Getting stuff done, kind’a. Since stuff started breaking several months ago I’ve been on an extended voyage to try to simplify things. Prior to this I had four computers running (three macs and one very noisy PC) and a growing collection of external hard disks. Since then I’ve eliminated one mac and one PC and added a Drobo “data robot” and an Apple Time Capsule wireless router/1 TB external hard drive. For all of my years using computers I’ve never had a consistent back-up strategy except for a yearly backup of my documents and pictures to CDs and more recently DVDs. Of course this didn’t work for my video projects, so I started adding internal hard-drives to my old G4 until I realized that I was overloading its poor little power-supply. Thus, I started collecting external hard drives. My thoughts most recently has been to move more functions to the new Time Capsule and back to the Mac Mini and eliminate as many wires as possible connected to the MacBook Pro.

So, how to remove as many wired connections to my MacBook Pro? Well, part of my motivation is that I’ve been using my laptop like a desktop replacement, which means that I have to connect my external monitors and external firewire audio interface before powering the computer up and then my ethernet connection and two USB connections (one to my small external hard drive and the other to the USB hub connected to all the other devices). So I thought that I could easily eliminate two connections: firewire connection by moving the M-Audio interface & speakers to the MacMini and the devices connected to the USB hub. Apple’s Time Capsule wireless N router/NAS (network attached storage) also has a single USB port and I’d been reading that one can attach a hub to that port thus multiplying the number of devices one can connect to the Time Capsule

Besides connecting my printer to the Time Capsule’s USB port, I’d been toying with the idea of attaching my collection of external hard disks and Drobo to the port/hub. But as fast as the network connection might be, it’s still much slower than USB 2 speeds, and seeing that the disks are mainly being used to store and stream my ripped DVDs and music and usually viewed from my Mac Mini, connecting the disks to the slower Time Capsule network connection didn’t make any sense. Besides, I’d set up the Mac Mini to share it’s resources across the network, so I could access the disks across the network anyway without sacrificing fast access on the Mac Mini. Nah. Ok, so besides my printer I have a USB scanner, USB turntable and the USB connection for my iPhone and iPod. My Epson printer connected easy enough, but then I noticed that the Airport set-up utility had tabs for printers and hard disks but nothing else. Cruising Apple’s website and around the web proved that I’d be hard pressed to get my other USB peripherals working on the Time Capsule. Damn. I actually started entertaining the idea of just getting a network ready printer/scanner combo (MFP or multi-function printer), but then I started reading horror stories about driver issues with Leopard and the like. It took me a surprisingly long time to figure out that if I could just move the scanner and other devices to a hub attached to the Mac Mini and just be done with it. That’s much more palatable solution than dropping at least $500 on a device that might or might not work as well as what I’ve already got. Now all I have to do is install the wireless-N card that I bought at MacWorld. After that I’ll have reduced the number of connections from six that required a power-down/power-up to four that require no powering-down. I wish that there was some way to connect my external monitors wirelessly, that’d save a lot of wear-and-tear and would be damn cool. jbb

Music/Podcast: Hak.5 Episode 3×09 from the album “Hak5 Video Podcast” by Trust Your Technolust

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