Time Capsule, Drobo, MacBook Air

Macworld 2008 has come and gone and several new products were announced. I was most interested in the Time Capsule. A combination Air Port/Hard Drive that can do Time Machine back-ups over the network using ethernet. I was almost going to buy one until I realized that I’d be limited to 1 TB (it also comes in 5oo GB) of back-up space. While it would be adequate for now, what if I get a new Mac this year with a 1 TB drive? Ideally with Time Machine, you want a larger back-up drive than the system drive you’re backing up. This is so you can have multiple versions of your back-up, thus allowing you to go back “in time”.

So this led me to take a look at Drobo. Drobo is a four bay hard-drive enclosure that provides redundant back-up. That is, you can lose a drive and your data will still be safe (assuming you start with at least 2 drives). It’s like RAID, only smarter. Your drives don’t have to be the same size, however you make better use of the space if they are all equal. Their Drobolator demonstrates how this works. I like this solution because as drives get bigger, your back-up capacity increases. With single hard drive enclosures, you are limited to what’s inside. And you lose data if it ever goes down. So I ordered Drobo instead. I’ll let you know how it goes after I get it up and running.

The MacBook Air was another announcement. It’s a very sexy laptop and I could see how a lighter, slimmer laptop would be appealing. However, I have no real use for a laptop. I do most of my computing at home, at my desk, with my nice comfortable office chair. It’s worth pointing out that you could buy the new 8 core Mac Pro (without monitor) for the same price as the solid state Air, about 3-thousand dollars! It is a marvelous feat of engineering, however they make some pretty big compromises. The hard drive is very slow, 4200 RPM. The Intel chip, while it is a Core 2 (1.6 or 1.8 GHz), it’s not the new 45 nm technology that all new Intel chips will be moving to this year. I would wait on this one. There is also no ethernet jack, you have to use wireless. It also uses on-board graphics, so 3D performance will be slow. But that’s not the target of this machine. People will buy this as a fashion statement, not for function.

I also updated my iPod touch software to get mail, maps, weather, notes, stocks and those jiggly icons.