Nobody likes a broken record (well, maybe some people do), but if there’s one thing we can’t repeat enough in the tech world, is that you need to keep backups. Good backups. The best way to appreciate the value of backups is to spend some time working at a help desk. When I worked at the help desk in college, the only thing more guaranteed than full computer labs during finals was people asking to help recover files. Sometimes I could get the files back, but sometimes they were gone for good. The best way to prevent that scenario is with a good backup system.

There are ??lots?? of options for backing up, and depending on your needs, some options are better than others. During my final year in college, I became so paranoid about losing critical files I backed up to manual .tar.gz archives on a file server every single night. Fortunately, I never had to dig into those archives, but it gave me peace of mind to know everything was safe. Actually, Apple’s Time Machine backup system came out while I was in college, but I was solidly in penguin-land (Linux) by then, so that wasn’t an option.

Nowadays, I use Time Machine on my MacBook Pro at work. It backs up to a 1TB external drive over firewire. While I’ve only had to use it a few times, and not for anything mission critical, it’s certainly been really great and helpful. At home though, I hadn’t been following my own advice, and was living dangerously without a backup system for a while. Fortunately, nothing ever happened, but I’ve since mended my ways and now use two primary backup systems/methods.

At home, my primary desktop is linux, so I can’t use Time Machine, but I do have a Mac mini I use as a file/web server. This is where my backups usually go. For a while, I used a linux-based backup tool. It was very simple, and I think it was probably based on rsync. It had its share of problems, and I don’t think it ever liked that I forced it to backup over my network to the Mac mini. So when I got tired of its problems recently, I started looking at other solutions and was immediately drawn to “*Code42’s CrashPlan*”:https://www.code42.com/crashplan/. This is an amazing backup solution that gives you more options than you can shake a stick at!

First, for free, you can download their client for linux, Windows or OS X. Once you’ve installed it on all the computers you want to back up, it just works. You can tell it to backup one computer to another, or to a folder (like on an external hard drive), or even to a trusted friend’s computer over the internet. I was amazed at how easily this worked, and how easy it was to install.

Once it was installed on my linux desktop, and my mini, they just started talking to each other. No configuration, no nothing. The first backup takes a while, but after that, incremental backups will be much smaller. And if you need more backup space (petabytes?), you can pay as little as $4 a month and backup to CrashPlan’s encrypted cloud. No gimmicks. They seriously let you back up as much as you want for the same price. Obviously the data has to go over the internet, so backing up petabytes there might not be such a good idea, but you can seed your cloud backup by mailing them a drive with all of your data for about $125.

My second backup scheme at home is something I don’t think people consider too often, and that’s archiving. There’s a lot of old data I have that I don’t need on a daily, or even monthly basis, but I want to keep it. There’s a huge debate online about the best archival methods. Many people even advocate for good ol’ magnetic tape, but I choose to backup to extremely high quality “*Taiyo Yuden*”:http://www.t-yuden.com/ DVD+Rs. As far as I know, you can’t buy these DVD+Rs in stores (at least not commonly in the U.S.). They’re pretty expensive, and for best results, you should make sure you’re buying them directly from Japan to ensure you get the real thing.

I’ve had too many cheap DVD+Rs fail on me after a month or two, so for archive-and-forget-it schemes, I highly recommend spending the extra money. Once I archive my data to redundant archive disks, I make sure to keep them in a safe place and about 1-2 times a year, I pull them out and run an integrity check. I have had to dip into my archive disks once or twice, and I was extremely happy to have them.

Hopefully I didn’t sound like too much of a backup broken record here. The point is backups are critical, and if you do a little research, there are solutions out there for pretty much everyone and every situation. If I can backup my linux desktop to my Mac mini, anyone should be able to find a solution that fits their needs.

Share between iMac, iPhone and iPad and take multi-tasking to a new level. This full-sized, wireless Bluetooth keyboard can be shared between multiple devices. Reply to a text on your iPhone, take notes on your iPad, type away on your Mac. A clean, white design and low profile keys make for a stylish yet comfortable typing experience.

For the next week, this keyboard ship to you for *free!*

A few of my friends have had issues with the top button on their iPhones not working anymore. This makes it tough to lock your iOS device and can really drain your battery depending on your auto-lock time setting. If your warranty has expired or you don’t have AppleCare+, there is a little trick you can do to fix this until you get a new phone.

In the iPhone’s (or various iOS device) Accessibility settings there’s an option to turn on a feature called *Assistive Touch.* This normally helps people to use their iPhone if they have difficulty touching the screen or if they require an adaptive accessory. But, it can also come in handy if your top button is broken.

To turn this feature on:

# Open up your iPhone *Settings*
# Under *General* choose *Accessibility*
# Scroll all the way to the bottom of the *Accessibility* menu and find the *Assistive Touch* option and turn *On*

You’ll see a transparent icon appear on your screen. This will remain on every screen and give you options to choose Siri, Device, Favorites and Home. You can move it around the screen by touching and dragging depending on where you’d like it to be.

The option to lock your screen is under *Device.* In that menu, you’ll be able to turn your volume up or down, unmute, rotate the screen and lock the screen. This could also be helpful for some who might have broken volume or mute buttons as well.

Voila! You might have thought you were out of luck until your next upgrade, but this easy solution has proved very helpful for many. Enjoy!

_Dear Friends,_

We got that big dump of snow on Valentine’s Day with just about three feet up at my house on Prickly Mountain. Unlike our friends down south, everyone seems to be smiling whenever we get the big snow. The snow plow drivers have work, the ski areas and restaurants are busy, and the skiers are definitely grinning, too. Emily and I drove to our store in Manchester, NH on Tuesday and it seems that they don’t pull out the plows there until the snow is over. It was a mess in town and it took us about an hour to get from Manchester to I-89, which is usually about a 15-20 minute drive, to head back to Vermont.

We have had a lot of discussions lately about our e-newsletters and I am very interested in your feedback on Kibbles & Bytes. It has always been my intention that this would be a vehicle that allows us to talk to our most loyal and valuable customers each week with a combination of news about Small Dog and Apple as well as a handful of special offers. I have tried to keep it personal and personable and to balance it as a friendly communique to our customers.

Every now and then, questions are raised about the value of the effort and what the return on investment might be. I feel that the value is in the communication itself, not necessarily how many of our specials sell each week. I think that many companies would find the ability to talk directly to almost 30,000 opt-in customers each week to be a real asset.

What are your thoughts? Do you find this newsletter to be of value? Do you look at the specials? How could we make it better? “*Drop me an email and let me know!*”:mailto:don@smalldog.com

I’m often asked about which Mac is the best purchase for a home. In general, we ask a lot of questions about what the Mac will be used for, who will be using it and whether a portable or desktop Mac would be most suitable. I’ve put together a special bundle for Kibbles & Bytes readers today on a complete system for your home that would suitable for anything from a dorm room to that new house up in the mountains.

This week, we’re featuring a desktop solution: a 21.5-inch iMac with 8GB of RAM, a 2.7GHz i5 processor and a big 1TB hard drive. It comes with a full-sized keyboard and Bluetooth mouse. This iMac is ideal for a family with several people who would share it for homework, internet, email and general use. It always makes sense to include a backup drive (especially with a standard hard drive), so we’ll add the Seagate Backup Plus 2TB drive that is sized just right for this iMac. With Time Machine, you will always have an up-to-date backup of your data when the drive is attached.

For Wi-Fi and network connectivity, we’ve added an AirPort Base Station (Apple refurbished) with 1-year Apple warranty that will do just fine. No system is complete without an Apple TV, so you can access all that content on your big screen TV or mirror the content from your iMac. We will toss in an HDMI cable, too! Last, but not least, you might want to print out some of that homework or some photos, so we’ll add in a Canon Pixma MX522 Multifunction AirPrint Photo Inkjet printer. This will allow wireless printing from your iMac (or any other Macs, iPads or iPhones in the house). It is a printer, copier, scanner and fax machine in one!

Since this is a shared iMac, we will also add a set of Urbanears Plattan Headphones in Tomato (red for belated Valentines) so that you can listen to music without bothering others or the kids can do some gaming without all the game noise. We want you to be ready for anything, so we have included the AppleCare Protection Plan for iMac that will give you three years of hardware warranty (instead of one) and three years of Apple technical support (instead of the 90-days that comes with new Macs). This bundle has it all: a great family desktop Mac, a backup solution, wireless networking, a color printer and some cool headphones.

Just for Kibbles & Bytes readers, I am offering this bundle this week for only *$1777.77!*

“*Buy Don’s amazing Mac bundle special here.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900001277

How old __is__ old? That is a great question in the context of technology and its life span. It can seem like as soon as you make that new purchase, it becomes yesterday’s news. This is definitely the case when it comes to module electronics. Cell phones are constantly being redesigned every day to incorporate the next big trend or technology that manufacturers think the public will go crazy over. There have been iPhone updates nearly every year and several Android and Windows phones out every quarter — each with a different range of technologies, new features and target markets.

Computers are getting more and more complicated, and smaller and smaller as the technology develops and more powerful processing units can be packed into littler packages. For instance, look at the previous Mac Pro model and the current one; the new version is a __fraction__ of the size and has way more processing power and capabilities.

So how can you anticipate when something will become outdated?

Technology technically becomes outdated when the hardware and software manufacturers no longer support your model of electronics. Whether it’s been discontinued or dropped as a product line, generally that means that you can no longer get help to repair or service your product. Then, it’s no longer a useful piece of technology if you’re out of luck if something goes wrong.

In the Service department, we often see computers that would be classified as “old” at 5+ years, meaning we can no longer get parts from Apple or service the software that originally came with the unit. Apple has a five year cut-off point; when a model hits five years old, it becomes “vintage.” Parts are no longer manufactured for vintage models and replacement parts are on an “as available” basis. When a model hits six to seven years old, it is classified as “obsolete” and no parts are available — any that are left over are recycled.

Now, what to do with your old machine if you have outdated technology that’s not working for you anymore?

I have an old G4 that is still kicking, but its processor is too slow upgrade to a supported Mac OS. Its usefulness has definitely passed, as I can barely surf the internet with it anymore — it’s often the case that internet browsers and coding technology change quickly, so if I can’t upgrade my OS, there’s not much I can do. The oldest supported Mac OS is 10.6 (Snow Leopard), so if you are running anything older than that, you’ll find you can’t update some of your software like iTunes.

Have a shiny new iPhone? Until you upgrade to something that can handle at least 10.6 or a Windows platform for the latest version of iTunes, you won’t be able to sync it with your computer. Apple and most Apple Authorized Service Providers won’t be able to service anything vintage or obsolete because they can only get authentic parts from Apple, which in turn, may not manufacture or distribute them depending on your status.

The bottom line is, if your machine or device is at least five years old, you should start thinking about upgrading to something that is able to be repaired if it breaks.

__Editor’s Note: For more computer ownership best practices, and signs you may need to upgrade,__ “*this is a fun read.*”:http://www.squawkfox.com/2013/02/21/upgrade-computer/ -KH