Nice app, does what it should, very, very, very stable. Very easy to use.

However, if you need to download only a special type of file (which is not listed in Maria's standard files like pdf, jpeg, etc.), then you have to download the whole site, which can take a looong time. Because of that, I use SiteSucker, which has much more features.

Still; Maria is a great app!

Until a few weeks ago, I used Parallels version 5 under Lion, which worked fine (after tweaking it with a little script/launcher). But for the new mac (where Lion was pre-installed) I had to buy the upgrade to version 7. I was thinking about moving to Fusion or VirtualBox, because I don't like Parallels' upgrade policy, however I was just too lazy to make a new installation of Windows XP – with Parallels I could use the same virtual machine file I had before, with all my Windows-stuff installed.

I was very happy to see that the upgrade process was successful without any problems, so I could use my older Parallels-Windows installation. It works OK, but now there are sometimes error messages at Windows start up. Seems to be confused with searching for USB devices. Parallels has some other bugs, like sometimes not displaying an (Windows-)app icon in the dock, and from time to time not starting an app at all.

But the most disturbing thing with Parallels Desktop is the ads. Yes the ads. You buy an app and you get ads. After every update, you get ads for some Windows anti-virus apps. You get invitations to buy something in the Parallels "Convenience store". And sometimes, when you just want to start up Parallels you get a screen sized banner "BUY KASPERSKY ANTI VIRUS FOR MAC AND WINDOWS!!!" – you can check "never ever show me that s... again", however you will still see it, time after time.

Obviously, Parallels wants to squeeze out as much money as they can: In the "Coherence"-mode, you have a nice little menubar icon, where you can get to the Windows start menu. That's neat, but somehow they forgot to put there the item to go to the virtual machine preferences/set-up. So every time you want to have a look at your keyboard-shortcuts or anything else, you need to select "Exit Coherence" and only then you can go to the preferences. Hmm... what they didn't forget in that tiny menu: "Convenience Store" where you can buy attractive upgrades for your virtual machine...

So in the end, Parallels truly emulates the Windows experience very well, unfortunately also the parts of it which you really hate...

No demo. Link to developer's site doesn't work.

Some time ago, a burglar stole my neighbour's mac and his TimeMachine-drive too (and also the Airport Extreme). For my neighbour that meant bye-bye to his family photos (especially painful: photos and videos of his 2 year old son).

So, while I use TimeMachine for frequent backups (over Wi-Fi), I use CCC once a month to make a backup of my HD to an USB-drive and put it into the bank safe. I have tried several apps for that, and CCC worked the best for me.

Also I used CCC when I put in a bigger HD into my MacBookPro. It worked flawlessly.

Well, I am no expert, but I think CCC is a great app, it never failed to do its job, so five stars from me. Also the "donate or watch ads"-model is fair I think.

The only thing I wished were sort of templates for routines (like monthly backup) or a wizard to create the new scheduled tasks, for people who are "computer challenged" (because these are the ones who usually fail to make backups even they really need it). That said, the interface of CCC is great and easy to understand (source left, destination right).

Very cool: Hype (form Tumult Soft) plays nicely with iBooks author to make nice animations and advanced interactive content without coding.

Just follow these steps:

http://tumultco.com/blog/2012/01/20/easy-html5-animations-in-ibooks-using-tumult-hype-and-ibooks-author/