Awesome and Weird: Apple iPad2 in India starting tomorrow

iPad (on the right), iPad 2 (on the left). Do the math.

Apple have scheduled the arrival of iPad2 in India for tomorrow. As it turns out, it’s kind of awesome but having said that, I’m worried for a few reasons. Here’s why…

India craved for iPad 1 for around ten months and then when the excitement almost died, Apple released the product in the country. They released it a few weeks before the iPad2 (in US) was announced. And less than two months into the launch of iPad 1 in India, Apple has bought the second (much much better) version of iPad. What does that mean to the consumers who already bought iPad 1 in the last month or so? Heartbreak! Literally, a heartbreak. What more, this kind of stuff makes Apple look bad in the mind of those consumers who already bought iPad 1. No wonder they’d be cursing after hearing this news. And with the speculated prices making rounds, there is hardly any difference between the two models except of course one would have to pay a bit extra for those niche smart covers – which ensures Apple is cursed a bit more by iPad 1 users.

It is beyond my scope of understanding why it took Apple a year to launch iPad in India and then only a month and a half for the upgraded version. Perhaps Apple heard about the criticism that the delayed launch of iPad 1 took and tried to mend their initial woes. Maybe. On the brighter side, let’s hope the future Apple products, like iPhone 5 and iPad 3 arrive in tandem with US.

Tech companies get weird about such stupid stuff, something no one will ever understand why.

Lifesaver: How backups saved me hours of reworking around stuff

I recently babbled why CrashPlan is the best backup service I ever used. Turns out, it’s much, much better than what I thought while writing that post.

Coming to the point, I didn’t have the best of time computing in the last few days – I lost a few important files and I lost a few important software while messing around. Yesterday while uninstalling Aurora, a recently launched half nightly-half beta build of future Firefox versions by Mozilla, I accidentally deleted all the program data related to it. And then I realized- all the data related to Aurora was the same data related to Firefox. And deleting user files of Aurora meant my Firefox became like a freshly installed copy of any other Firefox. Meaning to say – all my bookmarks, my extensions, plugins – the entire user profile was gone somewhere in the mist! Unrecoverable, of course.

At first I thought it was stupid of Mozilla to link up the data of both programs. Then I thought it was stupid of me to not realize while uninstalling Aurora that Aurora is well – just another version of Firefox. And Mozilla is no where near to be blamed, are they?

The bookmarks was what I was worried about. And in my hunt to get them back, I realized I’ve a backup running all the time! I started CrashPlan, selected “Restore” and there I was, stunned. To my surprise, CrashPlan lets you even restore just a single file from your entire backup making it easy to get things done. When I used backup software back around 3-4 years, this wasn’t possible. One had to go through the process of restoring everything, which was useless. There are other programs that do so, but with its already awesome features, this just makes CrashPlan more good. CrashPlan also stores deleted files (for a period of time that you’ve to specify, of course) in your backup, just in case.

I found my bookmark backup file and all it took was a minute to restore my beloved Bookmarks. I also restored my user profile – but some extensions didn’t work fluently. For that, I reinstalled the broken ones.

Following yesterday’s nightmare, today I went in a much bigger trouble. I lost a photoshop document – well I made some changes to the document and I was supposed to save it as a copy. Instead I overwrited the changes to the original file. And boom, all hours of work – gone, just like that. To overcome that – yes, you guessed it right. I connected my backup drive, opened CrashPlan and restored the original version of it.

Saved me hours of photoshopping and made me some time to do this blog post. What I’m trying to say here is – have a nice, good backup system if you are a regular computer user – then be it CrashPlan or Acronis or whatever.

Backups are cool, period!

CrashPlan is the ultimate backup client I longed for

Dropbox is something everyone loves and it’s cool for your very important docs. What about your other data? The music, The TV Shows, The Movies, The Pictures, The etc etc.?

I’ve been looking for a perfect backup solution since I became a computer user i.e. roughly since last six years. I tried Norton Ghost, I tried Comodo. I tried Genie and I tried Mozy. I even tried Windows Backup and also, LiveOne Care. Acronis Image wet me the most given it’s powerful functionality but still, it wasn’t perfect.

Then I came across CrashPlan last month. A few days back I decided to use it. And damn, it’s perfect! Leave it’s awesome online system (which is a paid service), it’s free service lets you back up your data to a folder ( or a external drive or whatever) and also to a friend’s computer (whose machine has CrashPlan). With CrashPlan you can also backup your stuff between multiple computers (Mac to PC, Desktop to Laptop, Office to Home – it works with all). But wait, that’s not why I’m loving it. I love it because of the simplicity it offers.

All I wanted from my back up client was –

a) It can backup/restore my stuff to an external hard drive.
b) In case I’ve to rush out during an ongoing backup process, I want the software to automatically pause the backup as soon as disconnect my hard drive without making all the progress a waste – Acronis did that to me too many times.
c) Backup has to be real time and it has to run all the time without me given any instructions. Acronis had to be told when to start, what to do and every other stuff. CrashPlan does it automatically without bothering me much.

CrashPlan does everything without interrupting the user. It runs quietly in the tray backing up your stuff, it’s neat and well as I said, it’s perfect!

**CrashPlan for Windows/Mac/Linux/Solaris – official website.