Trying a new backup software program at home

For years I have been using Crashplan for home backups, but I stopped using their cloud service for backups because if I forget to renew they delete all my backups in the cloud and I have to start over. I started just using their software to backup to a local NAS device I have with RAID5 enabled. I figure that was good enough for most things I needed.

Well, I noticed that on my laptop that I had configured to backup to the NAS (Using a technique I developed) stopped working. I'm not sure if Crashplan got wise to it or what, but it stopped backing my stuff up and said it couldn't connect to the backup location. I decided I needed to use something else.

I at first thought about using the built in Windows backup program, but the problem with that is that it doesn't use encryption or offer an option to password protect your backups. I'm backing up files from my Bitlocker Encrypted files to an un-encrypted NAS device. I don't want to compromise that encryption security by storing my files un-encrypted on the backup device. Makes sense right?

So I decided to try out a free third party backup program called AOMEI Backupper Standard!

Here are the features from their page:

• Backup system and create a system image to keep Windows and applications safe.
• Backup entire hard disk (HDD), SSD or specified partitions to create an image file.
• Backup or sync your most important files and folders on a regular basis.
• Set and forget with automatic backup, incremental/differential backups to save time and storage.
• Clone a smaller HDD to a larger HDD for disk upgrade, or clone HDD to SSD for better performance.
• Real-time file sync: monitor files for changes and synchronize new added, modified or deleted files from source to target path as soon as the change has occurred.

Besides what's listed, they also offer encryption and compression settings as well as the ability to email you when backups complete or fail so you can set it and forget it!

I will try this out for the next few weeks. If it continues to work well, I think I may have found my new backup solution!

Related articles

• Nextcloud adds security and scalability to its private cloud offering
• Google joins the open source Cloud Foundry Foundation
• Google partners with Slack to provide better Google Cloud integration
• 19 ways to make your Mac run faster right now (AAPL)

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I Gots Me A Palm Pre

If you have been following my on Twitter or Facebook lately, you know that I recently entered the market for a new cell phone. You see, I just accepted an offer to go work at one of the fastest Sharepoint consulting and hosting companies in the United States. With that I had to give up my Blackberry Pearl that belongs to my old company. With my new company they gave me the option of taking a company phone, or expensing a personal one. I decided to go with the latter!

Because this was going to be my personal phone it had one requirement, to be awesome! Also, My wife had big concerns about the monthly cost of the data plan since my company was only going to let me expense a portion of the bill, and not the whole thing. So I went shopping and I looked at the following phones:

• BlackBerry Storm
• iPhone
• MyTouch 3G
• Palm Pre

As you can tell by that line-up I was looking for a touch screen phone with the ability to sync wirelessly with Microsoft Exchange. I first liked the idea of the Blackberry Storm because right now Verizon has a 2 for one deal on them. Right now you can get two Storms for $99 with a 2 year contract. That of course caught me eye, however my wife did not want a Storm.

Next I decided on getting an iPhone. I have yet to meet a person who doesn’t love their iPhone, so I figured why not. That was until a buddy of mine told me about how crappy the AT&T service is. So I decided that I would keep looking.

Next I checked out what T-Mobile had to offer. They have the MyTouch 3G powered by Google’s Android. I liked it. It was small, and seemed to be pretty fast when I was playing with the demo model at the store. One thing I generally hate about PDA phones is that for the most part they are huge. I like small cell phones, so the MyTouch 3G seemed like a good idea. So I put that in the back of my mind and headed over to the Sprint store.

When I walked into the Sprint store I started playing with the Palm Pre which was pretty cool. Then Sprint showed me their plan prices, and that is what sold it for me! All of their plans come with unlimited data and unlimited text. So for $69.99 per month I get 450 minutes and unlimited everything else (Includes unlimited night and weekends, and unlimited mobile to mobile).

Okay, so now you know why I bought the Pre, here is what I really like about it:

• Wireless sync with Exchange/any other email services
• Touch Screen
• Pull out Qwerty keyboard
• Wireless backup with Palm
• Remote Wireless wipe with Palm (Incase you lose your phone)
• Smaller form factor than iPhone
• Easily copy files/media over via USB without the need for special software
• Wi-Fi enabled
• 3.2 Mega Pixel camera
• Wireless software update

This phone is pretty awesome, but there are some things that I am not too happy with which are:

• No ability to “mark all as read” in email
• Copy and paste is kind of difficult for me
• Very few apps out there yet
• The bat-shit crazy bitch on the ads (Check it out)

So far the good outweighs the bad, and I am confident that some of these missing features will be corrected in future releases. I am also confident that more apps will be developed for it. If you are a developer, you can download the WebOS Development kit here: (WedbOS Dev Kit)

Do you have a Palm Pre? What do you like/dislike about it? Know of any places to download third party apps? Hit us up in the comments!

Technorati Tags: sprint,palm pre,review

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My Twitter Client Of Choice for Blackberry

Ever since I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, and got hooked on it, I decided I needed something for my Blackberry device so I can easily update my status and see what everyone was up to. For the longest time I was using Twitterberry, which worked great, but lacked some features that other clients, like Twhirl, on the desktop provided. You know, features like Retweet!

Recently I replaced Twitterberry with a different Blackberry Twitter client called Ubertwitter, and I do not think I will be looking back. Ubertwitter has a lot of great features found in most modern Twitter clients, but also has the following features:

• Integrated ability to upload pictures to a site dedicated to serving ÜberTwitter users
• Ability to optionally update your Google Talk status with your last tweet, making your tweets reach a wider audience then just people following you on Twitter
• Automatically update your location based on the cell tower information provided by your phone, no GPS hardware required
• Send videos embedded in your tweet
• See everyone who is tweeting near you

Here is a screenshot of Ubertwitter’s timeline:

So far I really like Ubertwitter. To me it is the most like a regular desktop app that I have found for Blackberry. One thing I don’t like though is that when I close it, and let it run in the background, all of the updates keep coming, yet my cursor stays on the last tweet I read so I have to scroll up to the newest tweet manually every time I open the damned thing. If they had an option to automatically move to the newest tweet, that would be awesome!

What do you use for Tweeting on your Blackberry? Know of something better than Twitterberry or Ubertwitter? What do you like/dislike about your app? Let me know in the comments!

Technorati Tags: free,twitter,client,blackberry,app,application,ubertwitter,review

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A Review of The Kodak Zi6 HD Pocket Video Camera

I am a cheap bastard. You guys all know that! That is why I have been using my crappy little Kodak Easy Share camera to film all of the Bauer-Power videos. Since I have been getting a lot of complaints on the quality of the videos, I decided I should get a better camera.

I was thinking about saving up about $500-$600 to purchase a Canon HV20 HD camera, but then I thought better of it. Besides the awesome video quality, the HV20 comes with a mic jack. The only problem is that my Bauer-Power video co-host and I have two microphones, and there is only one mic jack. I figured since I will have to record audio separately anyway for both mics to take care of our audio complaints, and dub it back in later, I might as well save a few hundo, and buy something less expensive.

Enter the Kodak Zi6 HD Pocket video camera. I have seen them all over the internet at various prices, almost all of them for under $150. I got mine refurbished from Geeks.com for under $99 after shipping and handling, but since last weekend, their price for the refurbished model went up to $99 before shipping.

Here are some of the camera's specs:

• Shoots in 720P HD at 60 FPS or 30 FPS
• Has a VGA mode to save space
• Has a 2X digital zoom
• Uses 2 AA Batteries
• Uses SDHC card storage up to 32GB
• Can take 3MP picture snap shots

I decided to shoot a quick video in HD at 30FPS. The reason I didn't do 60 FPS was that my video editor only outputs to 30 FPS, and Youtube converts to 30 FPS, so I figured I was wasting my time shooting a video at 60 FPS if I was just going to edit it and upload it to the internet anyway. Here is my video review so you can get an idea of the video and sound quality:



Final verdict? I love it! For under $100, I just don't think you can beat the quality. The only things I don't like are the 2X zoom because it is too jerky for me, and I don't like that there is no image stabilization. Neither of those things are deal breakers in my opinion though.

If you are trying to figure out whether or not to buy this thing, I say go for it! If you have any more questions about the Zi6, hit me up in the comments!

Technorati Tags: kodak, zi6, review, 30fps, test

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Bauer-Power Episode 9

That is right! Two in a mutha friggin' row! Sundance and I had such a good experience getting up at the crack of dawn to head on into the office a little early to shoot an episode, we decided to do it again! I am thinking this may turn into a weekly thing :-)

This episode is AWESOME if I do say so myself! In this episode I share with all of you my new Hackintosh! That's right I took my new Dell Mini 9 and installed OSX on it! After we talk about that, Sundance gives us his impressions of Windows 7, then I review "Deadliest Warrior" which is one of the geekiest/coolest shows on television, and finally Sundance tells us where to get free web development programming! Here it is, Episode 9!



You can catch our previous episodes on our Blip.tv channel here: (Bauer-Power on Blip)

Got an iPod or iPhone? Add our videos to iTunes here: (Subscribe via iTunes)

So what did you think? We really do want to hear your thoughts and ideas about the show. What kind of stuff do you want to see? Hit us up in the comments with your feedback!

Technorati Tags: bauer-power, episode 9, hackintosh, dell, mini, 9, windows 7, deadliest warrier, review, w3 schools

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I Will NEVER buy another Acer computer again!

I am a little miffed as I write this, so forgive me if I go off on an occasional tangent. You see, I purchased an Acer Aspire M5100 desktop last year through Geeks.com. It seemed like a pretty good deal, and I needed a new desktop quickly. Geeks was offering it for a little over $500.

A few months after purchasing it my wife and I noticed that the fans on it were getting louder and louder. It turns out that their fans easily collect a lot of dust. No big deal right? Just clean out the dust and it quiets down for a month or so. Annoying yes, but not a deal breaker at this point.

Well, about two weeks ago I pulled the the case open to clean out the dusty fans again because the noise was getting unbearable. After the routing cleaning I tried to power on the machine, and it wouldn’t. Oops! It looks like I may have shorted out something. I mean this thing was a brick. it would not even go into POST. I checked online, and sure enough, I had another month or two on the warranty.

I went to the Acer Website, and tried to find a phone number to call to get the motherboard RMA’d. After looking around their site for an hour or so (exaggeration), I could not find a phone number. I did however find their online support area, and reported my problem. After filling out their forms describing my issue, all they said was to ship it to their repair center in Texas.

Of course, they couldn’t give me a return shipping label could they? Hell no, I had to pay for the shipping myself! That is the first WTF moment I had with their support.

Since I was going to have to blindly ship the thing back, I wanted to make sure I had a backup of my wife’s important files since it was her PC. I didn’t have a SATA to USB adapter, but my buddy Sundance did, so I took the drive out and gave it to him to burn my wife’s settings to DVD before I sent it out.

After Sundance burned my wife’s stuff, I put the drive back in and shipped it off. About a week later it arrived in Texas. I got an email saying they were shipping it back. About an hour or so AFTER that I got another email saying they just received it. That is the second WTF moment.

Curious, I emailed their support team (Note: I still couldn’t find a God forsaken support phone number on their site). I wanted to know if they had actually made any repairs since I got the return notice so quickly, and BEFORE I got the receipt notice. They said the following:

Paul, I understand that you would like to know what are the repairs had been done on the system.

According to the serial number provided our database shows that, the Depot repair had Replace hard drive,reloaded software,tested all components.

That is the third WTF moment! Replaced the hard drive, and reloaded all the software? Why the hell would they do that? The computer wouldn’t POST! It is NOT a hard drive problem you friggin’ idiots!

Besides, even if it was, why in the name of all things holy wouldn’t you friggin’ call me to tell me that you have to replace the hard drive? That way I can ask you to back it up, or send the hard drive back so I can back it up? Nope, no call, just replace the drive and away we go!

When I got the computer back it came with a piece of paper attached. FINALLY a mother fuckin’ phone number!

For those looking for a phone number for Acer support it is 1.800.816.2237

[EDIT]: I actually found the number on their site. Is is rather hidden, but it is available here: (Acer Contact Us)

So I called their support to find out why they had to replace the hard drive. They told me that the motherboard appeared okay, but after running diagnostics it appears that hard drive failure was imminent.

So once again I find myself asking, “Okay, that is nice and all, but why wouldn’t they call me and let me know that?” No answer!

At least I had that backup Sundance made right? Well, not exactly. It turns out that Sundance’s DVD burner was on its way out, and the burn was bad. All is not lost though. Like any good "tech guy" I have multiple backups in various forms. Pictures on the web, email settings synced with smart phones, etc.

Still though, it would have been nice to have been warned that they were going to replace the drive BEFORE they replaced it and blew away all of my stuff. I mean, now I have to re-download all of my BitTorrents!

After this episode, I think this will be my last purchase from Acer. I just can’t do business with a company that doesn’t have their customer’s best interest at heart.

Their customer support is closed as I write this. I will try calling them tomorrow to see if their is a snowball’s chance in hell that they still have my old hard drive, and if so if there is any way I can get it back.

Have any of you had bad experiences with Acer? Care to share your experiences/frustrations? Hit me up in the comments!

[EDIT 4/17/09] - Wow, I never expected this to go front page of Digg! It appears that the Digg users don't agree. I guess I should clarify my bottom line opinion then.

It doesn't necessarily bother me that they replaced my drive. What bothers me is the lack of communication and customer service from Acer.

When reporting the problem to them they did no remote troubleshooting with me, they simply told me to ship it back. When they told me to ship it back they did not warn me of the possibility of wiping/replacing the drive. When they got the machine, they did not email me, or call me to let me know that they found a problem with the drive requiring it to be replaced.

Now, as the article said, I knew in the back of my mind that there was a possibility of this. That is why Sundance and I tried to get one last backup before sending it back. However, the AVERAGE USER wouldn't know that, and once again it speaks to the importance of good communication.

I have worked with various PC manufacturers and their support. A couple of them have been HP and Dell. Both of which are very good at communication, and letting you know UP FRONT before they do stuff.

It all comes down to communication and customer service. Both of which Acer lacks.

I had to turn on moderation of the comments due to some pretty outraged Digg users. Unfortunately the few ruin it for the many. I promise to get your comments moderated quickly, so please keep them coming if you have something intelligent to add to the discussions.

Technorati Tags: acer,review,support,sucks,rant,phone number

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Introducing the Bauer-Power Book Club

Hey readers! Just thought I would let you know that I will be doing some periodic segments where I will be reviewing various books. These books of course may be of interest to you. That is, they will all be technology/internet related. You know, related to all the stuff you come to Bauer-Power for in the first place!

I was approached a few month's ago via email from Random House Publishing to do some reviews. Now, I will let you know right now that they are not paid reviews. Random House is just sending me advanced copies of some of their upcoming books so I can share my thoughts with you guys, my loyal readers.

The first book I will be reviewing, is one that just came in the mail tonight! It is called, "Stealing MySpace - The Battle To Control The Most Popular Website In America" by Julia Angwin.

According to Amazon, the book will be available on March 17th, and is currently listed at $17.82. If you want to, go ahead and pick up a copy and read along with me!

I have a lot of extracurricular activities going on right now, so I can't give you a date that I will be done with this book. I can however, promise you that I when I do give you my review, that I will give you my honest opinion about the book, and won't blow any smoke up your back side.

I know they say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but looking at the image of the book, what's you first impression? Does it look like something you would read yourself? Do you think MySpace is even relevant any more? Let me know your initial thoughts in the comments.

Technorati Tags: book, review, stealing myspace

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IE 8 Beta 2, Good and Bad?

So I've been testing the new IE 8 Beta 2 that Microsoft came out with and I'd have to say I like it. I have been a big Firefox fan for a long time now but I actually like the IE 8 better. It has many features built in to it that I like that I would have to download plugins for in Firefox. As far as security and privacy I've tested it by just randomly clicking through various porn and spyware infested sites and came out clean, got plenty of messages saying they sites were not safe also.

One of the things I like best about it is the inPrivate Browse option. With this it saves no cookies, history or cache and it's all cleared on exit. So when you're doing some browsing and you get a little paranoid or you just don't want your girlfriend or parents to find out what you've been doing it works great.

I also like their Accelerators. These link to things you do online all the time like say you're on a site and you want to blog about it, just highlight some text you want to quote and right click, then click on the Blog With option. You're not restricted to just using the Microsoft stuff also. When you setup IE 8 it asks you what you want to choose, and both MS and Google options are there. Accelerators also link with Email, Define, Find, Map and Translate.

IE 8 also has some nice enhancements to browsing and navigation options. For example they have a nice Compatibility button for sites that come up and look all out of place, (probably due to poor XHTML coding) it'll do a quick clean up and make it look better. Also one of my favorites is Linked Colored Tabs. So if you open a new tab from a link on the page it'll color code all the tabs that belong together and keep them next to each other to make it a little easier to find what you're looking for in the 15 tabs you have open. Oh and their Find on Page feature is a lot better and more like Firefox and not some 1990's popup search.

One thing that may just not really be used yet but so far seems pretty lame are the web slices. I mean really, do we need to have a little cutout page to look at in our favorites. Most likely if we're adding it to our favorites we know what it is or if we wanted to look up something on a page we'd just go to the page. Also the Ebay web slices don't auto update so that's about pointless.

Another thing is that they really haven't worked on their Favorites or History management. Even though they say Improved from previous versions. I can't tell the difference besides it pops out from the side differently.

And the last thing I really don't like about it is the Tab Recovery on load. There's no option, at least as far as I've noticed, to regain all the tabs from your last browser session. Sure you can go up to tools click Reopen Last Browsing Session, but that's one step I don't want to have to take. But it is at least an option this time around so it's just a minor annoyance.

By Sundance of Make Me a Sammich Games

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Do We Really Need a New Browser?

I was in my network Security class last night when one of my classmates asked if I had tried the new internet browser from Google. He said they just released the beta of it this week.

My first reaction was, "Great! just what we all need, another friggin' browser!" Seriously, the newer versions of Internet Explorer are getting better with tabbed browsing and other Firefox knock offs. Speaking of the devil, in my experience Firefox is already the best browser out there so why download another one. That is the reason I never got on the Opera or Safari bandwagons.

Now Google has answered the call...or lack of a call because there are already a crap load of free browsers... to create their own browser called Google Chrome.

From the Google Chrome page:

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

Here is a screen shot I took of it:



Now please don't get me wrong. I love Google's stuff. I am using Blogger for crying out loud. I use Google Apps to host my domain email. I am an avid Google Maps user etc. I am just not that interested in a new browser.

What's your take on this? Have you tried Chrome? What is your favorite browser? Hit me up in the comments.

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Dell XPS ONE = SEXY

My buddy Karl over at Ask The Admin posted this little blurb about the new Dell XPS One:

This is definitely a sweet looking PC. This is the way a home desktop PC should look. It's a little pricey, but it is in line, price wise, as the iMacs and the other Windows based all in ones that have hit the market.

His comment was based on the PCMag.com review by Joel Santo Domingo which said:

The Dell XPS One ($2,399 direct) easily outclasses its all-in-one competitor (and namesake), the Gateway One, and matches or surpasses the Apple iMac, which has long been the gold standard of all-in-one PCs. While the XPS One starts at $1,499, Dell sent us its top of the line $2,400 model for testing with a built-in HDTV tuner, 802.11n wireless capability, and Blu-ray drive. Although the model I reviewed is the expensive in the XPS One family, it is worth the money for the technology fan with deep pockets. Except for the graphics choice, the XPS One uses components that are competitive those found in traditionally-designed desktop tower PCs and has the benchmarks to prove it. Better still, it looks good doing it. The XPS One shows once and for all that the future of desktop PCs is in the all-in-one form factor.

This thing is one of the prettiest stock PC's I have seen in a while. You can check out the full review from PCMag.com here: (Full Dell One Review)

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