One thing I like about Apple’s OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is the built-in Time Machine backup software. I purchased a Time Capsule backup drive to go with it. Although the system apparently works well — I haven’t had to restore anything yet — it is quite slow, and by default runs every hour. It seemed that every time I wanted to log out, restart, or shut down my computer, it was in the middle of a backup.
Unfortunately, Time Machine does not include any settings to control the frequency of backup. Fortunately, changing how often backups occur is not hard to do. There are basically three routes you can take; they all do precisely the same thing (change a particular configuration file):
Use a freeware application called Lingon to edit the necessary file (this is the way I did it; however, Lingon is a powerful program that, used improperly, can totally trash your system, so beware; this is similar to using regedit in Windows)
Navigate to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto.plist and edit the file manually according to instructions here
I don’t HATE Microsoft — even though my repeating “Microsoft is Dead” makes me smile and laugh involuntarily. I used to be very supportive of them (especially in opposition to Mac OS 7, 8, and 9), but lately they have become so inept and mired in the past that I cannot enjoy their OS anymore. Mac OS X is so much better, which I’ve been using ever since shortly after it was released a number of years ago. I’ve tried Linux, but it left me unimpressed, and I haven’t tried any of the more recent Linux distributions such as Ubuntu. OS X works very well. And while it’s not perfect, I say it’s the best OS available for general users.
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