The Grafx Blogs

A couple of people have asked me what to do if you don’t have Time Machine on your Mac. My answer is to first see why you don’t have Time Machine, since it comes with Leopard (10.5) and Snow Leopard (10.6). Of course, there are many other reasons to upgrade your machine to Leopard or Snow Leopard, but backup is a pretty good place to start.

If you are stuck on Tiger (10.4) though, I’d recommend the software SuperDuper!. It’s a stupid name I’ll grant you, but it works really well and to use the basic features is free. I’d recommend it to anyone looking to backup their data one-time, but it’s no match for continual automatic backups if you have Time Machine.

You can download SuperDuper! for free, from www.Shirt-Pocket.com. You can then use the SuperDuper! to create a clone of your machine, an exact replica of your Macintosh HD to an external drive. This won’t be updated, but it’s a good one-time snap-shot as I said.

If you’d like help backing up on Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard then feel free to email me. We also have some other solutions we can provide for you starting around £25.

Firstly, a huge thanks to everyone that attended the free training last Saturday. It was our first foray into this area and it seemed to go down well with all of you. We hope to cover different ground every week and will try and keep the whole thing relaxed and enjoyable.

This coming Saturday (Feb 13) we will be looking at iPhoto, iMovie and iWeb. If you haven’t already signed up then please let us know you are coming as we were at capacity last week!

A couple of notes from me from last week then:

To access your Macs serial number, simply go to the Apple menu in the top left corner of your screen and choose About this Mac. Then click here on the window that opens.

Time Machine is a great way to keep your data safely backed up, and anyone on Leopard or Snow Leopard should be using it. If you’d like us to optimise it for you, please email me directly or leave a comment below.

Anyone looking to upgrade to Leopard or Snow Leopard can contact me via email or the comments below and we’ll get that sorted out also. It’s a painless process, I promise.

If anyone has any questions, comments or just wants to join the discussion, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Finally, for those looking for a new Mac, we have made a couple of bundles that some of you may have missed at the end of last week. We have a MacBook Pro bundle, including the MacBook Pro, AppleCare, wireless keyboard and mouse, backpack, backup drive and 2 hours setup/tuition. We also have an iMac essentials bundle, including the iMac, AppleCare, UPS for power, backup drive and 2 hours setup/tuition. If you are interested in either of these, please contact myself or tony.

Finally, a reminder that any Mac purchased from Grafx comes with complimentary FastTrack service, worth £35. This gives you priority service any time you need that Mac repaired.

This is an app I couldn’t live without, so I thought I’d share it with you. We all know how useful Apple’s Keychain is in saving our passwords, but 1Password takes it a stage further.

One of my favourite features is the secure password generation. Many of my customers use very insecure passwords, and nearly all of you use the same password for everything. This isn’t very secure. 1Password can generate massively secure passwords for you, and store them for you so you never need to remember them.

1Password integrates with Safari, Firefox and other browsers so you can enter your usernames and secure passwords at the click of a button. 1Password can also store details about you, your credit cards, your software licences and much more. This means that the next time you sign up for a new service (like Amazon or something) you can click one button and have the form filled out with your name, address etc.

It’s all stored securely so you don’t need to worry about security. There is also an iPhone app, so if you want to log int to Twitter, Gmail or even your online banking on the go you now can, securely.

The free trial is highly recommended and will save you a ton of time and effort which is what computers are for right?

For those running OS X Server 10.5, it’s important to note a new bug we have come across. It effects servers who use two ethernet ports to connect to the same subnet.

If you have a server running 10.5.8 and you have two ethernet connections to the same subnet then you will notice that your serial licence will become invalid. In essence, OS X is checking the local subnet for duplicate serial numbers and it’s finding itself.

This occurs only if you are using two different NICs to connect to the same subnet.

Depending on your configuration, there is a workaround for this. Go into System Preferences, Network and write down the settings for the device Ethernet 2. Add a new device on Ethernet 1 and call it Ethernet 3. Use the Ethernet 2 settings for Ethernet 3 and you will have the same configuration as previously, however it will all be using the same NIC and as such will not conflict.

Your server licence should now work as expected, however a restart may be required to allow additional connections. More information can be found on Apples discussion boards here, or you can call us for additional help on +44 1242 704330 (or email us).

Last night Apple released the OS X Leopard update version 10.5.7. It’s full of bug fixes including issues with  Address Book, Airport, Mail, MobileMe, printing, Time Machine and Safari. I’d recommend all home users update immediately, but business users allow us to test a little more before taking the jump.

The update should now show in Software Update if you choose that from the Apple menu in the top left corner. You can also find more information here.