It appears that Apple is having some issues with compatibility when you restore your new Macbook Pro from a Time Machine backup. The wired Apple keyboard does not work with the new Macbook Pro. It appears the issue only occurs when you boot up your new fall 2008 Macbook Pro from a Time Machine Backup.

My wireless logitech mouse which is plugged into the keyboard works, but the keyboard itself doesn’t work. I have confirmed this is happening with multiple people. Are you effected by it?

After a long search, I have found the perfect external hard drive for a laptop only owner. With that being said, I would like to introduce you to the Newer Technology Mini Stack v3 External hard drive. This little external hard drive offers plenty of additional features beyond just being an external hard drive.

Specifications

Hard Drive: 750GB Bootable, 7200 RPM, 32MB Cache
Dimensions: 6.5″ x 6.5″ x 1.5″
Bridge Chipset: Oxford OXUF924DSb
Interface Ports: 1 x eSATA, 2 x Firewire 800, 1 x Firewire 400, 3 x USB 2.0/1.0

Thoughts

The Mini Stack v3 is an external hard drive with a built in powered USB/Firewire hub. It offers 3 USB 2.0/1.0, 1 Firewire 400, 2 Firewire 800, and 1 eSATA ports. I searched on google for over a week looking for a external hard drive solution that has a built in powered hub. When I stumbled upon this bad boy, I was so happy to see that not only did it have a USB hub built in, but it also had firewire and eSATA ports built in.

Well, as I am writing this post I am in the process of doing  Time Machine restore. When I originally bought my Macbook Pro, I setup time machine purely because I had an extra 500GB external hard drive laying round, and I wanted to be able to brag to people about how cool time machine looks when you use it. Well, I have had my Macbook Pro for over 4 months now, and today is the 3rd time Time Machine has saved my ass!

I was at work earlier today running software updates on OS X when my machine asked me if i wanted to restart after it installed an update, and with out thinking, I clicked OK. When my machine came back up it occurred to me that I had my Windows XP Pro VMware Fusion partition running, and had not properly suspended it or shut it down. I quickly opened up VMware Fusion to see if it was still OK. Well it wasn’t, I found that it was frozen on the loading screen when trying to load up the Windows XP Pro install from where it left off. So yea, at this point I am worried.

I use Windows XP Pro on VMware Fusion as my primary work computer so when this would not load, I freaked. I had a 50GB partition of my hard drive filled with important work stuff and it would not load.

With in a few minutes I realized I had a Time Machine backup of that data on my home external backup drive. I opened up Time Machine, browsed to the Virtual Machines folder and clicked restore from my update last night. What a relief!!

Time Machine is probably the most unused program that comes on a Mac, but I would recommend you run it in the background all the time. When you happen to need it, it is great! Now if I could just get 50GB of data to restore in less than 1 hour I might actually get some work done today!