PC Mechanic, New Article |
- Is Backing Up Data Over Wi-Fi A Good Idea?
- Retro Friday: First Generation iMac
- LibreOffice – The OpenOffice Spin-Off – Has A Major Release
| Is Backing Up Data Over Wi-Fi A Good Idea? Posted: 28 Jan 2011 03:30 AM PST In the context of this article I’m referring to local wireless and not the cloud, meaning backups are sent over your local network to another computer/backup device in your house. Backing up your data wirelessly is obviously not a new thing. Automated nightly backups can be done in any number of ways be it a simple cron in Unix/Linux, Windows "Scheduled Task", OS X’s Time Machine or from any of the many backup software titles available. No matter which way you choose to go with, the OS/software doesn’t care where you backup to as long as it can get there. Most of you out there who use wi-fi use Wireless-G. N is becoming increasingly available and more affordable, but G is still the de facto standard at present. Many of you out there do backup data over-the-air via Wireless-G to the intended destination, however this may not be such a good idea. The best possible speed over Wireless-G is… …one MB per second. You may get 1.5MB/s if you’re lucky, but chances are you’re only going to get 1MB/s and nothing more. Concerning your nightly backups over wi-fi, this presents a problem. If what you’re backing up exceeds 24GB of data, the nightly backup won’t be finished before sunrise. 24GB of data is 24,576MB. At one MB per second, it takes almost 7 hours to transfer that over Wireless-G. This means if your automated nightly backup starts at midnight, it won’t be done until around 7am. You may be thinking, "So? What’s the problem?" The problem is that your local wi-fi traffic will still be in heavy use after you get up in the morning (unless you’re a late sleeper), and as such your local wireless network traffic is slowed significantly until that backup finishes its transfer. Nightly backups in the traditional sense are supposed to be 100% finished well before the sun rises. If not, it’s taking too long and can quickly become an annoyance. "But I’m not backing up over 24GB of data!" Don’t be so sure. If you have your automated backup set in such a way to backup your entire computer (which many people do), you are probably backing up at least 24 gigs of data if not much more. What do you do if you’re sending over 24GB over-the-air for a nightly backup? Consider switching your network means of sending the nightly backup data to wired LAN, USB, eSATA or FireWire instead. The transfer will complete much, much faster and your network will be ‘free’ well before the sun comes up. Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.       |
| Retro Friday: First Generation iMac Posted: 28 Jan 2011 03:00 AM PST
Most notably of the first-gen iMac’s badness is its mouse, routinely labeled as one of the worst tech products of all time. Fortunately it can be replaced with your mouse of choice easily. Even with its CRT-monitor "goodness", first-gen iMacs do in fact look cool simply for the fact they have such a wild design to them that still holds up to this day. The "tangerine" color, seen at right, is the most desirable because it was produced the least. For your retro computer collection, you may want to consider picking up one of these. Not only can they be bought at fire-sale prices, but can easily be loaded with Linux to accommodate the PowerPC architecture. If you’re asking "Why would I bother with one of these old clunker Macs?", it’s just a neat little conversation piece of a computer. You can get Apple style on the cheap in a still-usable/functional computer depending on which model you get. A quick rundown of first-gen iMacsEarly iMacs had a 233MHz CPU, which in today’s world is just too slow to get anything done with any expediency. The best first-gen iMac is one manufactured in July 2001. It only comes in the colors "Snow" and "Graphite", and is labeled the "iMac Special Edition". It houses a G3 700MHz CPU, has a 60GB HDD and a CD-RW drive. It’s also capable of running OS X Tiger. All the specs for the ’01 Special Edition iMac are here, including a photo to show what they look like. Working on a first-gen iMacReplacing/upgrading stuff on a first-gen iMac isn’t all that difficult, but it should be noted that if the iMac has never been opened before, when removing the bottom piece you will hear a rather loud CRACK when the ‘seal’ is broken – so be mindful of that. The maximum RAM that a Special Edition iMac can support is 1GB. Full instructions. As for the hard drive replacement, that’s not easy – but you can do up to 128GB and connect an external HDD with FireWire 400. Full instructions. Concerning the optical drive, if it works, leave as is. If you want DVD, connect an external USB drive. Why not replace? Too costly. Instructions and info here. What OS to go with if not using Mac OS X?As said above, a Linux designed to run on the PowerPC architecture. Most popular Linux distributions have these ready-to-download. Here’s a few links to read up on that: http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/ On a final note, Mac OS 9 is not recommended. That OS is generally seen as the "Windows 98" of Apple OSes. Sure, you could use OS 9 and mostly get along with it, but you’d be far better off with OS X Tiger or Linux. Retro computing is cool and all that, but you want your computer box to be usable. For that, you need to use an OS that can connect to the rest of your stuff and be fully compliant with the modern internet. Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.     |
| LibreOffice – The OpenOffice Spin-Off – Has A Major Release Posted: 27 Jan 2011 07:00 AM PST Not too long ago you may have heard that the popular open source productivity suite, OpenOffice, was acquired by Oracle. Many have perceived this to be the beginning of the end which prompted an open source fork, LibreOffice. A few days ago, LibreOffice released it’s first major version. This release has a slew of new features, including:
While I was reading through the new features, I didn’t see anything which I "wowed" me. Granted I am an MS Office user, I still like to see progress made on this this suite as it is a nice alternative for home users. Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.     |
The first-gen iMac is a weird little beast. This is the Mac most Apple fans don’t acknowledge because it is a bit of a stinker.| You are subscribed to email updates from PCMech To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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