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.

I know a lot of people reading this will have iPhones as well as Macs, so today I thought I’d share a cheap, but very useful little tool called Pastebot.

Now you can copy and paste on the iPhone, I know a lot of people are doing so heavily, and while this is great, sometimes you need a little more. Pastebot is an iPhone app (currently £1.79) which allows you to store anything you copy on the iPhone, so you can store multiple “clips” for future use. You can store text or images and even manipulate them to make all the text UPPERCASE, or make a photo black and white, that kind of thing. Pretty handy.

Even more useful though is Pastebot Sync. It’s a free Mac application which allows you to share your Mac clipboard with your iPhone, or vice versa. So next time you find something cool on your Mac and you want to paste it into a text message on the iPhone, you can! It’s super simple and very powerful. I highly recommend you check out Pastebot on the App Store and Pastebot Sync at their website where there is a great demo video.

Despite the fact that many of us sit here and think we are untouchable on our Mac’s by viruses and other nasties its still important to keep those applications we use most patched and up to date.

In a bulletin released on Tuesday, Adobe says there are  ”critical vulnerabilities” that could crash your applications or “…potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.” They recommend that anyone using version 9.2 and earlier update to Adobe Reader 9.3 and Acrobat 9.3 right away. Likewise, those using Acrobat 8.1.7 should update to version 8.2.

We also recommend you complete these updates and you can find more details and the patches themselves by clicking here.

One of my most used applications, Dropbox is great for students, people with multiple computers and those wanting basic read-only access to documents on the go (on iPhone).

Dropbox is deceptively simple. Once installed you will have a Dropbox folder, just like any other in your Home folder. Drag any file or folder in there and it’s sync’d up instantly and invisibly to your online Dropbox account. You can then access that from any computer with an internet connection (just through a web browser), or on your iPhone (free app here).

Ninja move: install Dropbox on your iMac and your MacBook to get the contents sync’d across them automatically. You don’t even need both on at once as you can change something on the iMac, turn it off, go to work, open your MacBook and a few seconds later it will sync down and be ready for you.

If you want a simple way to get a few important files backed up off-site, to share files with friends online, or just to get your files/preferences sync’d across computers it’s a great way to go. Loads more info on uses and features can be found here, with a short demo video below.

Dropbox is free if you want up to 2GB storage (enough for most people). If you want to you can upgrade to 50GB for USD$9.99/month or 100GB for USD$19.99/month.

You can see a demo video here.

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?

It’s a tough thing to admit as a Mac user, but when Windows 7 hit the streets there was one feature I really liked about it. If you drag a window to the edge of the screen then it will snap to that edge, and resize appropriately.

This is a great feature, useful for moving things from one window to another, cut and paste, layout, proofing and file transfer among many other uses.

Now you can do this in Mac OS X! It’s a USD$7 app called Cinch. It’s a tiny download and when you launch it a new menu bar icon will appear in the top right of your screen. Just start dragging windows to the edge of the screen for easy access. The videos are below, and I can say from experience how useful it is. Simple but effective.

A demo video is available here.

With the recent release of NetMediaMax to complement the already fully featured Portfolio Server 9 solution from Extensis Grafx have decided to run some One on One demonstrations for our key clients as well as any other companies that would like to see how Portfolio 9 can enhance their workflow.

If you interested in signing up for one of these demonstrations please call 01242 704332 or email sales@grafx.co.uk

I posted a couple of weeks ago about the great deals Apple Finance have here in the UK on business deals. The offers continue and as you can see from the below there are some great reasons to look again at these deals and consider upgrading your current hardware.

If you would like to talk more about how Grafx can help you with your next hardware purchase please give us a call on 01242704330.

Grafx in partnership with Apple Finance are currently offering a cost effective and flexible leasing solution to our customers.

2 or 3 years fixed term rental.

Interest free

Available on orders containing 80% Apple Equipment.

Business users only.

At the end of your rental term you can either purchase the equipment for a fair market value , or just start again with fresh new technology.

If you interested in discussing this further please call Grafx on 01242 704330 or email sales@grafx.co.uk