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Build Your Own External Hard Drive

Build Your Own External Hard Drive

Building an external hard drive eliminates the drawbacks of a ready-made unit. It can be significantly less expensive, and it's a great weekend project that is easy to do. A screwdriver and 10 minutes of your time may be all this project requires.

Hard Drive Know-How

Tom's Macs Blog

Folx: Tom’s Budget Software Pick

Saturday March 13, 2010

Folx from Eltima Software is a download manager that works with your web browser. It allows you to organize downloads, and specify where each download should be stored on your Mac. Folx comes preconfigured with download locations for applications, movies, music, pictures, and other. You can easily add your own categories, as well as specify where on your Mac downloads will be stored.

Folx: Tom's Budget Software Pick

Folx

Folx provides a handy auto-resume feature. If a download stalls, Folx can get things moving again. Folx handles downloads you initiate from your browser, and can also work as a torrent client, managing torrent downloads and controlling upload usage.

Folx is easy to configure and use, and I like the ability to 'tag' downloads so they will be stored on my Mac in the destinations I want, rather than all in the Downloads folder.

The Pro version of Folx can schedule downloads, as well as split downloads into a large number of threads for faster performance. It also has an advanced torrent client that allows you to search for torrent files from within the Folx application.

If you spend a good deal of time downloading files, Folx can manage the process for you, organize your downloads, and let you get back to work instead of watching the download status window.

Folx is free. A Pro version of Folx is available for $19.95.

See other software choices from Tom's Budget Software Picks.

Apple iPad Sales Off to Brisk Start

Friday March 12, 2010

51,000 iPad sales in the first two hours. That's the estimate from Valcent Financial Group, as reported by Fortune. It's likely that actual orders are higher since Valcent is only looking at online orders. Valcent is also basing its figures on the sales order number, which represents the number of orders placed, not the number of iPads in each order. Apple is allowing two iPads per sale, so the actual numbers could be higher.

Apple iPad Sales Off to Brisk Start
Courtesy of Apple

At this rate, Apple may have to stop guaranteeing April 3 availability for in-store pickup, simply because the number of sales may prevent Apple from being able to schedule enough time during the day for the pickups to take place. Of course, those opting for home shipment shouldn't be affected.

What I would like to know is if the shipping carrier will have to schedule additional workforce on April 3, to meet the shipping commitments. This could possibly end up being a one-day record for product shipment, at least for Apple.

Apple Store Now Taking Pre-Orders for the iPad

Friday March 12, 2010

Starting at 8:30 am EST, the Apple Store started accepting pre-orders for the iPad. The three Wi-Fi models will be available on April 3, while the Wi-Fi + 3G models will be available in late April.

Apple Store Now Taking Pre-Orders for the iPad

Courtesy of Apple

Apple has placed a limit of two iPads per customer, but there's a sneaky way to order up to four. This tip comes from Jason O'Grady, who suggests ordering two for delivery and two for pickup at a nearby Apple retail store. Why would you want four iPads? That I'm not too sure about.

If you're going to buy an iPad, let us know. And be sure to stop back and let us know how you like your new iPad once you get it.

Apple Releases Safari 4.0.5

Thursday March 11, 2010

Apple today released Safari 4.0.5. From the minor upgrade number, going from 4.0.4 to 4.0.5, you would think it's just a bug fix or security update. Well, you would be mostly right, but if you use Safari's Top Sites feature, you'll notice a performance boost that delivers faster Top Site updates and renderings.

Apple Releases Safari 4.0.5

Courtesy of Apple

Safari 4.0.5 also has improved the plug-in architecture, bringing better stability to third party add-ins. There are also improvements for sites that use scalable vector graphics.

If you have a Linksys router in your network, Safari 4.0.5 can properly make changes to its settings, using the router's built-in web server. If you had been firing up Firefox to configure your Linksys-based routers, you won't have to do that anymore.

Safari 4.0.5 is available from Apple's Software Update service. You can also download it directly from the Apple web site.

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