Hm! When I pressed the Time Machine icon when using Mail, the following message was displayed

giving me the option to restore individual mailboxes - I'm impressed, but for one problem, the Mac locked up at this time...

So I will have to experiment again.

Now that I have a iPhone my address book suddenly needs pictures of each of the people - and this is a excellent way of getting those:

FacebookSync syncs data between your Address Book and facebook account. It used to sync a lot of data (email addresses, IM details, phone numbers, etc) until facebook pointed out that this was a breach of its terms of use. It still does a number of useful things though. It can add facebook profile pictures to Address Book contacts who have no photo, also address information. [From FacebookSync: facebook plugin for Address Book]

I have found a really serious flaw with Time Machine (OsX's backup software introduced in Leopard) when used on a laptop, or rather used on a machine that changes IP address and loses network contact as a part of it's normal use.

I end up with messages telling me that Time Machine was unable to run a backup, and if I go and try to mount the backup disk image manually i get this message

the only solution I have found so far is to reboot the laptop - very annoying. One day soon now I'll have to put some time into finding a workaround...

This may come in handy one day - so keep a link to this post (-;

Time Machine is probably the defining feature in Mac OS X Leopard. It provides a nice, clean interface for you to backup and restore your files; but did you know you can also restore your computer from the Time Machine backup? [From Restoring your Mac from a Time Machine backup]

We are now backing up 3 of the Mac's in the house using Time Machine to a central backup server, and so far so good, it all seems to be working, and all backups happen every hour across the wireless network.

Best of all - it starts as soon as the laptop is back in range of the network, and requires no user intervention whatsoever, something that I have not been used to from other backup solution, especially ones that actually work from laptops, as these generally get their IP address from a DHCP server...

I'm impressed.