Raven Solutions: A Daylite Certified Partner

October 29, 2008 · Filed Under Support Services · Comment 

We’re always looking for new ways to help individuals or small businesses achieve peak productivity. Now we’re happy to announce that Raven Solutions is a Marketcircle Daylite Certified Partner.

What’s Daylite? Designed for the unique needs of Mac-based businesses of 1-50 people, Daylite is a new generation of productivity management software. Daylite’s time-saving features include shared calendars, seamless integration with Apple Mail, project and activity delegation, multiple pipeline views, a built-in report writer, sophisticated offline and sync capabilities, and a clean, easy-to-use interface. Daylite is a milestone achievement for the Mac community, directly addressing the day-to-day productivity needs of Mac users. Daylite, with its many new features and upgraded Daylite Mail Integration (DMI) module, provides Mac users and Mac-based businesses with the tools they need for command-and-control business productivity.

Whether you need assistance with installing a single-user license of Daylite or designing a multi-user productivity suite that is customized to your business workflow, Raven Solutions can help. Contact us for more information about Daylite today, or click here to download a datasheet about Daylite.

Apple’s Time Machine: Backups Made Easy

October 21, 2008 · Filed Under Uncategorized · Comment 

As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing more important for Mac users than having a backup of your data and applications. Apple made backups quite easy to set up with Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”, as it requires just two quick steps:

  • Connect an external hard disk drive to your Mac
  • Click OK when prompted by Leopard if you want to use the hard disk drive for Time Machine backups

After this point, Time Machine does a full backup of your computer. Once it’s done with that, Time Machine checks your Mac every hour to see if any changes have been made. If they have, it logs those changes, installations, or deletions. Once a day Time Machine looks at the differences between the current time and the previous day, and then it performs a similar function once a week. You don’t need to do a thing — Time Machine does it all for you.

If you accidentally delete information and need it at some future point, all you need to do is click the Time Machine icon in the Dock, search back in time for the information, and then click Restore to bring it back to life. It’s that easy!

Surprisingly enough, many Raven Solutions customers still aren’t performing backups on a regular basis. I like to say that I have two types of clients: those who have lost data, and those who will lose data!  Starting to make constant backups is as simple as making sure your computer is running Mac OS X 10.5 (AKA Leopard) and having an external disk drive to plug into the Mac.

How to determine what version of OS X your Mac is running.To check what version of Mac OS X you’re currently running, go to your Apple menu at the top left of the screen and select About This Mac. The OS version appears just below where it says “Mac OS X” (see screenshot at right). If it’s not Version 10.5 or later, you’ll need an OS X update in order to run Time Machine. Contact Raven Solutions using one of the phone numbers at left, or click “Contact Us” in the site menu bar for an estimate. We can update your Mac in a few hours.

For hard disk drives, you have a couple of options. If you need a new Wi-Fi router and want to share the backup drive with others in your office or home, you might want to consider Apple’s Time Capsule (click opens Amazon.com). At $499 for a full terabyte (1,024 gigabytes) of storage and an 802.11n Wi-Fi router, it’s a steal!

If you have a MacBook you’d like to back up, consider a portable hard drive like the Western Digital My Passport Essential 320GB Portable Hard Drive (click opens Amazon.com). It’s tiny, lightweight, and doesn’t require a power adapter to run.

Finally, if you just need a drive for home backups and don’t need the Time Capsule, consider a hard drive like the Western Digital My Book 1 TB External Hard Drive (click opens Amazon.com).

In any case, if you have any questions about how to use Time Machine or what hard disk drive to purchase, feel free to contact Raven Solutions.

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