I have the worst luck when it comes to electronics. Both my two-year-old Lenovo ThinkPad T60 notebook and my month-old Western Digital Passport external hard drive failed within several weeks of each other, and as a result much of my valuable data - including all of my schoolwork over a period of a month and a half, in addition to a digital photo collection I have been keeping since fourth grade - was lost. Subsequently, after receiving my new MacBook, I began looking into redundant backup and recovery solutions - I did not want to risk further losing data and productivity due to future hardware malfunctions.

Mac OS X Leopard includes a built-in backup feature called Time Machine, which automatically saves the state of your hard drive (minus whatever folders you specifically set) to an external storage device. Because it saves as many backups as it can until the drive is full, it facilitates the easy recovery of deleted or modified files; all the user has to do is select “Enter Time Machine” after which he can view versions of each file in as many save points as the software has set. To use the software, I assembled a makeshift external hard drive using an old 80 GB notebook drive I had lying around and a Rosewill aluminum enclosure, which provided me enough storage space to reliably back up my documents, pictures, and music.

Time Machine

However, at that point I was still not satisfied - what if (God forbid) my messenger bag was stolen one day, when I had both my laptop and my backup drive with me? I needed a permanent home backup solution just in case I lost both copies of information. As a result, a few weeks ago I purchased a network-attached storage (NAS) drive, the 1 TB Buffalo LinkStation Pro Duo. Featuring two 500 GB hard drives within a RAID-capable enclosure, the drive can also serve a multitude of other functions right out of the box including acting as a media server, print server, and BitTorrent client.

Buffalo LinkStation Pro Duo

Setting the drive up was easy on both my MacBook and on John’s ThinkPad Windows laptop; the drive pretty much worked immediately and the only setup I had to do was reformatting the drive into a RAID 1 (redundant) array instead of the RAID 0 it arrived as. I installed the LinkStation software on my computer, which turned out to be completely useless as upon connecting the drive to my router, all of the configuration and setup could be completed using the web interface. The NAS could be reached via an SMB connection on my MacBook, and could be mapped as a network drive on John’s ThinkPad.

The LinkStation came with a CD containing the Memeo AutoBackup software for Windows, a great piece of software featuring instant, automatic syncing of user-selectable files and folders, providing a very painless backup solution capable of recovering modified or deleted files. However, no such solution was provided for Mac, and so after looking at my options online I decided on purchasing SuperDuper, which allowed me to easily and automatically perform daily backups of my data onto the LinkStation.

SuperDuper backup software

After getting all the backup software up and running, I began investigating the other capabilities of my drive, the most appealing of which was the media server. I wanted to be have the capability to stream video (mostly my favorite TV Shows at this point in time: Boston Legal, Grey’s Anatomy, House, and The Practice) from the drive, watchable anywhere and by anyone on my apartment’s network.

I was able to reach a usable solution surprisingly easily, through an open-source piece of software called Plex. Initially written to provide media center capabilities on the XBox, it has since been adapted for the Mac and provides an extremely¬†aesthetically pleasing, Front Row/Windows Media Center-esque interface that organizes and allows remote-controlled access to media stored on any number of hard disks or network drives that the user chooses. Although I had to rename/rearrange my video files and folders to their rigid format, “Show Title (Year) - S##E## - Episode Title”, after doing so and adding the correct folder to the library, the software immediately downloaded a background wallpaper, poster, screenshots and plot synopses for each of my TV shows and movies, presenting them beautifully in the clean, modern interface.

Plex home screen

Selecting Boston Legal episode

Selecting a movie

Watching an episode of House

One feature of Plex that really appealed to me was that it is intended to be a media center, which meant that unlike QuickTime and VLC, all of the menus are navigable via keyboard. This meant that one could use a remote control - users have had success with the Apple Remote, the Logitech Harmony, and even their iPhones - eliminating the need to get up every time to play/pause/select a video, or as I had done before, using my mouse on the sofa to control the computer. Furthermore, Plex has an actual library and menu system that is significantly better than that in Front Row, which makes selecting and watching videos that much easier. 

As I have neither an Apple Remote nor a Harmony, I decided to use my iPhone to remote control the software. Following the directions on the Plex Wiki, I installed an application called Snatch on my iPhone and the corresponding server on my MacBook, which allowed me to remote control my mouse and keyboard. Snatch has a feature that allows users to create a custom interface, creating buttons and mapping them to keyboard characters or shortcuts. I subsequently designed my own remote control that could turn Plex on/off, navigate through its menus to select a video, and fast-forward/rewind during the video. For the capability to turn Plex on/off I wrote an AppleScript to check the status of the application and perform accordingly, and set a keyboard shortcut to run the script using Quicksilver.

The iPhone remote

At this point, I definitely do not regret purchasing the Buffalo LinkStation Pro Duo NAS Drive - it is excellent both for backing up one’s files and for streaming media, and it is calming to know that the RAID 1 configuration makes it very unlikely that the data will ever be lost. Furthermore, Plex is a great media center software and ultimately is a pleasure to use; the beautiful interface coupled with the intuitive navigation system makes for a highly enjoyable media experience.

The Apple MacBook line has not witnessed a significant update since 2006, when the 13.3″ widescreen¬†black and white polycarbonate¬†notebooks were released to the public. In contrast to the high-powered aluminum MacBook Pro that was released several months prior to that, it had significantly lower system, materials and build quality, marking its place as a consumer-only model. Its price, on the other hand, was low enough to appeal to college students, which caused it to achieve much higher market share than any other Apple notebook in the past.

Last week, on October 14th, Steve Jobs announced at an invite-only keynote address the long-awaited refreshes of both the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines. Prominently featured in the event was the new method of construction for both laptops, a one-piece aluminum shell (termed the “unibody”) that holds all of the computer’s components in place. Carved out of a single block of aluminum with the same technology used to build aircraft, it was billed as a more efficient, stronger and lighter way to build notebook computers, as opposed to the old-fashioned way of assembling multiple irregular pieces to form the inner chassis. The keynote also heralded a significant change in the design philosophies of Apple’s “pro” and “consumer” notebooks, with the MacBook receiving many of the features once solely available on the Pro, including a backlit keyboard, aluminum frame, and faster video card. The new MacBook is so powerful, in fact, that there are many Mac users purchasing it as a replacement for their old 12″ PowerBooks, or as an alternative to their larger and heavier MacBook Pros.

Featured in the new MacBook is a new integrated graphics chipset born out of a collaboration between Apple and Nvidia. Termed the Geforce 9400M, it is allegedly 5x faster than the old Intel GMA chipsets and has the capability of running many modern 3D applications and games, a performance level necessary for many artists and designers to fully utilize their photo editing software. In addition, both MacBook and Pro now have an LED-backlit display, which is thinner, brighter and uses less energy than the previous version. Also found in the new notebooks are 39% larger, multi-touch trackpads with no visible buttons - in fact, the entire trackpad itself is a button, and the finger’s location when clicking can have an impact on how the system responds. The trackpad is also able to support one- to four-fingered gestures to easily control everything from scrolling to switching windows to running Expos√©. The inner workings feature a 1066 MHz front-side bus and DDR3 RAM, in addition to a new SATA SuperDrive that could potentially be replaced with a second hard drive for those who need more secure or faster drive access.

There are currently three MacBook models you can buy: (1) a sub-$1000 model that is almost identical to the old white polycarbonate notebook, but with an updated SuperDrive; (2) a 2.0 GHz unibody aluminum notebook with a 160 GB hard drive and 2 GB DDR3 RAM; and (3) a 2.4 GHz aluminum model with a 250 GB hard drive, 2 GB DDR3 RAM and a backlit keyboard identical to the ones found on MacBook Pros. Interestingly, the Apple Store claimed erroneously on Launch Day that the 2.0 GHz model also had the backlit keyboard, in contrast to the rest of the Apple website and Steve Jobs’ keynote earlier in the day. I was one of the many users who purchased that model thinking that it did, only to find out the following day that it actually did not. Thankfully, after calling Apple’s customer support to complain, they offered me a $150 discount to upgrade to the 2.4 GHz model (with the backlit keyboard) which I gladly accepted.

After an excruciatingly long wait for the notebook, I finally received it on Monday, delivered by FedEx straight from the source - Shanghai, China. Upon opening the box, my first impressions largely revolved around the beauty of the aluminum exterior and the physical thinness of the notebook, both of which were vastly superior to my Lenovo ThinkPad T60 that I owned previously.

Peeking out of FedEx box

Slimmer packaging

First glance

Finally out of the box!

Getting the notebook up and running was a breeze, though since it was my first exposure to Mac OS X, I was a little slower learning where everything was. However, within 24 hours after receiving it I had already installed all the programs I needed (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Microsoft Office, et cetera), installed Windows Vista on a 32 GB Boot Camp partition and gained access to it through VMWare Fusion, and calibrated both the battery life monitor and the screen’s color spectrum. Vista actually runs unbelievably fast on this computer; my Windows Experience Index is 5.2 out of a possible 5.9 which is an tremendous score, especially for a notebook.

The new trackpad, with all its clicking and gestures, is surprisingly efficient - so much of an improvement, in fact, that I now cannot stand the tiny trackpad with its physical buttons on Morgan’s ThinkPad. Getting used to pointing and clicking with the same finger was intuitive, and some of the gestures (the four-finger Expos√© ones especially) have made many tasks such as navigating through open windows faster and easier. Furthermore, I am really enjoying using the Mac operating system, as it seems to require a lot less input than Vista to accomplish the same tasks in addition to being absolutely gorgeous.

At this point my MacBook is fully functional, and is ready to do some serious work - I cannot wait to try out some more computationally intensive programs like MATLAB in order to really judge the laptop’s performance.

The massive trackpad

Mac OS X

Keep checking for updates, I’ll keep you posted!