Time Machine makes the Mac and Leopard a must

How important is it to back up?

It's the most important thing you can do. So, the easier it is, the more of a chance that everything you have is protected.

Well, now, backing up is free and easy with Leopard (Mac OS 10.5). The backup scheme included in Leopard is called Time Machine.

Time Machine backs up every hour each day, then saves a daily copy for the last month, and then, it just keeps going. It's as easy as plugging in a hard disk and turning Time Machine on.

So what happened recently?

A user had a power failure over the weekend. The server computer did have a battery backup, but it failed to protect the data. The data could be restored, but it took overnight, and some work was involved.

But imagine this.

Imagine if he had Time Machine on the server computer.

He could have restored his computer to last Saturday before the power failure, and could have been working again in a few minutes.

And you needn't restore your whole computer either (although you could). You can just restore the files you need (or the ones that got corrupted).

It's not often I recommend an entire new operating system based on one feature, but I think, in this case, it's time.

You can either buy a new Apple Computer with Leopard pre-installed, or upgrade what you are using now.

Leopard runs great on G4 Macs as well as Intel Macs.

Get it today, and start backing up - before you need it.

Oh yeah, and do get a battery backup anyway, and take a copy of your data offsite every week or two, just in case.