Rosario Tech

Thom Hogan writes some of the most detailed reviews, mostly about Nikon equipment, has his review posted of Nikon’s new DSLR, the D200. Go check it out. The short: 5 stars. Go buy it.

I plan to.

A healthy hard drive is a happy hard drive, unless it’s dying, in which case it’ll be neither.

Have your internal hard drive(s) warn you about possible upcoming failures with SMARTReporter. Here’s the description of this free program (donations accepted):

SMARTReporter is an application that can warn you of ATA hard-drive failures before they actually happen! It does so by periodically polling the S.M.A.R.T.-status of your hard-drives. S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) is a technology built into most modern hard-drives that acts as an “early warning system” for pending drive problems. Because SMARTReporter relies on the S.M.A.R.T. implementation of Mac OS X, it only supports ATA or S-ATA hard-drives.

SMARTReporter 2.1 can notify you of impending drive failures by sending e-mails, displaying a warning dialog or executing an application. The current status of your drives is always displayed through the customizable menu item.

A little icon sits in your menu and will turn to red when things start to go south. Not only that, it’ll email you and cry for help. When that happens, get back to your computer and back everything up ASAP.

So stay safe and get SMART!

No story. Just funny picture.

For those adventurers out there (as well as cheapskates), Carbon Copy Cloner is a program that is very similar to Super Duper, except that it is free (donations accepted). It’s not as polished as Super Duper, but gets the job done and can create a perfect clone of your startup drive. There’s no harm in trying it and you might just save yourself $28.

(throw the guy a few bucks if you plan to use it.)

Super Duper is a program that will make an exact copy of your startup drive (for many of you, that’s the drive named “Macintosh HD”). Essentially, Super Duper is cloning your drive and makes a backup copy. It’s $28US and is worth every penny.

This is different than just using Chronosync to backup your startup drive. Chronosync will backup one drive to another, but what it cannot do is make a bootable copy of a drive. One reason you might want a bootable copy of your startup drive is that, in case something really bad happens to your startup drive, with a bootable backup (or clone), you can restart your computer with the clone and copy the clone back to the original.

A good backup regime should include Super Duper to clone your startup drive once a week (and before applying major system updates) as well as Chronosync for syncing all of your other drives and folders on a daily basis.

That’s what I do.

These were built originally to match the Mac Mini, but I think they are great looking. This is the miniStack from Newer Technology and it’s a stackable external hard drive casing. It has a built-in USB 2.0 hub, two Firewire ports and a user-configurable cooling fan. This is being sold at OWC for only $60 (you have to add your own hard drive). It’s a little pricey for a casing, but adding that USB hub seems to be worth the extra dough. Also, they are thin and stack nicely. This one is an older version. They are selling an updated version for $80. You can also buy them with hard drives already installed.

I’m going to buy a few later this week.

I don’t know how long the sale is going to last, but SurplusComputers.com has a 400 GB SATA drive for only $199 and free ground shipping. The SATA drive is only for those of you who have a G5 and want an additional internal hard drive. I don’t know about any SATA external casings just yet, but this seems like a great price. I hope the sale continues to the end of the week when I get paid.

Seems like a great deal to me.

More free things!

It’s a fact that the Tyrannosaurus was a carnosaur. So, what does that make a thesaurus? Well…. Free, of course!

Nisus Thesaurus is a free thesaurus for your Mac. There’s is no good reason why you shouldn’t have this program. Go. Now. Download. Learn. Free. Good.

We can all use a little rescuing sometimes, and photographs are no exception. Well, ever had a memory card go bad on you just after you photographed that guy who said he was Moses reincarnated and had an addendum for the ten commandments, along with one or two typo corrections, like “Thou Shall Not Kelp“, and “Thou Shall Not Convert Thy Neighbor’s Wife.” Changes things, huh?

Anyway, I  digress.

Well, fret no more. Photo Rescue to the rescue! This guy’s story is pretty compelling. Read it and think about whether or not you might need software like Photo Rescue. I’ll bet you’ll say yes.

(and what’s with the icon?)

Onyx is a Mac maintenance program, very similar to Cocktail, but is totally free (donations accepted). Here’s a description of what it is:

OnyX is a maintenance, optimization, and personalization utility for Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel). It also makes it possible to configure certain hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, and Safari, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome, preview the different logs and CrashReporter reports, and more.
OnyX is Freeware, gratis and freely usable; you may copy and distribute it at will. You can use it for as long a time as you want.

So, if you don’t want to pony up the shareware fee for Cocktail, Onyx is a great alternative. There are three different versions for the last three Mac OS’s. Download your version here:

OnyX version 1.6.8 for Mac OS X (10.4)

OnyX version 1.5.3 for Mac OS X (10.3)

OnyX version 1.3.1 for Mac OS X (10.2)