Mozy, Free Backups

Mozy said, “one in every ten hard drives fail each year.” I don’t really know if that even means anything!? Do you mean Hard Drives that are a year old? Or just ten random Hard Drives that failed within a year? Or maybe we shouldn’t think about it because hard drives do go out and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.

If your not out to spend a Hundred bucks on MobileMe this year, but you still want to back up your Mac. You may want to give mozy a try. Mozy is a simple and safe way to back up all the important stuff on your computer. A copy of your data is stored in a secure, remote location for safekeeping, so that in the event of disaster your data is still retrievable.

When I replaced my work computer I used Mozy to restore all my contacts, email, key-chains, miscellaneous settings and some important data to its fresh installation. It worked great and was easy to set up. The best part is that Mozy gives you 2Gigs FREE!!! However, if you need more space You’ll be paying close to MobileMe prices anyway.

Mobile Me

Apples Moble Me service has had its ups and downs since its launch. I have had a mobile me account for about a month now and haven’t been affected by some of the described problems aside from a few momentary outages of Mail and Homepage. Nothing as drastic as losing the contacts from my iPhone, as was the case after a sync bug struck Monday morning. The bug was caught and fixed by the afternoon and most where not aware the problem existed.

This after Steve Jobs announcement to the Mobile Me team at Apple., “It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” he says. “We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence. The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services,” Jobs says. “And learn we will. The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.”

I bought Moble Me mainly for its sync capability, and have been happy with the service. Knowing that every change I make to my iPhone will be moved to my other computers without a second thought is worth what I paid. Oh yeah I got my Dad and my Brother to pitch in and we share a family pack. I would suggest getting some family or friends together, or even sell off those 4 sub accounts in the family pack. A Hundred Bucks is a lot for one account. Family pack is the way to go.

All in all, I am excited to see what MobleMe rolls out in the next few months. Some great improvements from dot Mac include, the ability to add a domain name to your website, iWeb is much better than the old online web editor. Making online galleries and uploading photos is improved. However there is still much room for improvement and that overall feeling of Apple reliability. Check out a 60 day trial of mobile me at www.me.com