Regular readers know that I am very predictable in stressing certain subjects, such as backing up files and regular PC maintenance.
One of my most common “rants” is a reminder to never fully trust or rely on online-only or web-specific services, generically known as cloud offerings. By this I mean that we should always have a local copy of our important e-mails, data and so on.
By backing up locally we get the best of both worlds, the convenience of online offerings and a secure way to restore any data that might be lost or destroyed for some reason.
I was reminded of this earlier this week when Google Gmail suffered a severe outage affecting a large number of users. It appeared at first to be a total disaster for some, but at the time of this writing it seems that any lost e-mails and data will be able to be restored for most users. This is good news for those who had no backup of any kind, but it does reinforce the need to be prepared for such calamities, especially for businesses that live and breathe by their data retention.
n There has been a lot of coverage on the upcoming Apple Lion operating system or OS, due probably around summer or shortly thereafter. This release will be unique as it promises the most fundamental changes in Apple’s Mac OS in years.