I am running Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and it's very cool, but I don't run Time Machine for proper backups. I know, I know, I should do so, but I don't have any external computers on the network to host the drive. Anyway, I can see that Lion includes version control and am wondering how you actually use it with a file. For example, if I'm editing a photo, save the edits, then change my mind the next day, can I back up to the previous version of the file?

I just switched over to Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and am kinda weirded out about what happens when I go to edit a file that's more than a few weeks old. Instead of letting me edit the file like the computer used to do, now I get an error that the file is locked "because you haven't made any changes to it recently"? What's the story and how do I disable this feature?

After the recent 25+ hour outage on the Tumblr site, thousands of bloggers had a chance to think about what it would be like to lose everything on their site, all their entries, all the comments that others have left, all the effort and work. Gone. Fortunately Tumblr came back up after fixing its database problems, but imagine if it hadn't, or had to back up a few weeks -- or longer! -- to get things working. This leads to the obvious question: Can you backup, save or archive your Tumblr blog? Turns out, you can...

I've been a big fan of Time Machine, the backup system on my Mac OS X computer, but sometimes the backup is slow. I use VMware Fusion for some testing and have been recently wondering if that's affecting things adversely?

A friend pointed out to me a few days ago that if I were to have a data hiccup or have my system crash that I could lose everything I've ever written - and what everyone else has added as comments - from my Wordpress blog. Definitely not good. Is there some easy way to back up my blog so that I can insulate myself from this danger?

I have a Mac OS X setup in my office that includes an Apple Time Capsule in the middle of the network, streaming backups of every computer and laptop in our organization. One of the laptops was stolen, however, and I can't figure out how to access the backed up data from it on the device.

I've been running Memeo LifeAgent on my computer for a few months with very good results, but recently wanted to add a specific folder to the existing network backup and was stumped. How do you add or change an existing backup schedule?

I just got a MacBook Air and have been enjoying having the world's lightest laptop. It's an amazing piece of engineering and while it appears to have some critical features missing (like a DVD drive or Ethernet port) the fact is that I never used those features on my older MacBook Pro laptop either so it's not anything I miss.

Frankly, with my Corsair 8GB flash drive, it's just a super-modern version of "sneakernet" and was a breeze to jump onto the new device and use it full-time.

Even better, it gave me an opportunity to really pay attention to what I change on a stock Mac laptop to make it work for me. And that's what this article is about. Let's call it Dave's Guide to Critical Mac Software...