For just $29 ($49 for a 5-license Family Pack), you can make your Intel-powered Mac run faster and look better! Snow Leopard isn’t full of new features, although it does have a number of them. Apple decided instead to focus on making the operating system run faster and take less space on your Mac.

Within about five hours after Snow Leopard’s release, I had upgraded three Macs, and all of the updates show the same result – faster bootup, quicker shutdown, and just about every other application launching much faster. I was also able to get anywhere from 10 to 20 GB (gigabytes) of disk space back on each Mac, even though part of that is due to a change in the way that Apple calculates disk capacity.

If you work in an office where Microsoft Exchange is the email server of choice, you’ll be glad to know that Apple Mail now works directly with Exchange. No longer will you have to run Microsoft Outlook under Parallels or VMWare; you can have Mail talk to your Exchange server instead.

For the most part, you should be able to perform the upgrade to Snow Leopard yourself — it’s that easy! If you run into any difficulties, be sure to contact Raven Solutions for support.

Starting in September, we’ll be offering training for iWeb ’09, part of the iLife ’09 suite from Apple. iWeb ’09 is a powerful, yet easy-to-use web design tool that you can use to create and maintain your own web site. The classes, iWeb 101: The Basics of iWeb ’09 and iWeb 102: Doing More With iWeb ’09, use Steve Sande’s best-selling book Take Control of iWeb ’09 to teach you how to use iWeb ’09 to build your own attractive and functional web site for personal or business use.

Click here to view a brochure describing the upcoming classes, or visit this page to sign up!

We’re also planning on offering special deals and coupons for our customers and friends who follow us, so be sure to click the link at left to follow Raven Solutions if you’re already a Twitter member, or click here to find out more about Twitter and sign up.

Backblaze costs only $5 per month per computer for unlimited backups. How does it work? You install a small piece of software, Backblaze analyzes your Mac, and then it begins to upload your encrypted data to a secure data center in California. Although the initial backup can take a long time, once that backup is complete Backblaze will instantly back up any new or changed files on your Mac.

It’s as easy to use as Time Machine, with the added advantage of providing off-site storage of your backup. That means that even if your computer is stolen or destroyed, you still have access to your data.

In the near future, we’ll provide some value-added services with Backblaze. For now, simply click on the Backblaze icon at left to sign up and start backing up!

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.