot before escalating the problem.  So many issues are resolved simply by letting the device do a clean restart.  I’ve found this hold true for other (particularly modern) digital devices, from mobile phones, even the digital TV.