By coincidence I did run into a discussion making me aware about how difficult it is to loose some given status someone claims for him or herself.

I guess everyone of us working with computers is familiar with the old dispute between Mac and PC users about who has the better system …. 

Sure I was also jokng from time to time and one time I even lighted a wild discussion about when I very mindless wrote a cheeky comment at an internet list.

Since a while I’m used to work with both and I have to confess that i have likes and dislikes at both sides. It is not that I would really prefer on, but there is also no one I would define or decide as better or superior. At the end both world are the result of there history and special in some way.

But back to the topic. My recent posting about the Mojave Experiment I did send also to this internet list with no idea, but to share it. At the end I was amaze people there starting again to talk about PC versus Mac.

Now knowing myself that OSX since a while is running on non Apple hardware I try to prevent people there again running into a wild discussion but was amazed myself about some responses like:

"I kind of miss the days when you could walk into the Apple Store and there were only the true believers"

Wow! It must be really hard to recognise that your MAC is just another computer at the end.  

ps: You don’t take my todays posting too serious please … 

It is great when you have reached a state with a friend from were on you just blind trust into his or her recommendations.
This is for sure not easy to get and needs a special situation or a longer common history getting familiar with each other.

But back to the topic… A few of you might have got out of my earlier postings that I recently have bought myself a new gadget to play with. Something new, fancy, from principle not necessary and perhaps just an expensive new toy …. we will see.
The truth is that I like working with it since the beginning. And even everything is very different, at the end and looking behind you will find yourself working with as you would never have done differently before very quickly.

With the intention to speed up the learning curve I asked a friend for a few recommendations - personal likes and favorites - and got back a list out of ten software packages as the minimum requirement to add to feel found and happy.

As for the list was coming from one of those friends I have such a mentioned "trust in blind" relationship I didn’t requery things and straight away started to install all packages following her list top down.

Now there was this SuperDuper pointed out as a must have on that list and it directly answered me a nagging question. As for me working as a system administrator for years during the past, backups are essential to me.  But backups and a full system recovery are two very different things!  Someone not being able to restore / repair a system from scratch bringing  it exactly again into an equal state like shortly before the crash …. is not allowed to call himself/herself a system administrator.

On the other hand having those experiences restoring system by tape boot for example then restoring a standalone backup, recovering or cloning windows system with Ghost and Ghostwalker, sysprep, tar, cpio and and and ….. I’m sure you never will be able to image me looking when I had a short glance through the options of SuperDuper …. You want a full and bootable copy? Fine! …. then I will do ….

WOW …. Thats Tops!

I know that I scratch a difficult topic today and that the front between the different parties are very strict enforced - Just  … who cares?!

Whenever a discussion between Mac and PC users comparing there system starts, it ends up in a big discussion comparing all the benefits - depending on which side they are - they believe to have!

I personal never saw it really that polarized.

For sure I’m a major Windows User working with PC’s since the very first IBM XT I touched. But I also have a long and old history working with other Operating Systems  like VMS and Open VMS, Ultrix , TrueUnix 64 nearly all other available UNIX Distributions someone thought about to implement once.

So I guess it just didn’t happend to me, being seriously forced to work with some Macintosh Computer before.

Nevertheless by staying in contact with quiet a lot of folks being confirmed Mac Users by own word, I know a lot about Mac’s and OSX. And I really would lie in case I would try to hide that since a while I’m sneaking around those systems again and again recognising more and more things I like about them.

For example one of those things I really like about Mac OSX is the Dock application it comes with! Some really cool and neat application launcher always just one click away to start some needed application.

Now recently a friend made me aware about some “Dock” clone for Windows which I downloaded and installed.

It is called RocketDock and can be downloaded for free. Try it, and I’m sure you will immediately like it as much as I do!!

Lately I have written about a great Unix tool called SCP. Now recently I had the need to equal two Unix filesystems from which one was a remote filesystem in oversea. Now how to do that?!

Now you could just copy all the stuff from the remote system (I’m sure you know all about … tar, gzip, zip). For sure a secure way to go! But also very time and resource intensive for sure. Could that be done more elegant? ….  Someone could also have the idea to use a “better” ftp client being able to compare directories. Clever eh?

But are you aware how it stretches the needed time for it when you put a 3rd system in between? Anything better?

A few of you might now know a brilliant little helper out of the Microsoft Ressource Kit called robocopy?! Be carefully with the /MIR option …. read first and be aware what you are doing!

But I guess just only a hand full of you all here will know that this gorgeous robocopy is just the Windows equivalent of a UNIX tool called rsync.   Go for it!  rsync - Thats Tops!