Kibbles & Bytes Blog

I rode my electric motorcycle in to work yesterday with Hammerhead in the sidecar sporting his Doggles. Unfortunately, we got a flat tire on the sidecar, so we’re going to have to get that fixed before we hit the road.

It is a beautiful Vermont summer day, and it looks like the weekend is going to be great, too! Wherever you are, I hope you have a great weekend and thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
_Don, Kali & Stephanie_

Huh? Well, really what we mean is that our “*Dads & Grads promos*”:http://www.smalldog.com/dadsandgrads/ are still happening for about another week (until *6/30*) and with our special in-store financing back in action, it’s easier than ever to get your grad or dad something special.

The best part? (You know, aside from no-interest payments for up to a year and a half…) Every product in the store is applicable (excluding services). There’s no minimum requirement for 6-month financing, and if you purchase an iPad or Mac, you may qualify for either 12- or 18-month financing, pending approval.

* *6* month offer: No minimum amount
* *12* month offer: Purchases of $499 – $998
* *18* month offer: Purchases of $999 and up (until 10/31)

*How to Apply*
Come in to any of our retail locations — “*Waitsfield*”:http://www.smalldog.com/waitsfield, “*S. Burlington*”:http://www.smalldog.com/burlington, “*Rutland*”:http://www.smalldog.com/rutland, VT, or “*Key West, FL*”:http://www.smalldog.com/keywest — and any of our helpful Specialists can assist you with the application. Or, you can fill out the application online beforehand (see link below) and bring it in to any store. It can take as little as five minutes to receive approval!

(__Note that while our Dads & Grads specials expire on 6/30, the special financing does not!__)

Click here for more details: “**Smalldog.com/finance**”:http://www.smalldog.com/finance

Apple released a new entry-level iMac on Tuesday that dropped the entry-level price to just $1,099. However, that price comes with a few losses in other areas. For instance, the new version has a 1.4 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive. The older entry-level iMac came with a 2.7GHz processor — quite a cutback.

You are able to custom-configure your Mac to up to a 1TB hard drive or 256GB of flash storage, but that’s about it. While this would be a great, affordable computer for the average computer user, it’s almost worth paying $200 more to get a faster, stronger iMac.

We have them in stock in our “*Rutland*”:http://www.smalldog.com/rutland and “*South Burlington*”:http://www.smalldog.com/burlington locations and soon in our other locations. Stop by and check them out!

Summer is upon us, that means we’re all playing outside in one way or another. Biking, hiking, fishing, swimming, camping or just straight chillin’ and grillin’. Either way, some of us can’t go without tunes filling in the soundtrack to our outdoor fun. I have been out camping already this season and found that, being the nerd/techie I am, I camp a little differently.

The serenity of looking at the stars and “being away from it all” is great. However, I enjoy a little music and Netflix before bed. On my last few adventures, I’ve carried a backup battery from “*Goal Zero*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/83716/goal-zero-switch-8w-portable-charger-power-pack and the “*Turtle Shell from Outdoor Tech.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/search?search=outdoor+tech+turtle+shell

I’m not claiming to be an audiophile, but all my friends I was camping and chillin’ in the backyard with were shocked at the sound coming from this small, oddly-shaped orange boombox! The Turtle Shell connects via Bluetooth to my iPhone 5 easily and has a great battery meter to tell me how the Turtle’s battery is doing. ??Note: I always have an 3.5mm AUX cable with me so I don’t have to pair/re-pair my friends phones.??

The speaker has two tweeters and a bass battery. What is a bass battery? Well, some genius figured out that you can use the battery as a sub — genius right? The sound is great, with clean highs and thumping lows. For camping, it was mostly that hippie music — Phish, the Dead and other jam bands. But for the backyard party, it was everything from Miley, Jay-Z, DMB, Miranda Lambert (don’t judge). You name the genre, it came up (OK, maybe no slow jams); the Turtle Shell’s sound stayed true through them all.

But, that’s not even the best part. Sounding good is important, but what if you’re having so much fun that you either spill on it or worse yet, forget about it altogether? Sure enough, I forgot it and accidentally left it outside all night — it rained, poured and may have been struck by lightning (probably not, but __maybe__). I woke up to it sitting in the grass beside my tent…! It’s advertised as being “shower, rain and generally any other liquid proof,” but come on, for real? Yep, for real — it turned it on right away ??(not recommended for most wet electronics)?? and the jams kept pumping. “Party on, Wayne!”

With much of summer left, I’m happy to know that come rain or shine, my Turtle will be bumpin’. Check out our exclusive Kibbles special below on the Turtle Shell and you, too, can enjoy this sweet speaker. Enjoy your summer!

Several months ago I “*wrote about backups,*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/kb868/ and I talked about a number of things including my experiences with several different backup and archival solutions. Well, it’s been a few months, so how do I feel about the backup solution(s) I’ve chosen now?

One of the solutions I mentioned in that article was Code42’s CrashPlan cloud backup service. When I first started using it, I was only backing up between computers. So computer A would send its backup to computer B, and vice versa. This was OK, but not particularly great. I decided to shell out the money for the family cloud backup plan. This allows you to back up 2-10 computers to your account (I have three).

I mentioned in the previous article how easy CrashPlan was to install on any system. I installed it on my linux desktop, my Mac mini, and even the virtual machine that runs inside the mini. Once installed, I simply provided my account username and password and it started uploading data to my cloud. I won’t lie, the first full upload is definitely the most difficult. Upload speeds depend on many things, including your internet speed connection, CrashPlan’s internal throttling mechanism (so it doesn’t bog down your machine while you’re using it), and CrashPlan’s cloud server throttling. Overall, my upload speeds were not terrible, but my three computers needed to send a total of around 40 gigabytes. That would take a good amount of time even over a gigabit ethernet local network.

After that first backup completed, I have been extremely satisfied with CrashPlan. I know it’s running because I get weekly email summaries, but when I’m using my computer, it’s like it’s not even there. One of my favorite features is backup sets, of which you can have as many as you want. Backup sets help prioritize different groups of backup data on a single machine. For me, I want very frequent (every 15-30 minutes) backups of my home folder data, and I want those backups to take precedence over everything else. But I also have other data that, while equally important, doesn’t change every 15-30 minutes. Backup sets let me create a second backup for that data that only runs once a day. I can set it as “priority 2,” so that if my primary backup set wants to run, the second one will pause and wait for the primary to finish. This whole process is completely seamless, and really helps fine tune your backup to suit your individual needs.

In addition to fine tuning backup frequency, you can also fine tune how long revisions of files are kept. Since everything ends up in the cloud, and the storage is unlimited, I highly recommend setting your backups to never remove deleted files from the backups. That way, when you delete a file on your computer, it’ll remain in the cloud indefinitely.

Overall, I’m extremely satisfied with CrashPlan. They even have Android and iOS apps that let you monitor the state of your backups, change certain settings, and even download and view backed up files! So definitely check out “*CrashPlan*”:http://www.code42.com/crashplan/ and see if they have an option that will work for you. They’re even running a special in June for new subscribers.

_Dear Friends,_

The longest day of the year (well it IS still 24 hours but mostly daylight) is this week with the Summer Solstice. Grace told me that we have to celebrate with a motorcycle ride after work just because it will be light out! The garden seems to be doing well and we should have fresh strawberries soon. My gigantic Arctic Kiwi plant continues to dominate the yard, sending feelers out to climb on whatever it can find. Maybe I’ll have some kiwis this year.

I have been playing around with the 2nd beta of Yosemite and iOS 8, and as usual, each beta version gets a lot more stable and more features are apparent. I really like the improvements to Spotlight, for example. Spotlight will now not only search your drive(s), but also web pages, music in iTunes, and photos in iPhoto, etc. When you activate Spotlight by either clicking on the little magnifying glass in the upper right corner or by hitting command/space, a nice big window opens in the middle of your screen to display your results. One pleasant surprise was that Spotlight now does calculations, conversions and definitions. If I type in “3cm” it also converts it to 1.18in or 30mm. It will also do currency calculations; for example, 1,000 Chinese Yuan are equal to $162.51 US dollars or 119.99 Euros.

The dictionary feature anticipates your spelling and word choices, which makes looking up words easy. I tested it with “eleemosynary,” my favorite spelling bee word and it got it after the 2nd ‘e’. The one complaint I have so far is that the big Spotlight window in the middle of the screen is not movable, but I am sure Apple will fix that before most of you see Yosemite.

Small Dog Electronics is just about in its twentieth year of offering the very best in Apple products, and Small Dog’s commitment to only the very best in customer service. We are often asked why people should buy from Small Dog versus going online and buying from anyone else. I think it is our deep roots in the communities we serve and our commitment to measuring our success not only by how many dollar bills we can stack up on the table, but by the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit in equal measure. We are proud to be an involved member of our community and a resource for our customers that makes our motto of “Always by Your Side” be more than a cute catch-phrase.

This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive features the Seagate Backup Plus Slim portable USB 3.0 1TB drive in black. We want you to have all of your data backed up all of the time, so this 1TB drive is just the right solution for you! Because we want you to protect your data __and__ your device, we are bundling the Seagate drive with an AppleJuce Screen and Device Cleaner kit, consisting of an 8oz and 2oz travel pump cleaner and chamois. This bundle is normally $109.98, but for this week, exclusively for Kibbles & Bytes readers, get both the 1TB Seagate drive and AppleJuce kit for only $85.99!

“*Grab this Kibbles exclusive deal here!*”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900001486

Pets: 8-Year old Black Labrador/Hound mix named Sabbath 4-Year old Black Labrador/Germain Shepherd mix named Jables Hobbies/Interests: Reading, Video Games, Pen and Paper…