Apple iMac 5K Retina @ Amazon

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Apple iMac with Retina 5K display at Amazon for pre-order at standard $2499, tax in most states but free shipping with prime plus options for a 4 year warranty for just $120.59 more. Upgrade the RAM yourself with the Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2), buy two for 32 GB. (vs paying $600! to upgrade from Apple).

The i7 Quadcore looks good at $250 more, but is currently only available through Apple.  Give it a few months and that configuration should be available elsewhere.

 

Hyperjuice 2 External Battery Pack for your Mac

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I got the newest HyperJuice external battery pack in the other day to add to my road-warrior kit.  I've hacked up a MacBook Pro power adapter for use, and so far so good - more details to be provided in My MacLife section next week.

This portable power pack is powerful enough to charge a MacBook, and two tablets (iPads, etc) at the same time.

Other hyperjuice products coming soon as well - let me know if you want to see any other product lines from HyperJuice reviewed.

Review of course forthcoming, so check back soon for my initial impressions.

Backups - Here we go again

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This is probably my third post this year about backups, but it's sooo important.  

If you have been following my twitter feed, you will know that I've recently experienced a hard drive failure of my boot (C:) drive on my main multimedia computer tower which is actually composed of two uber fast hard drives (at the time anyway) that spin at 10,000 RPM (normal is 5000+ RPM, up to 7,200 RPM).

The drive is covered under the 5 year warranty so I will get a free replacement from Western Digital, but what isn't covered of course is any loss of data.

Here's my current backup scenario for the main tower.

My backup system for the C drive is composed of an Acronis True Image Home edition backed up weekly to my Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ 4 Terabyte system, which itself is backed up to an external USB drive system.  My C drive does not contain any data, just programs and windows so its non-critical.

When I am ready to restore, all I need is access to my image files (copy them over to a local drive probably), and my restore CD created within Acronis.  

For my drives containing data, I use another external hard drive for immediate backups using Acronis True Image and then online / offsite backup using Mozy. 

I should note that I have multiple computers that also serve as backups to this main computer I work on.  So in case nothing is working right on this computer, I have a few more I can jump on to get work done.  Although sometimes with licensing issues, I experience some downtime while I transfer a license or program over - same thing with settings and macros.  

I haven't decided if I want to go all flash storage yet for the C drive, especially since my drives set in RAID 0 is pretty darned fast already and Black Friday is coming around the corner.

I think I'll wait.

Save 10% on MOZY and get up to 3 months free by using the promo code OCTOBER

Acronis True Image Home 2011