<p>My husband is getting a new pc laptop as his current one is 6 years old, big and clunky, and might be on its last leg. We were looking into cloud storage to back up all his file and like the look of Carbonite. Looking for pros and cons of any of the services as there are many. </p>
<p>Because he takes his laptop back and forth from home to work everyday, cloud storage sounds like it might be better than what he is doing now; he has a back up external hard drive at the office and home, but the one at the office has stopped working and he doesn’t always remember to use the one at home.</p>
<p>I work between two desktops and more recently a laptop. I thought that adding the laptop would cut down on the problems of keeping all documents I work on appropriately up-to-date (using various combinations of emailing, flash drive, Google docs–which I don’t really like) but it just got more complicated.</p>
<p>Recently, I began using Dropbox, which is free for the first 2 gbs, and it’s possible to get more free ones. It has changed my life. The minute I open any of the three computers linked to my account, any new or updated docs are immediately downloaded to each computer’s files. Like magic! I don’t know Carbonite, which might do more than DB, but this has, seriously, changed my writing life!</p>
<p>Edit: you can pay for much more space, and if it’s pictures, music, and stuff, the free account might not work, but it’s fine for word docs, which is what I need it for.</p>
<p>I second the vote for Dropbox. I’ve used the free version for a long time, and it’s so easy. Only difficult part is remembering to copy work stuff to it that I would need in my home comp and vice versa. But if I were willing to pay for more storage, I’d just use it as my complete storage. I also have worked with Google Docs, which they want us to use at work, and I find that to be frustrating on many, many levels. For instance-- it changes the way stuff looks, you have to remember whether stuff is on “My Drive” or is “Shared,” and so on. Dropbox is the way to go.</p>
<p>If you’re talking about file sync, meaning document sync over various computers, then dropbox or Google drive or iCloud, etc. all work. Amazon has one. Microsoft has one. I use dropbox and iCloud. </p>
<p>But if you’re talking cloud backup for every document, all programs, data, etc., then carbonite is fine. I’m not ready to do that. First, like nearly all people, I don’t have as much upstream net connection as down so loading material will take a while. Second, I don’t want to commit to this, to the continuing expense and to other little bugaboos. Now if you schedule backups, have them scripted for 3AM or whatever, that’s different. Third, if this is for just backup, meaning copy what’s changed but don’t sync back down to the computer, then I find it easier to have a few hard drives that I’ve cloned. I know people with whole arrays, etc. but you can buy a terrabyte for under $100. I clone the drives using carbon copy cloner or some other free drive cloning tool.</p>
<p>OMG, I’ve just been researching Dropbox and wondering if I should try it! I too get frustrated with Google Docs. Just need it for word/excell or very basic graphic based documents.</p>
<p>My laptop is over five years old and you might say that it’s big, clunky and heavy. But it’s nice to work on too. I put in a 48 GB SSD and a 1 TB Hard Disk a few years ago so it’s a lot faster now than when it was new and it has far more space than I actually need. The processor performance is fine for what I do on it - browsing, email and work.</p>
<p>I can’t put work product on the cloud though, because of security reasons, so I keep that locally and backed up to an external disk at the office. My coworkers have similar practices. Some do wireless backup to other systems.</p>
<p>There are some personal documents that I put on the cloud but usually stuff that isn’t sensitive.</p>
<p>The system is a MacBook Pro with Time Machine so backup is easy. I just plug a USB hub cable into my laptop and it connects my devices and does the backup regularly without me having to do anything.</p>
<p>I have thought about a new machine - the benefits would be lighter and thinner, and much better battery life. I really don’t need a new machine though and it would take some effort to do the migration. It’s easier to do nothing or just do cheap upgrades.</p>
<p>Another reason for improved performance is better compilers. Compilers are tools that software engineering companies use to turn source code into executable code. Compilers have steadily improved over the past 10 years to produce more efficient code than they did in the past.</p>
<p>One reason to replace a machine is if the machine is running a 32-bit operating system and isn’t 64-bit capable. I think that we will be seeing more and more software that will only run on 64-bit systems as time marches on. It’s a pain in the neck to support additional porting platforms for software engineering companies.</p>
<p>This mainly applies to power users or those who need to utilize more RAM than 32-bit processors/OSes can address*.</p>
<p>If one is using their computers for basic internet, office apps, consuming multimedia and don’t want to upgrade all their software to 64-bit to get full utilization**, they’re probably better off using the 32-bit machine for a few more years and moving to an all 64-bit machine/OS when they purchase a new computer. May as well get a few more years out of what’s already paid for assuming everything still serves one’s needs. </p>
<p>And that’s not getting into the complication in the Apple world where some early intel 64-bit macs are effectively only 32-bit capable because their EFI is limited to 32-bit***. </p>
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<li>32-bit processors/OSes are limited to addressing a little more than 3 GB of total RAM. 64-bit processors can fully utilize RAM way beyond that limitation.<br></li>
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<p>** Running 32-bit applications on a 64-bit based hardware can actually make the application/system run slower than running a fully 64-bit equivalent.</p>
<p>*** Really a problem with the 64-bit mac’s EFI which is the mac equivalent of the PC’s bios. While some folks have tried hacking it…most attempts have resulted in turning said mac into a nice expensive paperweight.</p>
<p>That’s pretty easy to do with Virtual Machines or operations where you can utilize multiple cores and multiple threads to solve a problem using parallel techniques. Something as simple as bioinformatics homework assignments can use up a lot of memory.</p>
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<p>There’s no need to purchase 64-bit variants as the 32-bit variants will run fine on 64-bit operating systems.</p>
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<p>If you’re running 6-year-old hardware, the CPU alone is probably burning up far more power than current CPUs. So you have power consumption and cooling costs for those with warm or hot summers.</p>
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<p>I strongly doubt that running a 32-bit application on a current 64-bit hardware/OS will be slower than the same 32-bit application running on a six-year-old machine.</p>
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<p>I don’t think that anyone is suggesting buying such a machine. We’re talking about current systems.</p>
<p>If we want to get into why software is faster (sometimes), etc., that’s a huge topic. I’m blown away by the level of material available. I remember Jobs talking about how Objective C is like starting with a 16 story building - or some similar number. The systems have become more like that. Just core image is huge and that’s the tip of the iceberg.</p>
<p>Visual C/C++ added Whole Program Optimization in the 2003 release. In the past, you generally didn’t have subroutine optimization. You just called the generated code and returned unless the routine was inlined. WPO can optimize between routines but you potentially wind up with lots and lots of copies of similar code. Visual C/C++ added Profile-Guided Optimization. You created an instrumented image and had your users run the image to generate usage statistics. You then built a final image based on the usage statistics. This optimized branching for particular run scenarios. Both of these returned in the area of 10% performance improvements each without any coding.</p>
<p>Vectorization has also added a lot of potential for performance improvements but levels of functionality vary quite a bit with architectures so you may have to sniff the capabilities to find out what your processor can do. You compiler or libraries could take different vector code-paths depending on your processor - so you would need parallel code gen or libraries for all of the different kinds of processors that you want to support.</p>
<p>Intel’s C Compiler provides autothreading and autovectorization too. There can be lots of tweaks that you can do without having to change any code.</p>
<p>That places one in the power user category which is more than most home consumers…or even most non-techie corporate office application users. </p>
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<p>Not always. I’ve had to look over several i7 based notebooks recently and they ran a lot hotter than the Pentium M/core duo/core2duo notebooks I’ve serviced. </p>
<p>Am shocked at how the notebook manufacturers and intel thought it was fine for notebook to run so hot that the machines will literally shut off after 1-2 hours at near-full CPU load during February…much less April or June in the urban NE. </p>
<p>Some of the i5 notebooks also run hotter…though some of that is due to poor placement of cooling vents/inadequate implementation of cooling solutions.</p>
<p>Virtual Machines moved out of the power user category when Apple went to x86 for their computers. It meant that users that wanted Mac OS X or Apple Hardware could just get VM software without the performance penalty of architecture emulation. So people bought Macs and a Windows license and they could run Office or Internet Explorer, or TaxAct or QuoteTracker or some other Windows product that they couldn’t live without.</p>
<p>One other popular use for Virtual Machines is due to so many people working from home these days. Employees typically have to log into their workplaces using VPN software which puts the entire machine on the employer’s network. This means that any personal stuff gets run over the employer’s network and this is wasteful and sometimes some things aren’t available because the employer blocks them. So lots of employees install a virtual machine on their home computer and use the VM for VPN into the office while the rest of the system is connected to the outside world so that they can be on two networks (or more if you have additional VMs) at the same time.</p>
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<p>Well, you should try doing apples to apples comparison. Performance per watt has improved greatly. In general, the amount of cooling space and hardware has declined in notebooks so the overall system can run hot. But if you’re doing the same amount of work, you’re going to be using a fraction of the power of the old processors.</p>
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<p>I have a Pentium 4 Notebook with a beautiful screen. I can turn it on and leave it doing nothing and it will crash in 20 minutes due to heat. I have cleaned the thing out several times but it still dies.</p>
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<p>People want thin and light. Haswell will enable far more interesting designs. You can always buy the brick-style laptops if you want to to avoid heat concentration problems.</p>
<p>I was considering Carbonite for a while, then finally decided that I should do it after a friend lost all of her photos when her computer crashed. Literally one month after I subscribed, my motherboard failed. Had I not had Carbonite, I would have lost everything - but since I had it, after the computer was repaired, everything was restored - photos, music, docs. I’m a big fan now! I think it is totally worth the ~$50/year (btw - you can usually find an online coupon for a few $$ off) and it automatically updates almost immediately after changes, so I don’t really have to do anything. I would highly recommend it!</p>
<p>Pros:
Automatic
off site storage (house burns down, you don’t loose both the computer and backup)
remote access to backed up files</p>
<p>cons:
cost
speed (can take a while)
need to be connected to internet to backup
security (very small potential someone can access your files)
Service goes out of business - loose your files.</p>
<p>Note: There is a difference between on-line backups like Carbonite vs. using the cloud to store your files. If your company has a file server at work, the cloud works like that, although it can be much slower over the internet.</p>
<p>Pros and cons of cloud storage are similar. One big con is: No internet access, no access to files.</p>
<p>The big thing about backups is that most people don’t do it. Thus, paying Carbonite (with all its downsides) is infinitely better than doing nothing.</p>
<p>One advantage of a Time Machine backup is that you can get another machine and do a restore and the other machine will look like your original machine. On Windows, you can only do that with an image backup and I’m guessing that the internet backup services don’t provide image backups. If you lose your Windows machine, you have to get another one and purchase (perhaps)/reinstall all of your software to get back to where you were.</p>
<p>Carbonite can do a mirror image backup. It will take a long time to send that much data over the internet. Check the upload speed of your internet service.</p>
I don’t know Carbonite, which might do more than DB, but this has, seriously, changed my writing life!</p>