Quote:
Originally Posted by Stercus Vultus
On a Mac, unless you run a high volume business, that is not necessary: 4GB is more than enough. Use the savings for other stuff. More than 4GB RAM would be (expensive) overkill that doesn't add anything useful.
Cumbersome. With Apple's Time Machine you set it up once and 'forget' about it. Add another harddisk to mirror the first one. It's iron-clad. Afaik no Time Machine backup has ever been recorded to go sour.
True. So I keep a third harddisk in another location and physically exchange it once a month for one of the other two. So it's a remote mirror backup HD which' contents are maximally one month old. The other two backup HDs' contents are maximally a half hour old.
Using CDs or DVDs as backup media is a big mistake, Rocky! Burned CDs and DVDs (as opposed to pressed CDs and DVDs) deteriorate over time (osmosis) and will become unreadable in 5 years!
CDs and DVDs are useful only for medium term storage. To be on the safe side I always write the date of burning on them and use them for 1 year max! They suck for long term storage!
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What I would add to the CD issue that I did not include in the first post wold be what you said about the life expectancy.
What I do is also re-write the CD's every year with a new back up, and archive the old discs.
I forgot that part.
Also, is it practical for the client to swap out hard drives, and will they do it even if they can? Back-ups have to be used to be useful and they have to be easy to be used.
If the Mac back up app is good, then use it. I started using Retrospect when I had my Mac tech business and have not used anything else since. Retrospect is bullet proof, easy to use, can be set to run itself, and can be used to check the DATA on the backups.
It is my experience that RAM is the cheap in the long term. I max out every computer I buy with as much RAM as I can fit into it. Sort of like building a dam. 20 ft to high 99.99% of the time is much better than the .01% of the time it was 1 ft to short.
Something else I was thinking about,
I am not sure about the Mac video cards anymore, but on a PC it is a good idea to get a good one, and make sure it will work with your monitor.
One thing I always did was assume the client knew little or nothing about computers and built them to that end.
I also made sure that I could resolve 99.9% of their issues with my Cell Phone while I was sitting on a ski lift or on the side of the road when I was on a road trip with my Harley.
Thanks for the tune up, Stercus Vultus.
