Dear Friends,

After moderating a panel at the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility spring conference with our congressional delegation, I hopped on a plane to head to New Orleans for the Apple Specialist Marketing Coop’s annual conference. It was a chilly 45 when I left Vermont and a humid 85 degrees in New Orleans. At the VBSR conference there was an interesting moment during the keynote address by David Cay Johnston. David talks about how the wealthy enrich themselves at the expense of the taxpayers. His talk was a bit of gloom and doom but he ended the talk with a positive message about how we can change this situation.

I know he has given this speech a few times and towards the end as he was talking about political action, he asked, somewhat sarcastically, “how many of you can call up your congressman or senators and get a few minutes of their time?” He was fully expecting few (if any) hands to go up, but he was in Vermont where you may run into your senator in the local supermarket and say “hey, Bernie”—so, the room was a forest of hands because here we have the most accessible government and leaders anywhere (can you tell I love my state?)!

Every day we talk to customers who have lost their vital data due to a hard drive failure. Hard drives are mechanical devices rotating at high speed. They fail. It took me a few drive failures to realize I was not invulnerable and to become a back-up fanatic. My friend David Lerner, from Tekserve in Manhattan, has his email signature say “May You Have 1,000 Backups and Never Need One.” Apple has made backing up your data exceptionally easy with Leopard’s Time Machine automated backup and now with the Time Capsule, it is even easier and wireless.

The Time Capsule is a combination of a hard drive and an Apple AirPort base station for creating a wireless network. The combination of this device and Time Machine make the chore of backing up your data automatic. We were fortunate to acquire a great buy on some of the 500GB Time Capsules, so if you are looking for a wireless back up solution, please check out the details here in Kibbles. The alternative is data loss or a referral to DriveSavers where you may be able to get your data back for a couple thousand bucks!