Over the past couple of weeks, I have had two phone conversations with representatives from AT&T’s “Office of the President”, each in response to my constant complaining over AT&T’s new iPhone tethering charge.  The case that I have made from the beginning has been that AT&T is unjustified in charging an additional $20 for tethering on top of the $25 charge for 2GB of data.  Since we will be capped at 2GB of data, and charged an additional $10 for each additional GB, why does AT&T care about how much data we use, and how?  If I use all of my 2GB of data on my iPhone using Safari, or Mail, or any other app that uses the 3G network, it would be EXACTLY the same as using Safari, or Mail on my MacBook Pro.

AT&T claims that tethering my iPhone to my laptop will use more data.  This claim is ridiculous, and insults the intelligence of AT&T customers.  I was shocked when “Sophia” from the Office of the President made this claim.  It leaves me wondering if “Sophia” is an idiot, or if AT&T thinks its customers are idiots.  To be fair to Sophia, I’m going to go with the latter.

If I know that my data plan will be capped at 2GB, and since AT&T gives me the means on their website to track my usage, why would I use more data on my laptop through tethering than I would using 3G directly from my iPhone?  This logic was lost on “Sophia”.  She merely restated her faulty claim that I would use more data on my laptop via tethering than I would by using my iPhone directly.

Most of the time, I’m using a wifi network.  I would only need to tether my iPhone when I’m not within range of a wifi network.  Since 3G is nowhere near as fast as a broadband connection such as a T1, DSL, or cable connection, why would I use tethering as my default connectivity?  I have discussed this with several other AT&T customers who also use an iPhone, and who are also always on the go with their laptops.  All of them acknowledge that their 3G usage would be limited to only what they need, and would not be used for general internet connectivity.  Either way you look at this, why should AT&T care?  They’re going to charge an additional fee if we go over 2GB.

What this is REALLY about is AT&T’s desire for yet another revenue stream.  They know that we love to get the most out of our iPhones, and that we’re more likely than anyone else to use 3G data in large amounts.  The iPhone was the first phone I had that is actually capable of doing everything that was promised.  My last ‘smartphone’ was capable of sending email, and had limited web capability, but it was pretty much useless for those things, so I cancelled my data plan.  Then, the iPhone arrived.  I send, and receive several email messages from my phone on a daily basis.  I also have the ability to look up something on the internet whenever the mood strikes me.  Apple has created a great product only to have it be hobbled by AT&T’s greed.

AT&T’s stated reason for adding the extra $20 fee for tethering is bullshit!  If you agree, make sure to complain.  Email Randall Stephenson, the CEO of AT&T at:  rs2982@att.com.  Within a few business days, you’ll receive a call just like I did.  Make sure to tell the rep that you know that AT&T is just being greedy, and that you don’t accept their lame reason to charge for tethering.

A little over a week ago, I spent a few hours with my good friend Andrew to help him renew his Apple certifications.  We went to a really nice coffee cafe near White Rock Lake.  While Andrew worked on his certifications, I used the free Wi-Fi to surf the web, and keep track of some auctions on eBay.  While enjoying the free internet goodness, I noticed that several other customers in the cafe were using PCs with file sharing turned on.  Out of curiosity, I clicked on a few of the PCs that were showing up on my Mac.  Out of the 3 that were visible to my Mac, 2 had file sharing with guest access enabled.  One had accounting information in an unsecured folder!  Not wanting to violate someone’s privacy further, I did not open any of the files that I saw, but I did save a text file onto this person’s computer to let him/her know that I was able to get into their computer easily, without any trouble.  This is actually something that I notice every time I am on a public Wi-Fi network at Starbucks, the airport, and a lot of other places with Wi-Fi.  With all of the identity theft going around, why do so many people fail to do anything about securing their computers?

Even Mac users need to worry about security.  To date, there are no viruses out in the wild that can infect Mac OS X.  However, file security is still a major problem.  Several of my customers have Macs that boot straight into the desktop instead of stopping at the login screen.  This is very bad.  A thief, or otherwise unauthorized person, could easily gain access to your financial data, your porn, or any other data that you don’t want others to see.  Having your Mac or PC setup to show a login window after startup helps to thwart unauthorized access to your computer.  Always remember to use a strong password that contains a combination of letters, and numbers.  It’s also a good idea to mix in some random characters (*&_., etc), and combinations of lower case, and capital letters.  When I create passwords for email accounts, and servers, I tend to use memorable passwords that replace certain letters with numbers, and I also mix in random punctuation marks as well.  If you take your data security seriously, it should be simple to remember your password.  Just think of your password as something that is as important as the key to your house or car.  NEVER attach your password to your computer.  Having a sticky note with your password written on it attached to your monitor is about as bad as writing your PIN on your debit card.

Always use a secure wireless network.  Fortunately, most internet service providers such as AT&T, and Verizon supply a very good wireless router that is preconfigured with a random password.  If you like to use your own wireless router with your home internet service, make sure to always setup your network to use either WEP or WPA encryption.  This will keep unwanted “guests” off of your network, and it’s another way to keep your data safe.  If you live in an apartment, or in a neighborhood where the houses are close together, you may have noticed that there are several wireless networks that are visible from your computer in addition to your own.  If your network is visible to other people outside of your home, it’s likely that they will attempt to join onto your wireless network at some point either by accident, or by intent.  Setting up a secure wireless network is normally very simple.  You should never let your confusion over setting up your network impede you from doing it properly.

Do you really need file sharing on all the time?  At home, I have a Mac mini, a MacBook Pro, and an older Mac G5 running Mac OS X Server.  Because I do a lot of my work using these three computers, I have file sharing running on each one of them.  All of these machines are running on a secure network with a very long, and complex password, so I feel safe having file sharing turned on.  When I’m using my MacBook Pro outside of my home, I shut off file sharing.  Although I have a strong password setup on my laptop, I still like to take the extra precaution of shutting off file sharing.  If the other Wi-Fi users at Starbucks can’t even see my MacBook Pro on the network, they’re not very likely to want to try to break in.  If you do need to use file sharing while outside of your home or office, make sure that none of your critical, private files are being shared over the network.  Do all of those people in the coffee shop really need to know that you downloaded some music by Hanson last night?  Some things are just too embarrassing for other people to know about.  There are some viruses for Windows that activate file sharing without your knowledge.  Be sure to keep your PC clear of viruses, and spyware.  Keep your security software up to date, and make sure to look over your computer’s settings often.

One of the best ways for you to learn how to keep your computer secure is to learn how to use your computer, and become comfortable with it.  Most people who aren’t very computer savvy stick to only the things that they already know, and they rarely change any settings on their computers.  Think of your computer as just like any other work space.  You want to be familiar with where everything is, and how to use everything.  System Preferences on the Mac contains most of the Mac’s settings, including its network, and firewall settings.  System Preferences also contains settings for your user account password as well as the way that your Mac boots up (with a login window, or without).  By taking the time to explore the many configuration options fully, you will become more comfortable using better security settings.

Well, so much for “unlimited” data plans.  While AT&T struggles with iPhone users who actually expect to USE their iPhones for internet and email, why not upgrade the network instead of whining about supposed iPhone “data hogs”?  This blame the customer strategy is the wrong road to go down.  The iPhone, along with every other smartphone, is hyped as being a phone, and an internet and email device.  When customers actually use their phones for those purposes, it’s wrong to start complaining.

On a positive note… AT&T recently cut me a very good deal on my service.  I appreciate that, and in return, I’ve agreed not to bug their execs anymore about their network issues.  I’m still a customer though, and I will not tolerate limits being placed on me because I actually use my iPhone to the fullest.  I’m signed up for unlimited data, and I expect to get it!

Let’s not even get me started about the lack of a 3G tethering option, and the fact that we get charged extra for text messages!

AppleInsider | AT&T warns of coming clamp-down on iPhone data hogs.

While working as a Mac Genius at the Apple Store, one of my most unhappy tasks was to tell customers that we were unable to rescue any important data from their dying hard drive.  Some customers received this news with quiet acceptance, while others became very upset that their vacation photos were lost, or that thousands of dollar’s worth of iTunes downloads were gone.  These customers learned the hard way that backups are critical to maintaining the vast amounts of data that even novice computer users accumulate.  As we move more and more of our lives onto our computers, data backups have become as important as maintaining homeowner’s insurance, and performing regular maintenance on our cars.  If our data is so important, why do so many of us fail to perform regular backups?  It is a fact that EVERY hard drive will eventually fail.  Failure could occur 1 week after you take your new computer out of the box, or it may not happen for 2 or 3 years.  This is why regular backs are so critical.

Data backups can take many forms.  Just about every computer sold today has a CD burner installed.  Many also have optical drives capable of writing data to DVDs.  A standard CD can hold about 700 megabytes of data while a standard DVD can hold up to 4.7 gigabytes.  In recent years, the dual layer DVD has proven useful for data backups.  They provide about 8.5 gigabytes of data storage.  CDs and DVDs can be very useful for archiving data for storage off of your computer’s hard drive.  The disadvantages of using CDs and DVDs for data backups are that it is often difficult to append more data onto them, and backups are not automatic.  They require that the end user insert a disk into the drive, select data to be backed up, and wait through the burn process to complete.  Many of us (myself included) have so much important data that it would take several DVDs to backup everything.  This can be very time consuming.  As a result, backups become a tedious endeavor, and will often be put off.  Over time, CD/DVD backups can also prove to be more costly than other methods.

An external hard drive is a very good choice for home and home office users.  Copying data to an external hard drive is usually quick, and painless.  External hard drives are available in many different sizes.  I usually recommend to my customers that they purchase an external hard drive that is at least twice the size of their internal drive on their computer.  This allows consumers to backup the contents of their internal hard drive, and still have room left over for other things that they may want to store on the drive.  Today, you can buy a 1 terabyte hard drive for under $100.  If you want to be able to expand your external storage, and maintain redundancy, the Drobo made by Data Robotics is a great choice.  The Drobo can accept up to 4 separate serial ATA (SATA) hard drives for a total storage capacity of 8 terabytes.  You can store tens of thousands of songs, movies, and photos on a Drobo, and have a lot of room for expansion.  The cost of hard drives has been steadily declining over the last few years, so the Drobo is an excellent choice for someone who has a lot of data to backup, and who will also need to add more storage space over time.

Automated backups are the easiest and most hassle free method to use.  Together with the right external storage, automated backups can allow you to store a vast amount of data on your computer without having to worry about hard drive failure.  There are several automated solutions on the market today.  Perhaps the easiest of all of them is Apple’s Time Machine backup feature that is part of Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard, and Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard.  Time Machine will backup your files every hour as long as your backup drive is connected to your computer. Apple also makes a very handy wireless router that includes an internal backup drive all in one.  It’s called a Time Capsule, and it allows one or more Macs on the network to backup wirelessly, and automatically.  The key to Time Machine is that your computer must either be connected to your backup drive, or be networked to a Time Capsule.  If you need to restore a file, a lost email, a deleted contact, or a lost photo from iPhoto, you simply need to launch Time Machine, find your lost data, and restore it.  Time Machine will put the restored information back exactly where you had it.  Older versions of Mac OS do not include Time Machine.  There are many other solutions such as Retrospect, which will work similarly to Time Machine, but without the cool “going back in time” interface.  Retrospect, and other software titles similar to it, require more setup than Time Machine.   SuperDuper, and Carbon Copy Cloner will make exact copies of your internal hard drive, but they do not easily provide for incremental backups in the same easy way that Time Machine, and Retrospect do.  For Windows, there are several great backup software options such as Retrospect, Backup Exec from Veritas, Norton 360, and others.  Depending on your specific needs, it’s best to research these software titles thoroughly to ensure that you are selecting the right one for your needs.  With any backup solution, the key is to take ownership over the process in the same way that you would also take care of regular maintenance of your car.

Many companies make use of magnetic tape backups.  Magnetic tape has an amazingly long shelf life — much longer than CDs and DVDs, and external hard drives.  Similar to using CDs and DVDs, tape backups can be time consuming and tedious.  There are several devices on the market that hold several tape cartridges so that backups can be automated.  As each tape reaches full capacity, tapes are automatically switched to accommodate more data as needed.  Tape drives are normally priced starting around $1000, and up depending on the capacity of the tapes used, and the number of tapes that can be loaded into the drive.  Backup Exec, and Retrospect are two backup software titles that work well with tape drives.  Tape backups work well with both Mac and Windows systems.

Online, offsite storage is also a great option for businesses and even for homes.  The advantage to online storage is that your data is backed up to a server offsite, and away from the danger of fire or theft, or any other problem that could cause you to lose your computer, and your data.  There are several companies that offer this type of service.  Carbonite and Mozy.com are two of the leading providers of online offsite backups.  These solutions work very simply.  Your personal computer, or server uploads data to a remote server hosted by the backup service provider.  The first time your system backs up, the process can take several hours to several days to complete – depending upon the amount of data you have.  After the initial backup process is complete, the service performs incremental backups on a regular basis.  Offsite online backups will not only protect you from data loss as a result of a hardware or software failure on your computer, but they also protect against theft, fire, and other crises.  If your computer is lost, your data is not.  You would simply restore the data from the backup service.

One of the biggest obstacles to performing regular backups is that many consumers simply don’t know what to backup.  Let’s break it down:

First, backup any important data that you added to your computer such as music, photos, movies, Word and Excel documents, etc.  All of this data would be lost should you ever need to erase your hard drive and start fresh.  Second, backup software installers that you may want to keep.  You may have downloaded software for your camera, or printer drivers, or any other software that you don’t want to have to hunt for again.  As long as you have the install disks for the software that you have purchased, you will be able to reinstall the software back onto your hard drive once the restore of your system is complete.  The best rule to remember about managing your data is to keep things neat, and also to keep track of where you put everything.  Think of your computer as a true workspace.  If it’s cluttered, and unorganized, data can be lost if you need to have your computer repaired, or have the operating system reinstalled.  There are several companies such as Geek Squad, and the Apple retail stores that provide computer and software repair services.  However, these companies will not provide a warranty against data loss.

Aside from protecting your computer from data loss, backups also allow you to be free to perform repairs or maintenance on your computer.  A few weeks ago, my MacBook Pro was acting strangely.  I could not determine the cause, so I decided to erase everything, and start fresh.  I was able to do so without any preparation beforehand or worry that I would lose some of my data.  Time Machine had a current backup that was less than an hour old.  I was able to insert my Mac OS X install disk and begin the process of erasing my hard drive and reinstalling my operating system.  After I was finished installing Mac OS X, I was able to allow Time Machine to automatically restore all of my data.  The whole process took a few hours, but I lost no data in the process, and my MacBook Pro is functioning perfectly.

Do you need help choosing the right backup method for your needs?  Have no fear.  There are a lot of great computer consultants available to help you.  Most of the time, a simple Google search will help you find the right people in your area to help you.  Apple maintains a listing for Apple Consultants at http://consultants.apple.com.  Craigslist is also a great source.  Many smaller firms advertise there.  Smaller firms, as well as Apple Consultants can normally provide you with more personalized service instead of the “cookie cutter” solutions often deployed by larger companies.  Since I am recently unemployed, I can help out too!  The key is to consider your options carefully, and to ask a lot of questions.  Remember that it’s YOUR data.