I feel your pain. (And? I have a freaking CS degree. It's just, I graduated with it in 1990. It's like having an aerospace engineering degree from 1927: "so, tell me about this 'jet engine' thing you've just invented ...")
Seriously though, Dropbox as a synchronization product to keep your files in step among different machines: it's great. As backup: pass the garlic and holy water. You really want backup on multiple hard disks on multiple computers, one of them in a friend's house, and rotate it every month. Dropbox probably won't go bust (they're a gigadollar company these days) or quit the business (it's all they do), but it's not your data if it's not on your machine.
I trust iCloud -- and Apple's business apps like Pages -- as far as I can throw them. Pages can barely open 3 year old files; they keep changing the file format and don't care about backward compatability. Apple -- I hate to say this -- are utter rubbish when it comes to looking after their customers' data in the longer term.
But back to hard disks. External 5Tb USB 3 drives go for around GBP £130, or about $150 plus tax. For a Macbook Air, that's overkill -- 2Tb travel drives are about $100 and if you're buying a new laptop you should grab two or three such drives over the next few months and begin rotating them.
Software I love: Scrivener. It's written by a tiny company (originally just one guy) and it's a labour of love and it's designed for novelists. Oh, and it ties into Dropbox pretty neatly -- especially the coming iOS version (which I am not supposed to talk about in public yet). And it doesn't claim to own all your data. What's not to like?
LibreOffice ... it's OpenOffice, only properly maintained and doesn't keep trying to upsell you rubbish like MS Word. And it can read a huge number older file formats -- Word Perfect, naturally, but also esoteric stuff I've barely heard of.
Firefox: because it's a powerful general purpose web browser.
Thunderbird: unfortunately Mozilla are losing interest in their dedicated email client because everyone seems to be heading for walled gardens -- Gmail, iCloud, or Outlook.com. But it's still hanging on, and I suspect someone will pick it up for maintenance sooner or later.
no subject
Seriously though, Dropbox as a synchronization product to keep your files in step among different machines: it's great. As backup: pass the garlic and holy water. You really want backup on multiple hard disks on multiple computers, one of them in a friend's house, and rotate it every month. Dropbox probably won't go bust (they're a gigadollar company these days) or quit the business (it's all they do), but it's not your data if it's not on your machine.
I trust iCloud -- and Apple's business apps like Pages -- as far as I can throw them. Pages can barely open 3 year old files; they keep changing the file format and don't care about backward compatability. Apple -- I hate to say this -- are utter rubbish when it comes to looking after their customers' data in the longer term.
But back to hard disks. External 5Tb USB 3 drives go for around GBP £130, or about $150 plus tax. For a Macbook Air, that's overkill -- 2Tb travel drives are about $100 and if you're buying a new laptop you should grab two or three such drives over the next few months and begin rotating them.
Software I love: Scrivener. It's written by a tiny company (originally just one guy) and it's a labour of love and it's designed for novelists. Oh, and it ties into Dropbox pretty neatly -- especially the coming iOS version (which I am not supposed to talk about in public yet). And it doesn't claim to own all your data. What's not to like?
LibreOffice ... it's OpenOffice, only properly maintained and doesn't keep trying to upsell you rubbish like MS Word. And it can read a huge number older file formats -- Word Perfect, naturally, but also esoteric stuff I've barely heard of.
Firefox: because it's a powerful general purpose web browser.
Thunderbird: unfortunately Mozilla are losing interest in their dedicated email client because everyone seems to be heading for walled gardens -- Gmail, iCloud, or Outlook.com. But it's still hanging on, and I suspect someone will pick it up for maintenance sooner or later.