ZeroLogik

Comments on Mary Jo Foley; Follow Up

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:36:31 -0800

Recently I wrote an article commenting on Mary Jo Foley's comparison of Leopard to Vista. I've seen a lot of the backlash from the blogging community in response to Foley's original article and some of it is disturbing. Then Long Zheng from iStartedSomething directed me to his recent post on the matter.

He makes some interesting points. Many of which I agree with. Long points out that people get way too emotional about this stuff. I agree. I'm always surprised by how angry people get when it comes to the OS wars. I still voice my opinion on the discussion but I try to do it with a sense of sarcastic play and refrain from childish slurs or just spewing anger.

I'm not sure if I was to be included in Long's comments about the ongoing war between OS camps, but regardless I'd like to say that the points I made about Mary Jo's post were not about which OS is better. I wanted to point out that her comparison of Leopard to Vista is silly. Why? Because Leopard is much closer to Tiger, which came way before Vista. Her blog compares Leopard directly to Vista and makes direct and indirect claims that Apple copied Microsoft. My issue is with her knowledge of the technology market that she's commenting on.

Does it matter who copied who? Not really. Instead what bothers me is that you have a tech blog writer spreading information that suggests Apple copied Microsoft, when if anything the opposite would be an easier case to make. So people come along, they read this stuff and they go on believing something that's not factually true. The other thing that bothers me is that Mary should be more tech aware as a writer for ZDNet. Some of the statements she makes prove that she may not be very technically proficient. I consider that a bad thing when you're writing a blog on a tech web site. But hey, that's just me.

To be very clear, I completely agree with Long's comments about how far people take these discussions. There's something about the internet that brings out the worst in people. Perhaps they don't think there are consequences. Perhaps they think the people they target in their vile rants don't have feelings. I can only rest easy in knowing that I have said nothing in these posts that I wouldn't actually say to Mary Jo if she had said these things to me in person.

So yes, let the discussions continue because they're worth having, but let's do it in a way that's at least respectful of those you're talking with. And in the spirit of this post, I went back and removed the word "absurdities" in the original post in favor of a word that won't be misconstrued. I wasn't angry in writing it, so I don't want to leave people with that impression.

Leopard looks like Vista? In Crazy Land

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:36:34 -0800

Sadly Mary Jo Foley's recent blog post at ZDNet entitled "Leopard looks like... Vista" will likely be read by far more people than this post will. That's what makes her observations all the more frightening. She compares the upcoming Leopard OS from Apple to Vista and suggests that Apple copied Microsoft. This is laughable at best, when you consider that Vista copied Tiger, so essentially she's saying; Leopard looks like... Tiger.

Here are her points and my responses to them.

New Leopard Desktop: Not a whole lot different from Vista's Aero and Sidebar.

First of all, uh, no it doesn't. Secondly, compare Leopard's desktop to Tiger's. They're nearly identical. That's because it's an evolution of an existing interface that OS X has had for years.

New Finder: Many of the same capabilities as the integrated "Instant Search" in Vista.

Aww, look mom, she can type letters. To the forgetful Mary Jo, instant search was integrated and instant and called Spotlight since the first betas of Tiger, which came out long before Vista. So yes, it looks like Vista's instant search because Vista ripped it off from Tiger and I guess Leopard did too.

The new Leopard Coverflow viewing capability looked almost identical to Vista's Flip 3D to me.

One might also say it's 100% identical to the existing coverflow view in iTunes. And may I point out that Flip3D isn't even available in all editions of Vista, so I guess we're really comparing Leopard to Vista Ultimate here.

64-bitness: Leopard is the first 64-bit only version of a desktop client. Vista comes in 32-bit and 64-bit varieties. And most expect Windows Seven will still be available in 32-bit flavors. Until 32-bit machines go away, it seems like a good idea to offer 32-bit operating systems.

Yes, Vista is sold "separately" as either a 32 or 64-bit OS version. The two are not compatible, nor are there enough drivers for the 64-bit version, nor does a lot of the software run on the 64-bit version and so on. This is why they're separate and why no one buys the 64-bit version. Compare that with Leopard which lets 32 and 64-bit processes and drivers run side-by-side with no performance hit and no choice for a consumer to make that will limit his/her software options. See the difference?

Windows 7 will have a 32-bit flavor because MS can't figure out how to gradually make the move without leaving people behind. Apple has solved the issue, MS has not. Also, almost all chips today are 64-bit and Leopard (fully 64-bit) will "also" run on older 32 bit hardware. Another thing MS can't do. You need to do some more research before spreading this kind of misinformation.

Core animation: Not sure what the Vista comparison is here.

That's because this is for developers. Which I'm guessing you're not. The comparison would be with the Windows Presentation Foundation but the difference is that Apple gives you a full IDE for free (XCode) while Microsoft gives you a stripped down version of Visual Studio for free that you're not legally allowed to make production apps with.

Dashboard with widgets. Isn't this like the Vista Sidebar with gadgets?

Yeah, it's also a lot like the Tiger Dashboard (exactly even) which has had widgets since long before Vista came out with Gadgets. Tell me this is a joke.

Time Machine automatic backup. Vista has built-in automatic backup (Volume Shadow Copy). It doesn't look anywhere near as cool as Time Machine. But it seems to provide a lot of the same functionality.

Haha, okay sure. Volume Shadow Copy is "just" like Time Machine. Just as easy to use, just as slick, just as straightforward.

Granted, I am not an Apple user. So I'm sure I’m glossing over some subtleties regarding what’s new and cool in Leopard. But given how often I hear the "Redmond, Start Your Photocopiers" message, I was thinking that Leopard would be light years ahead of Vista.

Clearly you're not and never have been an Apple user. If you were you'd know that the features you speak of have been in OS X for a long time and are just improved (some being completely new). The photocopiers message was from a couple years ago when Tiger debuted and Redmond did just that... it's called Vista, which you now reference as the "original."

In all fairness I'm not trying to be harsh with Foley, but when you post a blog on ZDNet shouldn't there be some discovery of fact before doing so? I mean to compare OS X to Vista as if the copying was done by Apple is so misguided it almost feels like a gag. Maybe it is. Maybe I've been had. Who knows?

Free Open-Source Virtualization for OS X

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:27:03 -0800

Since Parallels came out with Desktop for Mac, virtualization has been a huge topic in computing circles. Parallels was the first company to let you install and run Windows from within OS X with little to no performance hit. Following Parallel's lead, VMWare launched the public beta of their competing Fusion product.

Even though these products do some amazing things, people often complain about having to pay for them on top of having to purchase a license of the OS they plan to install. Considering what these apps do, I think it's a silly complaint, personally. But now it may be an issue of the past.

Innotek has announced a Mac version of its VirtualBox virtualization software. This time though, the product is based on open-source code and is the first professional virtualization product being made available free of charge to the Apple Macintosh platform.

The product supports a wide variety of x86 compatible guest operating system such as: various versions of Windows from NT to Vista, DOS, OpenBSD and Linux. Features include USB support, snapshots and command-line scripting.
The OS X version is currently available in its first public beta version and is based on VirtualBox's new version 1.4 codebase. The product is expected to be completed in the 2nd quarter of 2007.

So if you have the need for virtualization software, but haven't been able to justify the extra cost, this may be the time to give VirtualBox a try. After you give it a try, write us and let us know how it performs. Especially if you have one of the competing products and you can give us some details on your comparisons.

Story from InfoWorld

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:13:33 -0800

Buried somewhere in our genetic makeup, is mankind's need to find a conspiracy in the most mundane things. Obviously this applies to views on governments (perhaps appropriately) but even the most analytical man in history (Sigmund Freud) said that sometimes it is what it is.

Apple recently announced that it's new OS X 10.5 (codenamed Leopard) would be delayed until October instead of being released in June as originally planned. They blamed the delay on having to shift resources to get the iPhone ready. Despite this sounding like a completely reasonable explanation, some people need to locate a lie. Maybe it's the need for drama. Maybe they need to feel special.

Ed Oswald over at BetaNews (a favorite publication of ours) writes that Apple Can't Face the Truth. He suggests Apple's using the iPhone excuse to avoid having to admit that they just underestimated how long it would take them to get the OS done. He begins...

Okay, so we basically take a risk by delaying an already established product in favor of finishing a product on time that hasn't even been proven yet?

OS X is established, but it's also a product that they are responsible for. If the date slips, they are only beholden to themselves and users. The iPhone is a huge partnership with Cingular and the dates effect another company "as well as" customers on both sides. I'd say it's a much bigger deal to push the iPhone. It has nothing to do with what product is established, it has to do with accountability and in this case Apple has to deal with their customers, Cingular's customers, and Cingular itself if they miss the deadline.

We do know from Microsoft OS launches that they also in turn boost PC sales. The profit margins on PCs are far higher than phones, so why would Apple take such a risk?

While this is true for a company that puts out OSes once every 5 to 7 years, I'm not sure it's nearly as true for Apple. Windows begins to show its age, users compare it to the latest OS X, and they start getting pissed off at security problems. So yeah, a new OS is going to boost sales a lot. Tiger on the other hand is perfectly capable of competing with Vista. It only came out a little over a year ago and users aren't "in need" of the OS as much as they just want the next bit of cool. I don't think the tie-in is as strong in how it relates to hardware sales.

There's also far more hype around the iPhone than there is around Leopard. Leopard only markets to Mac users while the iPhone has a much broader audience. Ed argues that Apple faces an uphill battle and may not do well with the iPhone, but the same could be said about the iPod shortly before its launch. No one had ever made good money on an MP3 player before that.

With no hard evidence other than Ed's "loose" interpretation of the facts bundled with a number of assumptions, he comes across looking like little more than a high school girl looking for gossip about the popular kids to make herself feel superior. If you're going to suggest someone is lying and that they're hypocrites, shouldn't you have some factual foundation to stand on?

And the comparison to Microsoft's Vista delays is laughable. Apple's pushing a date by 4 months for reasons that make sense. Microsoft's date slipped by years. It's just no the same.

Ed's not the only one either, the good folks at Red Sweater extrapolate a lot of meaning from an otherwise sensible and straightforward announcement. Software gets delayed, resources are spread thin. You don't go on a hiring spree for a temporary situation like having to launch two huge products at once, you just deal with the issue and move on.

But hey, Ed's article did get a lot of attention, so maybe he got what he really wanted in the end. Wait, that sounds like a conspiracy. Now I'm the hypocrite.

ZeroLogik 51: Naming Things is Fun

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 16:23:49 -0800

News and Topics

Marc Hershon joins, we talk branding and more | The Daily Grill | Simmer Branding | MarcHershon.com

Adobe Creative Suite 3 launch | Link

Build your own Justin.tv with Ustream.tv | Link

Mercedes sports car ends up in river due to driver relying on GPS | Link

AT&T sues NASCAR over logos - Nextel involved? | Link

XBox 360 Elite coming | Link

GrandCentral | Link

Review and Recommend

The1Second Film | Link

Spanning Sync | Link

App Fresh | Link

Tips and Tricks

Anti-rape device hits the market | Link

18 tips for using Google Calendar | Link

ZeroLogik 50: A Lady in Our Midst

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 14:52:40 -0800

News and Topics

Adobe to release 2 versions of Photoshop CS3 | Link

Windows Vista is less secure than XP | Link

V-CAST TV goes live from Verizon | Link

Skype lets users charge for calls | Link

Navy researching a vomit beam | Link

Microsoft threateened to shut down Mac Office in 97 | Link

Japanese use robotic Lassie to pull victims from fires | Link

Twitter | Link

TV through the power outlet | Link

Adobe announces Apollo | Link

Review and Recommend

Papers - a Mac app for organizing your digital documents | Review | Site

Azureus 3 | Link

Tips and Tricks

1-800-free-411 | Link

Get past T-mobile's voicemail prompt

ZeroLogik 49: Midgets Are Pretty

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 13:49:58 -0800

News and Topics

Guest bloggers are welcome!

Linux users tell Ballmer to put his code where his mouth is | Link

People with WiFi spend more time online | Link

Much more that we don't have links for...

Review and Recommend

Callwave voicemail widget | Link

ZeroLogik 48: F-Bombs Are Bad?

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 02:26:46 -0800

News and Topics

Cheney denies man causing global warming | Link

Hacker puts judge in prison | Link

MTV tries to make Laguna Beach version of Second Life | Link

MTA possibly adding WiFi to buses and subways | Link

Steve Jobs angers teachers | Link

FON appeals to people near Starbucks | Link

Australia to phase out incandescent bulbs by 2010 | Link

Review and Recommend

Calculate your paychecks take home

Open ID | Link

Seven add-ons for IE7 that don't suck | Link

Tips and Tricks

According to recent survey that spanned several large US cities, nearly one third of all ice-cream truck operators had at least one felony conviction.

Firefox tip: use Shift-Delete to remove old auto complete items | Link

5 Tips for Cell Phone Users

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 10:33:56 -0800

We received an email today that we found pretty interesting about cell phone tricks. We're not exactly sure who to give credit to for these, but we thank Joanna Kosmides for passing them along to us...

Subject: Emergency
The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile; network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.
Subject: Have you locked your keys in the car?
Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other "remote" for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).
Subject: Hidden Battery Power
Imagine your cell battery is very low. To activate, press the keys *3370# Your cell will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your cell next time.
How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone?
To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: * # 0 6 # A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write i t down and keep it somewhere safe. When your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.
Save money on 411 calls:
Cell phone companies are charging us $1.00 to $1.75 or more for 411 information calls when they don't have to. Most of us do not carry a telephone directory in our vehicle, which makes this situation even more of a problem. When you need to use the 411 information option, simply dial:
(800) FREE 411, or (800) 373-3411

NOTE: We tried a couple of these on different phones and your results may vary, but for those who get them working they're pretty cool.

ZeroLogik 47: Strippers Are Smart

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 19:10:50 -0800

News and Topics

sRGB colors on Mac vs Windows | Link

Hitachi RFID powder | Link

Vista Compatibility kit released | Link

Adobe makes PDF an open standard | Link

Adobe Lightroom 1.0 released | Link

Microsoft asks for IE8 ideas | Link

Netscape 9 to be cross-platform | Link

Mac ads UK | Link

Beryl Linux 3D desktop effects (video) | Link

Bionic arm woman regains sense of touch | Link

RIAA pressures ISPs for early settlements | Link

BBC chooses Microsoft DRM | Link

Review and Recommend

Find drink recipes| Link

Shell Tray Info | Link

Rocketdock | Link

Homeland alert | Link

Tips and Tricks

Guillible.info quote

Go hi-res with Skype video calls | Link

Use SmartSVN

AdiumX IM Client goes 1.0

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:45:03 -0800

Many of you may be familiar with Adium already, but you may not have realized that the open source IM client just matured to 1.0 status recently. The 1.0 release offers dozens of enhancements and hundreds of bug fixes, possibly making Adium the best IM client around today on any platform.

Adium is unique because of the sheer quantity of protocols it supports coupled with an amazing amount of customization. You can go from the default contact list view to something quite your own with relative ease....

Because Adium has been around so long and has such strong community support, you'll also find hundreds of extensions, skins, icons, sounds, etc...

Add to all that a ton of necessary features like, OTR (encrypted chats), address book syncing, working file transfers, tabbed messaging, very slick message history, and that it works with Bonjour as well as dozens of protocols and you've got yourself the best IM client ever on the Mac.

Now if it only had video and audio chat support it'd really be amazing. Of course this is a long shot at best considering AOL, MSN, and Yahoo! don't open up their systems to let 3rd party applications use their audio/video services. There is some hope if you're a GoogleTalk user though. I think Adium is planning to do some work to tap into that system for audio, but I may be wrong on that. It's hard to confirm plans like these in an open-source project.

So if you've ever been hesitant to try Adium because it was pre-1.0, now's your chance. And if you're a big voice/audio chat user, you can always keep iChat or whatever around just in case, but let's face it... it's pretty rare for a majority of users.

ZeroLogik Facelift Complete

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 00:23:00 -0800

We're very happy to introduce the new site design. The main page will reflect the most layout and content changes. The other pages haven't been rethought in that way yet. Instead they just got a facelift, but the layout is pretty much the same.

The plan was to get this new look out as soon as possible (since we got so much hate mail about the bubbles) and then to tweak it as we get more feedback and start tracking how users interact with the site. For the meantime, consider the site in beta mode. But we won't be putting a stupid beta graphic anywhere.

We faced some annoyances when designing the CSS to fit the needs of most browsers out there. We'll talk more about that on the next episode of the podcast. There are several changes planned for ZeroLogik in the near future, so please tune in for Episode 47 and listen carefully. A lot of the changes could involve you.

Death to the Bubbles

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:36:26 -0800

We're in the process of implementing a complete redesign here at the ZeroLogik web site, but in the meantime we just had to kill those f-ing bubbles that we were using. They were pissing everyone off (including us) so we decided to do a very basic refresh of the site with a simple layout and color shift.

Eventually we'll be getting to the complete overhaul of the site itself and you'll see something similar to what we outlined in this post a while back. Hopefully this little update will make the site more palatable in the meantime. Enjoy and keep spreading the word!

Yours,
ZeroLogik

Advice on an Intelligent Backup Strategy

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 17:01:16 -0800

People put an enormous amount of trust in hard drives these days. If you ask me, it's misguided trust and one day it will bite you in the ass. Hard drives are complex devices which store data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces. They do fail. It's just a question of when and how prepared you'll be for it. Sometimes you get some warning via clicks or odd noises coming from the drive. Other times you turn on your machine to find errors and it's all gone. At that point your only option is to take the drive into a shop that can recover some of the data for a premium price.

However, you could save a fortune and lots of time if you have a basic backup solution in place. Since most people I know don't have any backup strategy, I thought it might be helpful if I documented one that's practical and fairly simple. Let's get started...

Mirror Your Main Drive
What it is: This may sound a little technical at first, but it's actually very simple. The idea is that you want to have a single exact copy of your main hard drive as a backup. That's the C:\ drive on a PC or Macintosh HD on a Mac.

What it does: If you have a perfect copy of your drive that's kept up to date, then you can simply swap your bad drive for your good backup and you're up and running again in minutes. Your applications are there, files in tact, no re-installing, no restoring.

The Details:

(Recommended) Option 1: Internal HD and Enclosure

Find out what kind/size hard drive you have in your computer and buy an extra hard drive that matches it. It doesn't have to match exactly. For example the brand and size can be different (assuming the size is bigger on your extra one) but the technology must be the same

Next, buy a USB or Firewire enclosure for that extra hard drive. You can get these at Best Buy or any online shop if you search for hard drive enclosure. It's just a case for the drive that lets you connect it to a computer as an external drive. We use a regular hard drive and put it in an enclosure so that if you need to swap drives out, you just pull it out of the enclosure and put it in the computer. No copying needed.

(Not As Easy) Option 2: External USB or Firewire HD
If you choose to just get an external hard drive then the rest of the strategy will work the same, but if your main drive fails, you can't remove the drive from a drive that was bought as external. So it will still work as a backup, but when the failure happens you'll need to run to the store to buy a new internal drive, swap it out and then do a full copy of all the files from your external drive to your new internal one. Of course you'll have to first install your OS on that internal drive and then make the mirror copy over itself (Mac users won't have to do this as Macs can boot from external USB & Firewire drives).

Make the Mirrored Backup
Once your backup drive is in place, you'll want to make an exact copy of your current drive on it. There's different software for this on Windows vs Mac...

Mac Solution
There's a great app called SuperDuper! that makes this process incredibly simple. Best of all, it's FREE as long as you don't want a scheduled backup system and even then it's only $27.95. After the first full backup, SuperDuper can just update changed files to the external drive instead of doing a complete backup each time. This saves tons of time and is much easier on both hard drives.

I'm not going to go into other apps because there are many and it would take forever and this app is free. If you can find another one that does what SuperDuper does, use it.

Windows Solution
I haven't used Windows for some time, so I'm not up on the best software to accomplish this same task. I'll gladly update this article if someone can point me to an app that matches SuperDuper. Otherwise I know Norton Ghost can do the job (but for a cost) and I was told Backup4All may be a good choice too. Just make sure it can copy "everything" on the source drive for a completely mirrored result.

Handling Video, Music, and Other Files
These days most people don't have enough room on a single drive for every file they have. Music collections grow, downloadable video is a reality, and so on. So some of you may already have an external drive for storing those kinds of things. That's great, but those drives fail too. In fact, they typically fail more often than internal drives. So what do you do about backing up those files without creating all these backups of backups?

It really depends on how important these files are to you and whether the investment to back them up is worth it. For me, I edit videos and have huge project files that I simply cannot lose and yet they don't fit on my main drive...

Option 1: Single External Drive
If you can stand to possibly lose these files, then you can still save some money and be somewhat save all at the same time. Simply buying a single external drive to store the files on may be enough. Buy something big that you can grow into. If you're using 100GB now, buy an external drive that holds 200GB. It's really something you have to decide based on how fast your collection grows.

Once you have this external drive and your files on it, just pay attention to it. Shut it down when you're not using it and listen for odd noises. The minute you suspect something, buy another external drive to copy everything over before it's too late. As I said, it's the riskier approach, but doesn't require as much of an investment.

(Recommended) Option2: External RAID Array
Again, this sounds uber-technical, but it's not. A RAID array is simply more than one hard drive linked together to act as one. Go out and buy one of these in the largest size you can afford. Most drive manufacturers make this kind of thing (I use Maxtor).

Because there are multiple drives together, you can set them up as RAID 1 (Mirrored) which means you only see a single drive on your computer, but each time you copy a file to the drive, it's actually making two copies (one to each physical drive inside). This means you automatically have a backup of everything on that drive without having to run software or worry about it.

The reason I say you should get the largest size you can afford is because when you mirror a RAID you end up with half the actual space it's capable of. So if you get a 500GB external drive that's RAID capable and you mirror it, the drive will report as a single 250GB drive, thus making room for two copies of each file you place on it.

What about a fire?
If you have data that would destroy your life if it were lost, I'd recommend taking extra precautions. Just making backups won't do much good if a fire wipes out all of your drives and your computer. In this case, store your backup drives in another location. Keep them at work or some other safe place away from the originals. Also, don't use the RAID solution - instead use 2 external drives of the same size and make backups of one to the other and take the extra one to another location as well.

Also, if you only have a handful of files that are this important, you could look into one of several web sites that offer online backups for files. Sometimes they allow up to 1GB of data to be backed up via their password protected web site. Here are a couple... (iBackup.com, Xdrive, box.net)

Thoughts on CD or DVD Backups
Honestly, I think they're poor solutions. If you have sensitive data you're backing up to CD/DVD and you throw one away when you're making a new backup (or you lose it) then that data is available to anyone. Wiping the disc clean before throwing away would require a "lot" of scuffing and scratching to ensure it's all safe. And the cost for large amounts of data (gigabytes) can be quite high if you have to keep buying discs. They're also slow to read/write from (painfully if you're backing up an entire drive). I'd just recommend against this.

My Setup and Costs
To give you an idea of what we're talking about in terms of cost, I've looked over my setup and come up with a run-down of costs...

160GB laptop drive and enclosure to backup main drive ($150)
1TB External Maxtor Drive w/RAID ($430)
Grand Total: $580

That may seem like a lot to some of you, but keep in mind, I have an enormous amount of video that I need to backup, so most of you should be fine with a 500GB external RAID, which is about $230. Also, if those extra files aren't important enough, just stick with the main drive solution until you can afford the rest.

Conclusion
I hope some of you have found this helpful. What I like about this strategy is that it's very straightforward (one drive for your main backup and another for extra files). It's also extremely convenient if you use the enclosure option. I recently had a drive fail and I was back up in 15 minutes as if nothing had happened using these methods. All my settings, apps, and passwords were completely in tact. Nice when you're on deadline and tragedy strikes.

Keep in mind that this strategy may not be thorough or scalable enough for those of you with absurd amounts of data or other unique needs. It's great for the general home user or media enthusiast though. Also, I didn't go into detail about how exactly to do some of what's mentioned because this isn't a tutorial, just a general strategy, but the information shouldn't be hard to find.

Best of luck!

Great prices for items mentioned can be found on PriceGrabber

ZeroLogik 46: Vista is Coming

email@zerologik.com (ZeroLogik.com) — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 11:30:19 -0800

News & Topics

Time Warner throttles BitTorrent traffic?

Accountants call BS on Apple's unlocking fee | Link

Diebold shows us all how to hack a voting machine | Link

Company sues over use of the words "ant farm" | Link

Google Groups is out of beta | Link

TellMe launches a killer mobile product | Link

Microsoft explains IPTV in detail | Link

A-Data plans to announce 128GB SSD Hard Drive | Link

What's new in Windows Vista? | Link

Intel announces 45nm breakthrough | Link

Verizon rejected the iPhone deal | Link

Review & Recommend

Senduit.com | Link

Pixel image editor | Link

Tips & Tricks

Disable annoying prompts in Vista | Link

10 Vista tricks and tips | Link

Use iTunes to feed podcasts to your Zune | Link

Share your iTunes library over your home network | Link