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.

• 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.

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.

Where did that name come from? Founder and president Steve Sande got vanity plates for his Honda C-RV last year and wanted to have plates that described his love for Macs. The result? That plate you see below!

So we’re starting a whole new chapter in the life of Raven Solutions with this new website. Not only are we going to continue our work in the Denver area, but we’ll be branching out nationally as well through our remote support work.

From time to time we’ll post tips and hints about the Mac here, so visit the website often.