I just want to remind everyone that if you have not backed up your Macbook Pro already, you really should (take it from me … I lost all of my data when my new Macbook unexpectedly crashed!  Backing up protects you in the case of a computer failure and/or if your laptop gets lost/stolen).  You can back-up on your Mac easily by using Time Machine.”

If you don’t have one already, you will need to purchase an external hard drive (look for a portable external hard drive).  Then you should plug it into your laptop and initiate “Time Machine” (you can do this by clicking on the round-arrow-clock-like symbol to the left of the wireless icon on the top menubar (not such a great description, I know!) or simply by opening “Time Machine” in your Applications.  Then it should guide you through the steps (it will probably have to re-format your external hard drive, so make sure you haven’t saved anything on there first).

the first back-up will take a long time (many hours!) because it copies everything on your machine.  but after that it only takes a moment or two, because it only saves the changes that have been made since your last back-up.  you can back up as frequently as you want simply by plugging in your external hard drive to your laptop.

Let me know if you have any problems with this (I’d be happy to go through this process with you during my office hours) … and please do back up so that you can keep all of your work, photos, music, videos (etc.) for as long as you want!