‘Tis the season for gadget giving but in all the hustle of the holiday season have you thought about how to really get a good start with your new products? It should come as no surprise that while December is a booming month for retail, January is actually the busiest month in technical support; lots of new gifts to set up and configure. It’s always an awesome feeling to unwrap new machines, iPods and accessories, but getting them set up can be a chore. It doesn’t have to be.

Our Watchdog Consulting department is available for in-store, in-home/office, and remote sessions to help get your new goodies working the way you want them to and help teach you how to get the most out of them. While you’re always welcome to check our “website”:http://www.smalldog.com/consulting to learn more about what we have to offer, we’d also like to cordially invite you to our second Meet The Consultants day this Saturday (12/12) in our South Burlington location from 11am-4pm. Feel free to stop in for a free 15-minute consultation and learn more about what we have to offer. Don’t have time to wait? Schedule your 15-minute session in advance by shooting us an email at consulting@smalldog.com or give us a ring at (802)496-7171 x512.

I love me some “Time Machine”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/time-machine.html. It’s the easiest way for the average Mac user to reliably back up their computer. Since it’s the easiest backup method, it’s also the most likely method to be used, which is a good thing. Apple writes:

“Time Machine automatically makes incremental backups every hour, every day, copying just the files that have changed since your last backup. And it does this all in the background, so you can continue working while Time Machine is busy copying your files.”

As much as I adore and use Time Machine, there are times when it gets in my way. I frequently import and edit audio and video, which results in large files that take a long time to backup. The standard hourly Time Machine backup is often too frequent.

Fortunately, there is a free app for Mac OS 10.5 and Mac OS 10.6 called “TimeMachineEditor”:http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor, which lets you change the default one-hour backup interval of Time Machine. You can change the interval or create more sophisticated scheduling based on a calendar. I prefer my Mac to simply backup to Time Machine once at the end of the day.

You can “click here to download TimeMachineEditor”:http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor. It’s easy to install and uninstall. If you decide you prefer the standard one-hour Time Machine backup, simply use TimeMachineEditor one last time to turn it off, then drag the application to the trash to uninstall.

This week’s repair is on a first-generation MacBook that had a very slight amount of water spilled on it. The customer did everything right: he immediately turned off the computer and removed the battery, and left it alone in a warm place for ten days. An attempt to fire up a spilled-on computer generally makes the situation worse, so while it might be tempting to cross your fingers and hope for the best, resist the urge and wait it out.

After 10 days near his wood stove (not too close!), he plugged it in, pressed the power button, and it fired right up. Delighted, he attacked his inbox for a half hour and right after signing into Facebook, the reserve power warning came up. Even after plugging the computer in, the battery would not charge.

This is a fairly common situation and there are several components involved. The flow of power in a MacBook goes from the MagSafe adapter, into the MagSafe-in clip, to the logic board, to the battery transfer board, to the battery. Of course, the easiest thing to do is test the MagSafe adapter itself with a known-good one. If that does not resolve the issue, the next component to test is the battery. If neither of these resolve the issue, it’s time for a visit to your local repair shop.

Knowing that the spill was concentrated in the area around the arrow keys, right above the battery transfer board, the first step was to swap that part out. No luck there. Not having a spare logic board to test, I went to the MagSafe-in board and swapped that with no luck. At that point, I had to order up the logic board for diagnostic purposes, and it did resolve the issue. While I could not find any sign of liquid on the logic board, I did very plainly see liquid damage on the battery transfer board, so the outcome was a bit surprising. In the end, though, the customer elected not to repair the damage due to the very high cost of logic boards. In this case, the best thing to do was simply use the computer while plugged in.

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For all the wonders of the iLife suite, occasionally I run into bizarre quirks that don’t seem to have any easy solutions. This week, the newest quirk I discovered was in iWeb. Now, I have to say that I love iWeb. I know it bugs the heck out of some people that it’s impossible to directly edit the html, so it’s not nearly as robust as most site-creating applications, but it has some really amazing user-friendly features that have really gotten me hooked.

For example, I needed a quick, clean, professional site for my home business and iWeb helped me create and maintain it in just a few hours. While I still get the itch to fire up BBEdit and get my hands dirty in the code, it’s really not necessary for my needs.

Something that is necessary, however, is being able to edit my site on multiple computers or to access the files for my site if I somehow lose my local copy. This was the issue I ran into this week when one of my clients called up our support line to say that he needed to “re-download” his iWeb-site from his iDisk. His hard drive crashed, and, due to some extenuating circumstances, he also lost the backup he had on his Time Machine.

However, he’s a MobileMe member and the latest edits to his site had been uploaded to his iDisk, so he, logically, assumed that he could just import the site from his iDisk back into his iWeb program. Wrong!

After doing a little research, I found that there is no way to reimport an iWeb-made website into iWeb. Just for reference, the iWeb files are kept in your user folder in Library/Application Support/iWeb. In there you’ll find a Domain file that is a package created by the iWeb program.

At first I was hoping that I could just take the site folder from MobileMe and create a package with those contents, but if you actually view the package contents of an iWeb domain (select Domain -> Right Click -> Show Package Contents) you’ll see that it’s not laid out like a site folder at all. Frustration!!

What’s the solution? Well, make multiple backups of that iWeb domain file (see “this Apple Support article”:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1105 for more details). If you’re a MobileMe member you might want to consider manually backing up the iWeb Domain file to your iDisk so even if your computer and external hard drive fail there’s another copy of your Domain off in cyber-space that you can easily re-download.

Also, if you feel like editing your site on multiple computers just be sure to transfer that Domain file to the Application Support folder of the user account on your other machine. Launch iWeb and it’s all gravy from there. For now, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that some swanky Apple-programmer out in Cupertino finds a way to make importing a site into iWeb just as easy as exporting one.