Season’s Greetings! We are excited to deliver updates to Winclone and Boot Runner in time for the holidays, with more releases planned for 2013. We want to thank you for your interest and support of Twocanoes software. We’ve been listening to your requests for enhancements and new features, so keep those suggestions coming! Have a safe and happy holiday season and we’ll see you in the new year!
Winclone 3.6 available now
Winclone 3.6 adds the Dutch language to the growing list of supported languages. Many thanks to Bart in the Netherlands for making that happen. There are also some minor bug fixes and maintenance updates, too. To update your copy of Winclone, select the “check for updates” option under the Winclone drop-down menu to download and install Winclone 3.6.
Winclone is Windows 8-ready
Although Apple has yet to release an update to officially support Windows 8 on Boot Camp, our testing and reports from the field have found no notable compatibility issues. Winclone has been fully compatible with Windows 8 since version 3.5, ready for upgrade whenever you are. See the full list of features and system requirements for Winclone 3 here.
Boot Runner 1.1 released
A few months ago we unleashed Boot Runner, a new product for easing and automating the selection process for dual-boot Macs. We received a lot of great feedback and made further refinements for the just-released Boot Runner 1.1. Please test drive the 14-day trial and let us know what you think!
Boot Runner solves the problem of how to globally manage dual-boot Macs, particularly remote Macs, which may be in varying boot states at any given time. Boot Runner’s selection screen is ideal for creating a consistent start screen for kiosks, labs and public terminals. But Boot Runner is great for individual Macs, with a Finder menu boot selector containing useful partition information.
Boot Runner 1.1 includes bug fixes and enhanced controls for using Managed Client for OS X policies.
Twocanoes Premium Support
Twocanoes now offers premium technical support and software maintenance for Winclone Pro and Boot Runner. If you would lke premium support, contact contact@twocanoes.com. More details here.
Twocanoes.com gets Responsive
Recently we tweeted about how our website is now a better viewing experience on iPads and mobile devices. This was done with the help of our web development intern, Dave Lebbing, using a relatively new concept known as Responsive Web Design. This approach involves making the website as flexible as possible so it can expand and contract as needed for the display it is viewed upon. Much of this is done by using standard web design principles of making individual components of the page be sized relative to other components. The technique is responsive in that it listens to the display’s properties (like width and aspect ratio) and adapts accordingly for the best viewing experience at that scale. For example, a very small or tall screen may display fewer columns so text is as readable as a larger screen, shifting automatically for small displays. For larger, wider screens, more columns and less stacking. Narrow displays see few columns across but are stacked vertically to maximize space for text and layout. As the world increasingly shifts to mobile browsers, more sites will become adaptable for the mobile world. Check out the twocanoes.com website from a mobile device to see Responsive design in action!
For more on this topic, see Dave Lebbing’s article Making Twocanoes.com Responsive on the Twocanoes blog.
JAMF Nation User Conference
In October, Twocanoes participated in the JAMF Nation User Conference at the illustrious Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The conference provided a great venue for sharing ideas and connecting with the Mac IT community.Duke University administrator Michael Crispin delivered a fantastic presentation on integrating Winclone and Boot Runner for mass deployment and management of Boot Camp. Kudos to JAMF for hosting a well-organized and energizing conference!
Apple’s Fusion Drive: A First Look
Timothy Perfitt takes an in-depth look at Apple’s new hybrid Fusion Drive for the Mac that will be of interest to Boot Camp users. Check out the full article on the Twocanoes Blog.
Backups vs. snapshots: What’s the difference?
We receive correspondence from prospective Winclone buyers looking for a backup utility for Boot Camp. And why not? After all, a Winclone image contains the entire file system, data and settings, plus it’s bootable to boot! The problem with using Winclone as the sole mechanism for backup is that it serves a different purpose from file-based backups. So we encourage people to use both. A file-based backup solution will provide more flexibility, especially if you need to restore version #23 of a 150-version document. Winclone is great for making a “snapshot in time”, your Windows desktop frozen in amber, but it may not be practical or necessary to clone Boot Camp every single day, seven days a week. Combining a file-based backup solution like Time Machine (or a cloud-based backup service) backing up your data incrementally along with weekly/monthly/yearly Winclone imaging ensures that you can quickly recover and be working again if disaster strikes.
Next time around…..
We ran out of space, but look for more articles in the next edition of TwocaNews, including:
- Converting Windows XP from FAT32 to NTFS
- How the OS X Recovery Partition affects Boot Camp imaging and restoring
- Can hard drives larger than 2.2TB run Boot Camp?
- Imaging from and restoring to external drives with Winclone
Upcoming Webinars
Join us for our twice-monthly free webinars. We will walk through the process of cloning a Boot Camp partition and restoring Boot Camp from a Winclone image. We’ll also cover some common issues and answer your questions. Select a date and click the register link to sign up. More details about the webinars can be found here. We hope you’ll join us!
Using Winclone
December 4, 2012
10:00AM CST
Register
December 18, 2012
3:00PM CST
Register
January 8, 2013
10:00AM CST
Register
January 24, 2013
3:00PM CST
Register
Using Boot Runner
December 4, 2012
3:00PM CST
Register
December 18, 2012
10:00AM CST
Register
January 8, 2013
3:00PM CST
Register
January 24, 2013
10:00AM CST
Register
Introducing T.J. Caracci
Hello! I come to Twocanoes from the road less traveled. Early on I sold highly-engineered products for Illinois Tool Works. I then went on to serve my country in the Peace Corps in the Republic of Vanuatu. Upon my return I worked for DePaul University scoping new technology. It was here that I caught the technology bug. I honed my skills at identifying customers needs and then matching up appropriate solutions to solve those needs.
I then moved to Henkel Adhesives as a territory sales manager. The vast majority of this job was identifying customers needs and then finding or creating a product to fill that need. I was involved in many successful projects, from scoping of the project to working with the lab to create a new adhesive then on to production testing and then finally company wide roll out.
My wife and I with our daughter live in Northwest Indiana.
I joined Twocanoes Software this November as the Business Development Manager and have hit the ground running.
Follow me on twitter @tjcaracci and please friend twocanoes on Facebook!
Cheers,
TJ Caracci