I HATE APPLE

most of it depends on whether you have large media libraries or personal (or mostly likely work) photos/video that you want backed up in a non-interactive way

if you listen to music in the cloud, have a moderate amount of photos and few videos, iCloud and other file stores like Dropbox are sufficient for that media and document storage. If you have a bunch of larger files, or archives, you want a non-interactive full backup offsite. The other risk, although smaller, is a rogue app or glitch is more likely to take out an interactive file storage like Dropbox but a bulk backup is safer.

is there a good solution if i want to do better than my external HD backups with Time Machine, but don't want to pay an ongoing fee for offsite backup?

Rotate between two external drives for your backup and leave one at work.

safe deposit box imo

Well that costs money but yeah

Backblaze is exceptionally cheap.

I have Backblaze chugging away now that I have an internet connection that makes it viable.

I also got a new monitor recently and for some stupid apple related reason by iPhone won't charge when connected to the USB port on the monitor. Everything else is just dandy, including other lighting powered things, just not the iPhone. (I guess Is hold see if my wife's is similarly afflicted). Anyway I'm blaming this squarely on Apple not HP.

is it a power supply USB port or just an accessory one? Some monitors don’t have both, sadly

It seems to power other things, as it in can charge my Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad.

I like the idea of an off-site back-up; to put my whole photo/video/old-crap archive online would only take around 12-13 8-hour working days in *this* office. At home, over my basic broadband, it would take an entire year of connection. And, in this office, I suspect ZScaler/some other security measure would kill the connection to BackBlaze.

Just to backtrack for a second, I thought Dropbox was a disaster if you care about security and/or privacy?

Re the USB port, the phone won’t charge unless sufficient current is available - way more than it takes to power a keyboard. Sometimes you can run a USB cable from the computer to the monitor to pump it up a little.

Possibly it issei's because it is sending 65W down the USB-C to power the laptop, but that seem daft to not be able to spare a few watts for the phone
.

Oh - well yeah that sounds mad, but maybe it’s the USB standard 500mA instead of 1.5A like some of the iPhone chargers

xp - why does the speed to backup offsite matter? I throttle the hell out of mine during times where we’re using the internet. It took me maybe a week or two for the initial backup to finish, but now it just tops it off if there are new files or changes to existing.

Restoring is where extreme slowness sucks. It’s where cold storage solutions like Nearline and Glacier get you, too. Slow and expensive. The way I have mine set up is a happy balance. I can cherry pick the files I want after a catastrophe. The best way is a local backup (Time Machine to external drive or NAS) and cheap offsite backup run as frequently as you’re willing to put up with, or seldom as you’re willing to risk. Encrypt it, too.

I guess I can see it if a laptop is your only computer and you’re often mobile. Would then suggest a NAS if in the budget.

my initial backup to backblaze took forever. Since then I haven't noticed. I like that for a fee they'll just send you a hard-drive.

nearline is slow (it's what i use with arq), but if i'm recovering a single file (which is by far my most common use of backups) it's still faster for me than finding the right disk drive and a usb cable.

http://youtu.be/zPptSPVYnQQ?t=121

Ooops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPptSPVYnQQ&t=121

Shout out to @TaikaWaititi for using his post-win interview to bag on those garbage Apple keyboards. He continues to be a hero of the people. pic.twitter.com/nVaAtLpNoN

— Anthony Carboni (@acarboni) February 10, 2020

he's right!

they're decent again now, I swear

only on the larger pro model, though :(

and they're better but still nowhere near as good as they used to be

I have no idea why I'm acting defensive about a zillion dollar company. Maybe my brain's partially in the late 90s

my message to every company other than Apple (and maybe Microsoft?) is to make a touchpad that freaking works well, though. apple did win the touchpad wars

Some still swear by the clit TrackPoint

that is a relatively good device, especially on ThinkPads of yore

ok you guys sold me on backblaze, currently doing the first upload that will take an eternity even on my ~~fibre~~ mega fast connection.

but, a question: from what I can tell this is cheaper than dropbox and gives me the same functionality: my files will be gettable on my phone when I'm out. what reason would there be to pay more for dropbox? I don't get it?

oh, duh, this doesn't automatically sync on another computer.

Found a MacBook on sale today and was so tempted apart from that keyboard.

Pity there isn't a tiny Thinkpad tbh

are there any modern laptops with good keyboards? they've all seem to have taken a cue from apple and decided worse keyboards are the way to go.

all the non-apple ones

which ones though? even thinkpads went rubbery garbage.

no one is putting high travel cherry switches in laptops, it's true. but dell XPS keybaords are fine IMO (perhaps not for you if you think thinkpads are no good).

i've even tried razer's opto-mechanical laptop keyboard -- like typing on corn flakes. what a world!

I like my new 16" macbook pro keyboard better than the one in my workplace dell latitude but I may be a fringe case

i don't really have a stance on this issue, but what are you guys pining for, the clackety-clack of PS/2-era keyboards?

I am pining for the X60-era thinkpad keyboard, that was a gem.

i guess i type hard because i have a recent gen macbook pro and my wife says it sounds like a telegraph office

aside from the whole "they don't work" thing, the usual complaint is that travel is so low/bounce so small that they are painful to use (and very loud!)

I'm pining for a keyboard where the f and j keys haven't broken off completely

Nhex - I think the issue is that a certain amount of travel or tactile feedback is necessary to both trigger the "I've pressed the key" muscle memory along with stopping the motion without it feeling like your fingers slamming into something

I'm a light touch on keyboards and actually have the opposite issue where I'll just barely tap

A couple of years ago I bought a Unicomp replica of the IBM Model M keyboard, which is easily heavy enough to serve as a murder weapon, and I love the huge noisy full-travel keys. It works beautifully with my new iMac.

I do get a cool nostalgia trip with a big old ibm keyboard or replica that reminds me of the green screened card catalog computers the library had when I was a kid

Because time machine is not an off-site backup. Don’t know how much I’d trust anybody who just says use Time Machine! I use Time Machine and backblaze and have lots of stuff in Dropbox and google docs. Used to also use super super to clone my system drive for an even easier way to back up and restore system drive without having to deal with time machine.

― dan selzer, Sunday, 2 February 2020 00:33 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

the thing is happening again which caused me to take the laptop to be looked at (i.e. to the guy who said "just use time machine") -- viz the laptop tending to hang and the spinny disc, bcz backblaze seems to use a lot of memory? is there something else i can be doing to sidestep this? it's not the worst thing in the world but it's mildly annoying when i have 12-odd GB available and still getting intermittent memory-pressure red in the activity monitor?

in the incremental os updates lately some beachball spinning began to occur where it formerly had not, may not be in your control

maybe -- it just really reminds me of how it was behaving two years ago and i wondered if there's a thing i can do

are you sure it's backblaze that's lagging? i can tell that safari in particular has gotten worse, whether it's because of its own code or an os subsystem it depends on, so that it's obviously a side effect of upgrades.

mark how big is your HD? 12GB isn’t much free space on a, say, 500GB drive. rule of thumb is 10% free at a minimum iirc

tracer it's 120GB

xp to j.
well i don't use safari so it's not safari -- what i generally use in a working day are:
chrome: could be chrome! massive memory suck i believe!
scrivener: unsure, it now has a fvckton of docs in it tho most of them aren't in daily use
mail: lol i have unfiled emails going back 12 yrs in my inbox alone

plus spotify for when the wifi signal to my headphones isn't buggy which is not never :(

i wasn't getting problems before i turned backblaze back on but this exactly coincided with upgrading to catalina 10.15.2 so