driving

Dropbox is one of the more popular cloud-based syncing and storage tools, and offers Mac users a convenient way to transfer files from one system to another, or share files with colleagues. Dropbox can sometimes give you errors, saying that it cannot transfer something because it does not have permission to access some of the files being copied.

If this happens, then it could be because of an improper permissions setup with the Dropbox configuration files in your account, or with the files currently being copied.

If a permissions error such as this occurs, then the first thing that might … Read more

Perhaps it's BMW's fault for cramming so many similarly sized vehicles, between-size variants, and remixed configurations into its lineup, but I had the hardest time deciding if the 2013 BMW X3 xDrive28i is too big or too small.

The second-generation vehicle's aesthetic is more wagonlike and it seems to press down into the ground when viewed in the round, which makes it look smaller -- both in photographs and in person -- than the pre-2010 model, which has a more angular, upright design. However, put the models side by side and it becomes apparent that the new … Read more

Sorry about yesterday's oopsie with the hard drive. As I've noted countless times before, and as stated at the bottom of every post, deals are subject to availability, expiration, and other terms determined by sellers. The rub with most coupon codes is that I don't know when they're about to expire.

Likewise, it's hard to know when an independent seller working through Amazon will run out of something, which makes me a bit leery about today's deal. But, hey, nothing ventured, nothing saved, am I right? (It's an expression!)

For a limited time, … Read more

When you boot OS X or attach a hard drive, the system will automatically try to mount any available volumes so you can access or format them for use. However, there may be times when you don't wish this to happen.

For example, if you have a dual-boot setup such as OS X 10.7 on one partition and OS X 10.8 on another, then you may wish to prevent one boot volume from being easily modified and perhaps corrupted when you are in the other operating system.

To do this, you will need to make use of … Read more

Shooting a lot of photos and/or videos? Ripping a lot of Blu-ray movies? Recording a lot of TV shows? Activities like these require a lot of storage -- the more, the better.

Through tomorrow, or until they sell out, Newegg has the Western Digital My Book 3TB external USB 3.0 hard drive for $79.99 shipped. That's after applying coupon code 72HRSL066 at checkout. (Note that you must be a registered Newegg user in order to use the code.)

Update: Well, folks, the universe has conspired against me once again. I promise you I tested that code … Read more

If you use an external disk drive with OS X, you may notice that when it is mounted, it becomes available for all users on the system. Therefore, if you have files you have saved to a USB drive and you attach it to your system and you switch user accounts, those files will be viewable within the second account.

In addition, if you have network file sharing enabled, the files on this drive will be accessible to any user who logs in via the network.

This behavior may seem a bit concerning, especially for those who have set up … Read more

Do you have an external hard drive that you cannot write to on your Mac? While most external storage media's default formatting and other setups should make them both readable and writable on most Mac systems, there may be times when this is not the case.

NTFS formatting The first detail to check is if the drive is formatted to the popular NTFS format used in Windows systems. Often commercially available drives will be formatted to FAT32 and therefore be fully compatible with both Windows and OS X; however, many popular drives (especially high-capacity ones) may be formatted to … Read more

There's nothing worse than a senseless death.

Not that any death makes sense, of course. But it's easier to accept someone dying of sheer old age than a 16-year-old being crushed in a car because she was texting Polly about the dimples on Charlie's cheeks.

This week, advertising's loudest are meeting at the Cannes Advertising Festival. One campaign doing absurdly well is an absurdist effort from Australia that tries to stop people doing stupid things around trains.

Called "Dumb Ways to Die," it takes the silliness of how people die around trains and raises … Read more

Apple's new MacBook Air has adopted faster solid-state drives made by Samsung. But Apple won't be the only beneficiary.

Samsung announced Monday that it has started mass-producing new PCIe solid-state drives aimed at the next generation of ultrabooks. SSDs that use a PCIe connection offer faster speeds than those outfitted with SATA (Serial ATA) connections.

As one example, Samsung's XP941 SSD can read data sequentially at 1,400 megabytes (1.4 gigabytes) per second, the highest speed offered by a PCIe 2.0 interface. In the real world, that means the drive can read 500GB of data … Read more