Last week, Apple announced their wireless backup device, Time Machine. This device is an Airport Extreme with a hard drive in it. Now a few of you will be familiar with the fact that the Airport Extreme has a USB port which has the ability to add a printer, or a hard drive, or multiple USB devices if you use a hub. Now the question is should I go with an Airport Extreme and get an external hard drive, or should I go with Time Capsule.

If you want to backup your Mac with Time Machine to a wireless hard drive then this is a no brainer at this stage. Only Time Capsule has the ability to backup to a drive wirelessly. Hooking up a USB drive to an Airport Extreme will not work for Time Machine. In the future, Apple my release a firmware update that allows for you to use an external drive for backing up with Time Machine but until then, you only have one option.

But for people wanting to use it as network attached storage, you have 2 options. You could get Time Capsule and  you would have the convenience of having an Airport Extreme and a Hard Drive in one small package. The other option is to get an Airport Extreme and connect a USB hard drive to it. There are a few disadvantages of doing this instead of getting Time Capsule. First, you have just used twice as much space as the single unit would have. You also have used the only USB port on the device and if you decide you want a printer on the network through the AirPort Extreme, you will require a USB Hub. The final disadvantage I can think of is the amount of power sockets the devices will take up. There is one for the Airport Extreme, one for the Hard Drive, another one if you want to hook up a printer and another for if the hub is powered. That is 4 plugs you require, instead of the 2 if you used Time Capsule with a printer.

Now, how do the prices compare. An Airport Extreme costs $179 and you can get a Western Digital MyBook 500GB for $118 or a Western Digital MyBook 1TB for $251. This brings the total for an Airport Extreme + 500GB External Drive to $297 and an Airport Extreme + 1TB External Drive to $430. The Time Capsule 500GB model costs $299 and the Time Capsule 1TB model costs $499.

The 500GB Time Capsule is prices pretty similar to the Airport Extreme with a 500GB external drive. With such little difference in price, I would recommend if you only want 500GB at this stage, getting Time Capsule would be the way to go. You can always add external drives to it afterwards if you decide at a later date that you want more storage. The 1TB Time Capsule is prices quite a bit higher than getting an Airport Extreme with a 1TB external drive. You are paying quite a bit extra for the convenience of having it in one package.

To conclude, if you are going to be using it for Time Machine, there is only one option. If you are using it for network storage, if you are looking at 500GB, I would say get Time Capsule. If you are looking at 1TB, you have to decide which is better for you and your situation. Ultimately, it is your decision on if you would rather convenience over price for this configuration. On another note, you might be able to find cheaper external drives elsewhere but I have decided to use Western Digital MyBook’s for my example because I have found this product to be cheap and reliable for my friends and myself and would definitely recommend their product. If price is a factor, do your research.

Note: All prices are in US Dollars and were taken from the Apple Store and Newegg websites on the 24/01/08. Prices may vary in different countries. This article is only a guideline, you should do your own research on prices and products to see what options are right for you.Â

Yesterday was the day that Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, made his yearly MacWorld Keynote about his consumer products. Last year at this event, he announced the revolutionary iPhone, a device that amazed everyone. This year, the amazement was back with the announcement of a new MacBook. I set my alarm to get up in time to get live updates of the goings on in the keynote, but I managed to sleep through my alarm but woke myself up just in time to see the announcement of the MacBook Air.

The MacBook Air, a ultra-slim notebook computer that weights under 1.4kg and at its highest point is under a measly 2cm. It is amazing how slim it is, but what is even more amazing, it all the functionality and power they have put in the tiny package. But if you want one of these, you do pay a premium price of $2999 NZD for the base model. Sure, you can get more powerful computers for a lot less than that, but you won’t find a computer this thin, that still has all this functionality left in.

I do think the MacBook Air looks amazing and would love to own one of these, but in reality, a computer like this would not suit me, I would need something ore powerful. There will be many people in this same boat that don’t care that much about size and wouldn’t get a product with reduced performance than a bigger notebook computer. The computer is nice and would be great for people to carry around everywhere with them in their bag or something. This would suit someone with a more powerful computer and wouldn’t mind a small notebook without a bit of performance and wouldn’t mind something small and can afford the price for this.

Last year, Apple announced their entry onto your television. They admitted that they failed to deliver, but they are going to try again with Apple TV Take 2. Take 2 has a few new features such as viewing photos from .Mac and Flickr and a new interface, but the biggest change is the fact that it is now an independent product, it no longer needs a computer for you to take advantage of it. The store is now accessible from the Apple TV and you can buy music, movies, television shows as well as download podcasts right for the device. And all this, is available to current Apple TV owners in a software update available in a few weeks.

But that’s not all, there are now iTunes Rentals in the store. For a small price of $3.99 USD for new releases of a dollar less for library titles, it is an attractive option to rent movies. There is also HD movies for the Apple TV which cost $1 more and are around 4GB in size for a full, 720p resolution movie. This is a great way of getting movies right when you want to see them, at nice HD resolutions. When you rent the movie, you have 30 days to start watching it, and from when you push play, you have 24 hours to watch the movie, you can also watch the movie as many times as you want in that 24 hours.

I think it is good of Apple to give people the Take 2 software for free and not make a new product. I also hope that they have a huge success with the rentals, because I do think it is a great way to rent movies. I live in New Zealand so the iTunes rental stuff won’t be here for a long while, but when it does come here, it would be a great way for me and my family to get movies, much easier to get movies when we want them and not have to pick them up from a video shop. I do hope that they lower the delay from the DVD release and the iTunes rental release so they can compete with the video rental stores. If I want to see a movie when it comes out on DVD, if I can borrow it cheaper then the video shop, but if it is not there and I really want to see it, I will make that trip to the video shop to watch it now, not in 30 or so days. It is a brilliant start and I hope they roll it out internationally as soon as possible.

Those two big announcements were amazing, but the thing that interests me the most was the thing that was under-looked by everyone. The hype of the other announcements overshadowed this, but then again this isn’t anything evolutionary or really anything to be excited about. The product I am talking about is Time Capsule. Basically, all Time Capsule is, is an Airport Express with a hard drive in it. The product was mainly based around the wirelessness of the MacBook Air and the other MacBooks, but also the amazing backup feature in Leopard, Time Machine.

Time Capsule is nice because you get the benefits of the Airport Extreme, with gigabit ethernet and 802.11n, and on top of that, you get Network Attached Storage, with either 500GB or 1TB of storage. At this point, this is the only way to backup using Time Machine to a network drive and makes the backup process just that much more easier, convenient and completely automatic. You are no longer required to plug in a hard drive into a USB port.The price of the product is very competitive and not that expensive, you are not paying much more for having all these features put into one easy package.

There was another thing that was announced, which are new features of the iPhone and iPod touch. They were cool and make me want them, but they are irrelevant to me and I don’t really have much to say on them. I later watched the keynote video and I was interested right through to the end, well except for the performance at the end. Steve’s keynote speeches are always interesting and amazing, even though there weren’t many things that were so innovative that it blew me away. I’m waiting to see refreshes for the two older MacBooks which I am sure we will see sometime during the first half of 2008. I can’t wait for the next Apple Event and a bunch of new announcements.

You may have seen across multiple technology sites over the past month, some stuff on a Apple docking patent. What this does, it is takes a portable computer, like a MacBook, and it goes inside the dock that looks similar to an iMac. This will allow it to be used as a desktop like device with many extra ports and such.

Laptops are becoming more popular and are starting to take over a lot of the desktop market. People are turning to laptops for what they need, except in a portable package with similar and/or sufficient power for their needs. People are turning to laptops to use as desktop replacements and therefore a type of dock is a well welcomed device for the home. This allows for all peripherals such as hard drives, monitors, keyboard and mouse to be on your desk, and you can dock your laptop and use it without having to plug half a dozen plugs into your laptop.

With the Apple dock, the laptop inserts into the device, and there is where the limitations start. First off, you lose the ability to use one screen. It is being wasted inside the computer. For some people, this wouldn’t be an issue but you could use the laptop screen as a secondary monitor to display stuff, such as your iTunes library, or even other applications that you may not use. It would be useful for displaying information that you don’t need to see but it would be nice to have displayed without getting in the way of the apps you are using and without you having to select it. It would be good if it was just there at your side on the laptop screen.

You are also limited to the screen size of the dock, which is dictated by Apple. They could have multiple docks with different screen sizes, but that means you have to pay extra for it, and it probably won’t be cheap. You could even be better off getting an iMac and leaving the dock out of it. It will most likely be cheaper to buy a Dell monitor, or any other brand, for cheaper than the dock is. If the laptop isn’t very powerful, it might struggle with displaying two large resolutions if the dock happened to have a monitor port for a dual setup.

What I would rather have is a dock that can be used with all the Mac notebooks, not just the one that the dock is made for. Also I would like to be able to use a monitor of my choice and have many ports on the dock. It could work similar to how their iPod docks do, you just slide the laptop into it, and it just goes. All peripherals and such connect to the dock and get detected by the computer on insertion. I would also be able to use the screen on my monitor for other applications and not have it wasted.

On the assumption that the new notebook is ultra slim, it might not be as powerful as bigger laptops, in many ways. If so, is it really a good option to use it as a desktop replacement? If people wanted a Mac desktop replacement, they would probably go for a higher end line with higher processor, dedicated graphics and larger screen. A lower powered notebook might not suffice as a desktop machine. In that case, the dock is a waste of space, and probably a waste of money. A port replicator dock would be much better and could also be usable with multiple notebooks, models from now, and in the future.

This is really all based on speculation, and not a real product. Maybe in less than 12 hours, we find out what this really is and if it is plausible. I may end up eating my words, but some of my points may still be valid. It is a neat idea just sliding in your portable computer into a monitor/iMac like device and use it as my desktop. It can be two units in one, a slim portable computer for when i need the portability, and then a desktop like computer with a bigger monitor and more ports and such for when I need that functionality. I would have to get some real information about the notebook and the dock, before I can have real opinions about the actual product, and I would have to use it for a personal opinion of the actual product. We shall wait and see.

As some of you already know, I have been using Firefox 3.0 Beta, codenamed Minefield, for a few months now. I do think it is the best update so far and will be a must have for anyone, although Firefox should be no matter what version. Something I stumbled across today was a security feature that was implemented into Firefox, and that is blocking suspicious sites.

Today when I was doing the usual browsing of hundreds of different sites, I came across a site that was blocked by Firefox. I was greeted with a big red alert with a dark grey background, a page similar to the one when the server cannot be found. The page read the following, “The web site at <URL Removed> has been reported as an attack site and has been blocked based on your security preferences.” I was very intrigued and happy that I witnessed this and love Firefox for blocking bad sites. I wouldn’t have ever thought I would come across this screen when I heard about this feature, but I did.

I do think this is a great feature to have, and hope that they get all those bad sites on the list. This may not be a big feature for me because it is extremely rare I come across sites of the nature but for a lot of people I know, this feature would be a godsend, and also to me too because I won’t be required to fix their infected computer. This function alone is enough to switch your less computer illiterate friends and family to Firefox. Thumbs up to Mozilla for putting this much needed security feature into their browser.

No, I am not going to give you a list of things I plan to do for the new year. I have never, and will never make a new years resolution list. I think the lists are stupid and pointless. It’s fine if you are one of those people that do make these lists, I have no problem with you and will not hold what you do every year against you.

The typical resolutions are things like stop smoking and more exercise and be healthier and so on. Why should you wait till New Years to start this. If it is so important, why don’t you do it the moment you think of it. You have come to realise that smoking is probably not the best for your health so what do you do, keep doing it and wait for new years to start stopping. You get a headstart on doing something important to you and your life, and if you screw up, it’s not going to be a big deal. People are weak. “Oh I didn’t do this so my resolution is ruined. Oh well I’ll just go back and start again next year.” There are going to be people that are like that. If you need to make a change, do it now and not wait for a new year to come for you to start.

Playing devils advocate here, people do need a starting line, and New Years Day is a good place to start. New year means a new slate and a point to make changes for the rest of the year, it’s a good opportunity for people to make big lifestyle changes. Even though they have set a time for hen changes happen, at least they are trying to change for the best instead of shrugging it off or denying that they could make changes to be healthier and live healthier. There are a lot of people who just ignore and continue the bad, hectic lifestyles they currently live.

It would be hypocritical of my to make a new years resolution list because the things I would probably put on such a list would never be accomplished, I know that. Then again, I probably could be doing better but decided to ignore the fact that there is room for improvement for a better and more enjoyable life. My loss. I suppose I’ll just say that my first new years resolution was to not make any new years resolutions, so I am doing quite well for myself on that one.

Well it seems about time to write something in this blog. Last year, in my opinion, was a good year for my blog. 85 posts between October till the end of 2007, consisting of a total of 31,157 words. No I didn’t count them, I have a plugin. My fifth attempt seemed to be more successful than my previous ones, but in saying that, there are some people (Peppery) that have gone through many more without success. You might define success by the amount of readers you have, or even the amount of hits you get per month, but to be honest, success for me is keeping something alive, something which I managed to achieve with this blog last year.

Now that I know I can keep it alive, it is time to get some readers. A blog isn’t a blog without readers, but then again, is this a blog? Its really the rants and discussions of a seventeen year old New Zealander. I’m sure the 2 regular readers would agree that this blog is pointless and I should kill it, because there is no way on earth anyone would read my stupid writing. I am not going to kill this blog. It is not going into the pile of the other dead blogs that I and many others (TheSkorm) have. This is going to survive, even if I am my only reader.

What is in store for 2008 for this blog then. There is going to be a few changes, nothing big and noticeable. One of them is the less frequent posts. Last year, I felt that it was compulsory to post, just to keep this thing alive. I don’t really need to do that anymore because this is alive and the fire is strong. I will still post, but less frequently, and when I feel like it. This blog started to feel more like a chore than something to do for enjoyment. Blogging when I feel like it will put the fun back into it and make it seem less like a job and more like a leisurely activity. Also I felt that last year, the blogs were written in a systematic way. Everyday, every two days, six days a week. That is not going to happen because of less frequent posting, it will be when I want to do it and not at a set time or period.

Other than that, this year is going to be the same, except the unobtrusive advertisement at the bottom of my blog and tumblelog. If you have any suggestions or anything you want to me talk/rant about, do contact me. Peppery, you suggested more images. I hope you are happy with what I deliver. Lets see how this goes, also feel free to use the comments system to leave your opinions and criticism (be nice please.) To another successful year, cheers!

Well it officially just ticked over to 2008 in New Zealand. I wish my regular reader a Happy New Year! For the rest of you, New Year, it would be happy if you were a regular, but you aren’t. Best of luck for 2008 and lets hope it brings joy to you and your friends.