DV for Teachers

This looks interesting: VirtualBox.

VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See “About VirtualBox” for an introduction.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.

I hope I can find time to test XP on my Mac with this.

One of our professors met the author of this article about backing up your Mac while in California at a conference. You do have good backups, right?

Losing data is a drag. Many of us store digital photos, original documents, calendaring and contact information, architectural drawings, spreadsheets, video and music on our computers. This data can be irreplaceable if your computer is lost or stolen, or if your hard drive fails.

With good timing, The Unofficial Apple Weblog adds this article on External HDs to their Mac 101 series. External drives are inexpensive (I checked prices at dealnews’s storage pages, they listed tereabyte drives for less than $180 – oof!), it’s really important to backup, and it’s getting so easy to do with Time Machine or other solutions.

Do it now!

Mac OS X 10.5 Help: Calibrating a MacBook or MacBook Pro battery

Calibrate the battery in your MacBook or MacBook Pro every month or two to keep your battery functioning at its fullest capacity.

I didn’t know this. I shall calibrate tomorrow and then I’ll get to feel all virtuous. Ah, small victories.