Yesterday, I decided that it was probably about time I backed up some files in case something goes wrong with my computer. The day before that, I got given a DVD writer for my laptop to borrow. I was going to give it straight back but they said I can borrow t for a bit longer. Since I had it, I thought that I might as well put it to use. I had some music to burn to CDs, music to rip from CDs, and some backing up to do.

I used Windows to format the disc to enable me to drag and drop the folders and files I wanted to back up. I was hoping that I could backup all my important files to one DVD disc so I didn’t have to mess around with multiple backup discs. I managed to just fit everything that I needed. I didn’t backup my desktop because the videos there will be transferred to an external drive later. I also didn’t bother backing up my music folder because I didn’t need the podcasts and iTunes libraries that were there because I wouldn’t use or listen to anything there ever again. If something did happen to my data, it would be easy enough for me to start fresh. After backing up, I closed the disc and labeled it with a marker and filed it in my Disc Case for archive purposes.

I then burnt music to disc and them ripped music into my iTunes Library. That was a simple task. I then decided that I would backup my iTunes Music Library because at times, I have heard clicking coming from my external music drive and also Windows Vista doesn’t spin down the disc when I eject it from the computer so I have to unplug it in a special way. If I just yank the USB cord from the computer, the drive makes an awful sound, and it could one day possibly destroy the drive somehow. For me to safely remove it from the computer, I have to pull the cord half out to spin down the drive, then I can take it all the way out without it making the horrible sound. It took a bit over 30 minutes and 3 DVDs to backup my iTunes Library, which was a little over 10GB.

Backing up my files on my computer will help me sleep easy and in the event on my computer fully dying, I won’t have to worry as much about the data I have lost. Also if my music drive dies, I have a backup which will contain most, if not all of my music and recovering my library in the event of a failure won’t be that painful. Using iTunes to backup my music was simple, I love how it just does it. I wish backing up what I want with Windows was as simple as that, without requiring third-party software.

One of the things that Vista comes with is the sidebar. The sidebar can be filled with all sorts of widgets… erm… I mean gadgets, that can do various things. I have eight gadgets currently on my sidebar and they each have a use for being there. Here I am going to tell you what gadgets I use, as well as providing links to where you can download them from. So here is my list from top to bottom.

The gadget at the top of my sidebar is called Simple Date. I tell you now, it is far from simple. It can do a lot, not only tell you the date, but also the weather and temperature. It also has buttons so you can open task manager, and even shutdown and restart your computer with it. This gadget can do a bit more than what I have just said, I just don’t use half the functions it has. I only use it for the basic time and date, as well as the weather. The gadget is also highly customizable, to the way the type is displayed, the the background and colours.

Multi Meter Dual Core is an essential gadget that every sidebar user should have. Basically what it does it tells you your CPU usage, as well as your RAM usage. It is very interesting to see how much of your computers processor and memory you are using as well as knowing if you are using too much memory or if your processor is doing a heavy task.

Is really useful, and good to know how much hard drive space you have used and how much you have left. Multi HDD Meter is the gadget that can display this information. Keeping track of how much hard drive space you are using is essential so you know when you need to clear space for new data, or possibly even require more space. Having this easy to read indicator on your sidebar makes keeping track of hard drives simple.

This is another must have gadget, but this is for notebook users only. It is Some Life, and it shows information about how much charge your battery has. Not only does it show you that, it also shows you what the battery is doing, if it is being used, if it is charging, and when your battery is full and not being used. It is much easier just looking at the sidebar than clicking the battery icon in the taskbar.

Uptime Meter is a fun little gadget that displays your computers uptime. It shows your computer current uptime, your record uptime, and even your total uptime. It also has a clock on the gadget. This has no real use but it is cool too see how long you can keep your system up without restarting it (or before it crashes. )

If you connect to the internet using wireless, then iStat Wireless (Mod) is a must have gadget for you. It displays your signal strength in a graphical form, as well as showing the strength percentage. It also has the name of the access point you are connected to, and the IP address of the computer in the network, and even your external IP address.

This is a another non-essential gadget but it is always exciting to countdown to a certain date, and Count Down does that for you, right on your sidebar. You tell it the name and date of an even and it will count down the days, hours, minutes and seconds till that point in time. This could be your birthday, a holiday, or even the date of that next episode of your favourite television show, Heroes :p

These are all the gadgets I use, except one, and that is the analogue clock gadget that comes with the sidebar. It is nice to have an alternative view of the time form the old digital display that computers do. The top five gadgets come from the same place and all have the same (or similar) skins as each other so the gadgets look like they belong in the sidebar together, which makes it look more polished and nice. Do check out these gadgets and tell me how you like them, or if you have a better gadget that functions the same as on of the ones here.

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

It had been 11 months since I bought my last external hard drive. All the drives in my house were close to maxing out. Between the 3 hard drives, the external, the one in the desktop and the one in the laptop, there was 30gb of free space combined. Some people would think that is a lot of space, others would say that it is time for a new drive. I knew it was definitely time for a new drive.

The past week, I have downloaded heaps of TV shows due to the releases of the new seasons. I ended up downloading about 25 different shows this week. If each episode is 350mb, thats about 9gb for the week. I would definitely be needing another drive if I planned on downloading full season of each of these shows.

This morning, we were going to the local computer shop to pick up a monitor for the old computer. The previous one had died (and smelt bad too I may add.) We got a nice 19″ LCD monitor, a major upgrade from the 5 year old 15″ CRT display. While picking up that, I grabbed an external drive off the shelf, a Western Digital My Book 500gb. This hard drive will be plenty of room for the next 11 months, hopefully. I currently have plans on getting another drive of double capacity in 11 months time just to start a nice trend.

I copied all the TV shows, movies, and PSP games from my old drive to the new one, leaving only documents and video podcasts to take up space on the old external drive. I really like this external drive too, it is much better than any other one I have seen and tried. It looks very nice and words nice too. The best feature of the drive is that there are no buttons, no switches, it turns it self of with the computer or if you safely remove the drive. This means that I don’t have to worry about powering the drive and such. This would be perfect as a second storage drive for a desktop computer as it would power up and down with the computer without the user having to do anything.

The total of all drives at home now reach 1000gb, which sounds like a lot of storage but really it isn’t. I could easily use it in a short period of time. I am extremely happy with my purchase and would definitely recommend a Western Digital My Book to anyone looking for an external drive. Now I just need to download more TV shows to store on it and need more time to watch everything. Then in a year or so, its time for a terabyte drive for me!

The other day when I tried to open a movie in Quicktime, my computer crashed. Quicktime is a frustrating piece of software for me, it doesn’t do video very well for me. It can play video on an external source, whether its a USB Drive or a Network Drive or a Memory Stick of some description. The only thing it can’t do it play videos that are saved onto my hard drive. I just don’t get it and why, 6 months later, it hasn’t bean fixed.

After some searching on the internet, apparently Apple blames nVidia for a bad driver for its Serial ATA driver and nVidia blames Apples bad software. No one seems to want to take responsibility for this and it is a pain in the arse for me and other people with this problem. People have been somewhat forced to use Quicktime alternatives. I eventually gave up and decided to take that route too.

I downloaded VLC Player and it pissed me off from the word go. It played video fine but it done annoying things that pissed me off. First off it made itself the default for all video formats. It would have been nice if it asked me first and not just presumed that I would want it like that. Trying to get it back to my original configuration was a pain in the neck and resulted in my uninstalling it and fixing settings individually to get it back exactly to the way it was.

After reinstalling it, I watched a H.264 HD video. I was disappointed with the quality becuase it was not as good as the quality Quicktime offered. It was extremely apparent when the podcast, Diggnation, displayed websites which were crystal clear and readable in Quicktime, but were slightly pixelated and harder to read in VLC. Another tedious thing is the volume control in VLC which is not simple to use and also thanks to Vista, makes it animated, which can be distracting when watching video at times.

Everyone is going to blame Vista and say thats what I get for being an early adopter, or a user in general. Yes I accept that but that is not going to make me switchback to XP. My XP days are over and I am only looking forward now. On the Quicktime problem, I have two options, put my videos on an external drive and play them from there in Quicktime, or play them with VLC but suffer because if degraded quality. I guess I’m gunna have to live with an annoyance either way so it’s whatever one is more convenient so VLC it is, unfortunately!

UPDATE: I have made a retraction to one of the things mentioned in this post. You can find it here.

I’m going to quickly touch on my opinions on the 4 new iPods that were announced yesterday at Apple’s Keynote.

Lets start small with the iPod Shuffle. New colours, big whoop! I have never really though of the Shuffle as a proper iPod. Its really just a thing that plays music that looks pretty nice. I’m not a huge fan of the new colours though, I preferred the old ones. Whenever I see a shuffle, which is rare, I think of that person as someone that can’t afford a real MP3 player.

3rd Generation iPod Nano’s look a little squashed and plumped. The colours aren’t that nice either. Yes it now plays video but how good of a player would it be in a small screen? I suppose I’d have to use one to properly judge it. I have never been a huge fan of the iPod Nano’s, or the Mini’s for that matter.

The iPod Classic looks pretty similar to the iPod Video, and the functionality is pretty much the same too, but with minor differences there and here. One of them being the implementation of coverflow, a feature I would find myself using quite a bit. Its also at a very nice price too and comes in the 80GB and 160GB models.

Last but not least, the one everyone as waiting for, iPod Touch. This iPod has most of the functionality of the iPhone, but without the communication feature. I was disappointed to find out it only comes out in the 8GB and 16GB varieties. I would have preferred if they had gone with Hard Drive storage for bigger capacity than going with Flash memory. I wouldn’t pay the money for a 8GB, or a 16GB iPod touch knowing that I can get the 160GB iPod classic with more storage, even if it has less features and no touch screen.

To sum it up, I wasn’t that pleased with the new iPods. I couldn’t justify buying the iPod touch at the price point it is since it only has a minimal amount of storage, 16GB at the most. I can see myself paying for the pretty reasonable 80GB iPod and if I had $399, I can see myself getting it without a second thought.

Now that Diggnation is released to members a day earlier and released to everyone a day after that, i can’t decided whether to download it on the Saturday using a mirror or the Sunday officially. I generally watch Diggnation on a Sunday night, its like my end of week routine. Diggnation is a nice way to end the week.

Saturday is one of the busiest days as that is the release of 2 podcasts, 2 TV Shows and now Diggnation. That is 2 hours of podcasts, 2 hours of television shows and now an hour of Diggnation. 5 hours of media compared to the now empty Sunday. Should I continue my routine and watch it on Sunday?

Another thing is the HD issue. First off, Quicktime videos don’t like playing of my laptop hard drive, which HD Diggnation plays in, secondly the videos are 600mb per episode, I barely have enough hard disk space at the moment let alone enough to support a 600mb diggnation episode each week. It it worth downloading it in HD. I’m pretty satisfied with the Xvid version that isn’t in HD to be honest.

Comments would be appreciated on this important issue. I can’t decide what to do!