Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • Time Machine Goes Back in Time

    About a week ago I received a call from a close friend of mine who was experiencing some sluggish computer behavior coupled with beautiful ticking and grinding sounds from her iBook G4; classic hard drive failure. After weighing her options she decided to take me up on the offer to replace her hard drive and she headed up to visit me for the weekend. Being the intelligent woman she is, she also brought her Time Capsule with her latest successful backup on it.

    Sure enough, by the time I took out her drive and attached it to an external sled, it gurgled and gasped in an attempt to mount and finally showed as an uninitialized volume. No worries, she brought her Time Capsule so I could seemingly just migrate the data back on to the new drive, right? Well, I was missing a vital tool to allow me to do that; I was lacking a Leopard disc. It figures that my Leopard disc had finally become too scratched to continue using just a few days before.

    Time Capsule is designed to restore all data in three ways. One can use the Apple Migration Assistant from the Utilities folder of a machine that’s already set up, it can migrate data directly to a blank internal drive from the Leopard media or it can migrate to a drive with a fresh OS on it using the Setup Assistant. In front of me I had my Macbook Pro, her iBook with a blank internal drive and her Time Capsule; this did not fit any of the ideal restore options. I quickly double-checked that it was impossible for me to use the Migration Assistant on my MacBook Pro to restore the data to her iBook and sure enough I was correct about that. The Migration Assistant will only transfer the data to my own internal hard drive, bummer!

    Exercising my well-honed Google-Fu, I found an application called “Back In Time”:http://www.tri-edre.fr/english/backintime.html by Tri-Edre. “Back In Time”:http://www.tri-edre.fr/english/backintime.html is one of the many new third-party Time Machine “helper-apps” that have sprung up in an attempt to fill in some features that many of us wish were included in Time Machine. Some of its features include the ability to view Time Machine data from another user’s machine, quick looks of files (including letting you know how many versions of that file are available), drag and drop capabilities and, most importantly for me, full restores of the Time Machine to any attached volume. Eureka! This sounds like the answer to my problem!

    After attaching my friend’s Time Capsule to my machine via ethernet I was able to mount her Time Machine sparseimage. (As a sidenote, for anyone with security concerns about Time Machine it’s important to note that the data is an encrypted sparseimage so for me to mount my friend’s Time Machine backup I did need her username and password.) I was able to then set “Back In Time”:http://www.tri-edre.fr/english/backintime.html to restore her latest Time Machine backup to her iBook hard drive which I had mounted on my machine via “Target Disk Mode”:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661. I let that run all night and in the morning Back in Time reported that all of the data transfered with no errors. Great!

    Upon rebooting her iBook, I found that the machine would not load the kernel. Crap. I reboot her machine in Target Disk Mode again and this time I ran “Disk Warrior”:http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html on the drive to repair any software corruption that might be present and then I ran a permissions repair in Apple’s Disk Utility (located within the Utilities folder). The permissions repair was epic and I ran it twice to ensure it would run clean. This time upon rebooting the iBook I was greeted with success! The iBook boot beautifully to the internal hard drive, I was able to run all software updates and after a week of use my friend is thrilled and says it’s zippier than ever!

    The good news is I found a way to restore my friend’s Time Machine backup to her new hard drive without using a Leopard disk. The bad news is, “Back In Time”:http://www.tri-edre.fr/english/backintime.html couldn’t do it all by itself. I spent some time in the shop playing with a healthy iMac G5, a Time Machine backup and “Back In Time”:http://www.tri-edre.fr/english/backintime.html and received the same results. Yes, it works, but in every instance I had to run both Disk Warrior and a permissions repair. I have not played around with restoring an Intel Time Machine backup yet to see if the issue is any different on Intel vs. PowerPC. In the meantime, I wanted to share this interesting new app in hopes that someone else in a pinch out there can get something out of it. I’m also curious to know if any of our readers have used “Back In Time”:http://www.tri-edre.fr/english/backintime.html and how has it worked for you?

  • Tip of the Week: Smart Mailboxes

    My mailbox swelled to the point that the “comparing notes with server” function seen in Mail’s Activity viewer (found in the Window menu) would take almost a minute to complete. I looked into it a bit, and found that I had saved over 40,000 messages in the past few years. This included communication with customers, vendors, co-workers, friends, and family–and a healthy dose of spam.

    I came to grips with the situation, and convinced myself that saving three-year-old email is obsessive, unhealthy, and certainly unnecessary. While I could probably get away with saving email for only six months, I find myself looking for emails sent or received in the past year quite often. So, I told myself I’d keep email for only 12 months, and set out to do just that with Smart Mailboxes.

    Smart Mailboxes are dynamically updated mailboxes just like Smart Playlists in iTunes and Smart Folders in the Finder. You can specify any number of criteria, or just one. In my case, I wanted a folder to hold mail more than one year old. I clicked on the plus symbol on the bottom left of the Mail application’s window and selected New Smart Mailbox. Alternatively, you can select New Smart Mailbox from the File menu, or control-click on the mailbox you want your Smart Mailbox to draw from.

    There’s limitless potential here to keep yourself organized. Unlike the old days of manually sorting your mail, or having only rigid Rules to automatically sort your stuff, Smart Mailboxes are infinitely more nimble and extensible. Give them a shot.

    By the way, reducing my inbox by 25,000 messages really sped up checking for new mail, particularly at home when I’m off the Small Dog network. Ignore your pack-rat urges and clean up shop!

  • 3rd Annual eWaste Recycling Event | This Saturday!

    …It’s back for a 3rd year and it’s happening this Saturday!

    **The 3rd Annual FREE eWaste Recycling Event will be held on Saturday, April 18 from 9am – 1pm at S. Burlington High School in S. Burlington, VT.**

    We want you to recycle your old electronics responsibly. We’ll be taking your old TVs, computers, monitors, printers, scanners, digital phones, other peripherals and pretty much any other electronics with a cord!

    “See our website for more details.”:http://www.smalldog.com/ewaste2009

    **NOTE: THIS IS A RESIDENTIAL COLLECTION EVENT ONLY. NO BUSINESS LOADS WILL BE ACCEPTED.**

    For more information on our ewaste initiatives, our event, ewaste statistics as well as national ewaste recycling resources, “click here.”:http://smalldog.com/ewaste

  • Happy Tuesday,

    The holiday weekend saw flurries in the Mad River Valley, and nighttime temperatures continue to dip below freezing. Triggered by the warm sunny afternoons, the dogs are starting to shed in full force.

    I picked up Tony’s dog, Waylon, to scratch his belly and I was left with a solid pad of short cattle dog fur stuck to my sweater. Jim brought in a shedding rake for his dog Ziggy, and I used it on Owen. Thankfully we did it outside, because there was a huge pile of fur on the lawn when all was said and done.

    I’m hoping Owen will dry off faster with so much less fur, but I don’t think it’s going to make a difference. I just let him out of the warehouse and he’s bounding towards the river with Waylon. Time will tell.

    Enjoy this issue, and keep in touch.

    Matt
    matt@smalldog.com

  • The Rise of Netbooks

    I’m going out on a very sturdy limb to predict that in the next 18 months, the rise of netbooks will have a…

  • There is one other extended warranty that I usually buy–the one for my Victory motorcycles when I get a brand new model. That really paid off with the first Victory I bought that needed a new transmission, but the later models have been pretty much trouble-free. The bikes are so reliable, in fact, that Victory is now including a 5-year warranty. We are expected to get some sun on Saturday (with temps possibly into the 50s), so I might be able to take one out.

    I am heading down to Boston today to catch the Celtics vs. the Heat with Grace and Katie. With baseball season starting and basketball heading to the playoffs, I am getting some resistance at home to all sports, all the time.

    Thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
    _Don, Kali and Ed_

  • SPECIALS | 04/10/09 – 04/17/09

    View specials while on-hand supplies last. Please note that some specials may not be available in our retail stores; check for availability.

    See all specials on our “Specials Page.”:http://www.smalldog.com/specials

  • FEATURED SPECIAL | 04/10/09 – 04/17/09

    This week we’re featuring a 20-inch iMac with a 2.66GHz processor, 4GB RAM, 320GB hard drive, SuperDrive, and 2600 Pro graphics. This machine…

  • The Rise of Netbook Computing

    I’m going out on a very sturdy limb to predict that in the next 18 months, the rise of netbooks will have a major impact on the computer industry. I think this will be reminiscent of the impact of cheap cell phones on the traditional telecommunications industry (though not nearly as profound).

    In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept, a netbook is an inexpensive ($200 – $500) ultra-portable notebook computer with a 10-inch or smaller screen. They’re typically powered by a special class of low-power processor (for example, an 1.6GHz Intel Atom). They are specially designed around wireless communication and access to the Internet, and are often targeted at cloud computing users who don’t require a powerful computer. Most netbooks run Windows XP or some variation of Linux, installed at the factory. Indeed, 80% of netbooks run Windows XP. Netbooks don’t have optical drives.

    The New York Times reports that netbooks “are the big success story in the PC industry, with sales predicted to double this year, even as overall PC sales fall 12 percent, according to the research firm Gartner. By the end of 2009, netbooks could account for close to 10 percent of the PC market, an astonishing rise in a short span.”

    I love the netbook concept – an energy efficient, inexpensive machine you can bring anywhere. There is a niche for such a device. The iPhone is almost there, but is still a little too small for long-form typing. Standard notebooks are overkill for many tasks, and also may be inadvisable to use in certain situations.

    For the past week, I’ve been testing an Asus EeePC. It’s about the size of a hardcover Tom Clancy novel (or Danielle Steel, take your pick). It has a 10-inch screen, 1.3 megapixel webcam, 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor and 2GB of RAM. It came with Windows XP. I promptly installed a special netbook-friendly version of Linux called Eeebuntu (which is by far the nerdiest thing I’ve ever done).

    Overall, I’m impressed with the EeePC. It’s fine for very basic tasks. I’d gladly it to a library or coffee shop, out to the park, or even on a short trip. It’s also great to use around the house for websurfing and research. That’s what it’s designed for; not image editing, DVD-watching, or even advanced word processing. The netbook is a great second or even third computer.

    I admit that it was a relief whenever I went back to using one of my Macs–even an old, battered and sloooowwwww 12-inch PowerBook. Part of that was using better hardware, especially the screen, keyboard, and trackpad. Most of the relief was from using OS X, which truthfully is far superior to the other OS’s I had on the netbook.

    Many people hope that Apple will eventually release a true netbook (including me). This would be distinct from the MacBook Air, which has a 13.3-inch screen and emphasizes thinness over small size. The elegance of OS X could scale wonderfully to a sub-10-inch screen–much better than XP. Apple’s netbook probably wouldn’t be as inexpensive (cheap) as the other models, but it would probably have much better hardware and a few unique “gee-whiz” features.

    Currently, Dell, HP, etc. are selling netbooks without cannibalizing notebook sales. At the same time, netbooks have razor-thin profit margins, and all netbook makers are currently locked in a race to the bottom of the barrel in terms of price and features. Apple never tries to compete in that space, instead offering middle and high-end computers with premium design and features. A premium netbook from Apple might help other netbook manufacturers by disrupting their current dead-end race, and reemphasizing features and design. I’m really hoping Apple adds their own unique contribution to this exciting new field.

  • New Intel "Nehalem" Powered Xserve

    Say it with me: “NAH – HAY – LEM”

    Today Apple introduced an all-new Xserve line that reportedly delivers up to two times the performance of the previous generation while providing enhanced energy efficiency. Based on next-generation Intel “Nehalem” architecture, the new Xserve features a single-die quad-core architecture, a fully shared 8MB L3 cache design, and a three-channel integrated memory controller with up to 12 slots of 1066MHz DDR3 ECC memory.

    The new Xserve introduces new storage capabilities, including an optional 128GB solid-state drive (SSD) for use as a boot drive, SATA/SAS drive support with support for up to 3TB of internal storage, internal second-generation RAID card option with 512MB of RAID cache, and cost-effective dual- and quad-port Fibre Channel cards for external storage connectivity.

    The new Xserve is based on a green design that delivers improved performance per watt for reduced energy consumption, eliminates toxic chemicals, and a high-efficiency power supply.

    Starting at $2999, Xserve also includes an unlimited-client license of Mac OS X Server as part of its standard configuration (a $900 value). Now you can easily set up and manage servers, add new clients to the network, share calendars, schedule meetings, and more. Leopard Server also offers incredibly smart and efficient services for your network, including iCal Server, Wiki Server, and Podcast Producer. Mac OS X Server Leopard also features enhanced multicore performance.

    The standard $2,999 configuration includes a 2.26GHZ Quad-Core Xeon 5500 processor. Build to order options include dual 2.26 GHz, 2.66 GHz or 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon processors.

    “Click here to read more about the new Xserve!”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Apple|Xserve

  • iTunes DRM is Dead! Variable Pricing Lives (For Now)

    The success of the iTunes Store is undeniable (it’s the #1 music store in the US). It has proven that people are willing to pay for digital music, movies, TV shows, and games, as long as the content is priced fairly, and the purchase process is fast and easy. I appreciate the iTunes Store and make purchases there almost weekly.

    Effective today, iTunes is even better, as the record labels have finally allowed Apple to drop DRM (digital rights management) from all music tracks offered in the store. From now on, there are no DRM restrictions on any music purchased from the iTunes Store. Other content (movies, TV shows) may still have DRM protection in place.

    Also, from now on, all tracks are available in 256kbps AAC encoding, which Apple claims to be virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings. In my own testing experience, 256kbps AAC encoded-tracks sound great and truly are virtually indistinguishable from CD quality-tracks. 256kbps AAC encoded-tracks strike the right balance between sound quality and digital file size.

    Also, the iTunes Store is abandoning the fixed 99 cents price-per-song in place since its inception in 2005. Apple has adopted a new pricing scheme that includes offering songs for 69 cents, 99 cents or $1.29, depending on factors including popularity. Apple has announced that there would be more 69 cent songs than $1.29 songs.

    I’ve read several opinions that the new pricing means that the iTunes Store will lose sales. I don’t think it’s possible to know this until we know how many 69 cent songs are available. Also, without DRM, tracks purchased from iTunes can be played on non-iPod music players, potentially expanding the iTunes Store’s reach.

  • MAC TREAT #80: Get Rid Of Duplicate Songs in iTunes

    In iTunes, it’s very easy to end up with duplicate songs. There are many ways this happens, but recently many people are ending up with duplicate songs as they upgrade their old iTunes Store purchases for new iTunes Plus tracks (see below about this). There are several ways to permanently remove duplicate songs from iTunes. This will save hard drive space, and can make it easier to browse your iTunes library.

    It’s worth noting that some tracks appearing to be duplicates may actually be different songs; for example, a live version vs a studio version. Be careful not to delete these. Otherwise, it’s very easy to remove duplicate items in iTunes with built-in management tools.

    Apple has a knowledge base article about this “which you can read by clicking here.”:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1417

    Some people use third party apps or applescripts to weed out duplicate tracks. Take a look at Tidy Up!: http://www.hyperbolicsoftware.com/TidyUp.html and Dupin: http://dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/dupin.php

    Also, here’s a virtually unknown keyboard short cut: in iTunes, hold down the Option key and click “File”. This will change the menu entry to “Show Exact Duplicates”. Show duplicates only displays tracks with identical titles, but selecting “exact” will only display tracks where ALL fields are identical.