I have a 2TB Passport and two smaller external drives. I use a 17" Dell laptop with Windows 7. Just purchased in July because my previous laptop hard drive failed. I did not want Windows 8 so I really had to shop around for something with W7. I currently have no dedicated office so the work I do is generally while sitting on the sofa. Not optimum but it is what it is. As such, a NAS would not be practical. I know about NAS, they were used in the design department I used to work in. I'm tired of dealing with external drives and remembering to manually back up. It got me in trouble once, it will get me in trouble again. The cloud is really the way I want to go. I didn't know that bells and whistles would go off if I tried to upload 30Gb of photos. I'll contact my ISP and see what they suggest. Thanks. Jodi-

A 100% passive solar home is a very complicated matter. I believe it can be done, but not easily, and perhaps not affordably either. The building would need to be very efficient at capturing solar energy, but it would also have to be very good at storing this energy. Instantly we have a design conflict, all those places that allow heat in during the day will start to leak heat backwards when the sun is gone and the outside air temperature falls. Things can be done to correct this, but the complexity starts to increase dramatically. Also, to store heat you need mass. Concrete or brick are popular, but they're bulky and expensive... Well, expensive is relative, I'll conceed it may just be me who is looking at cubic foot of concrete and wishing it were cheaper! Such a house which collects lots of solar energy, stores it well and has enough thermal mass to remain warm overnight can be designed and built at some expense, but that's not the full selection of problems facing the 100% passive solar house, it also has to perform well throughout the whole season. The traits that make it work so well in winter may cause it to work too well in summer and overheat terribly. Personally, I have discarded the idea of the 100% passive solar house due to it's complexities, expense and design limitations. But I have not given up on the idea of the 100% solar heated house. Passive solar is still a very adaptable technology and can provide a substantial amount of free heating, but it has limitations and should only be used up to the point where it is doing what it should - providing free heat for a sensible cost. Going extreme and trying to squeeze that last 20% or 30% of your heating needs from it by adding vast quantities of expensive glazing, bulky thermal mass and inconveniant manual systems such as heat retaining curtains and solar shades that must be ajusted frequently is irrational. Active solar technology, such as solar air heating pannels can provide the remainder for a much lower cost and avoid most all the design issues. Active solar also has the advantage of being able to turn it off when not needed, a conveniance of fossil fuels that has allowed a lot of badly designed buildings to remain comfortable all year round. It could certainly help compensate for any small design flaws in a passive solar home. I suspect the only way to make something perfect is to design around any faults it has.

I was here pk. I guess I should have let you know that the backup was specifically asking for the apple id password. I only brought up email because I found no contacts (but I also pointed out that I hadn't tried to link emails in any way). I also now see that there is an off setting on a 'settings' button for email. I am not sure how she sees her mail. Probably directly via Safari but I do see an email app right on her first page trey below the regular apps. Probably way more info than needed since this was not really an email question. Looking back, I now see that I wasn't clear about what password was wanted; sorry. My general question was about the whole purpose of this kind of backup. It appeared (and still does) that she may not have had anything to backup because she didn't really use itunes for paid music (and yesterday I saw something that implied it didn't do that either, I suppose because apple really only has pointers to the music and always remembers your apple id with those pointers). I was more concerned that perhaps each system update might wipe all apps and perhaps other stuff. As far as I can tell, it certainly didn't wipe all apps out (she still has some), and I see no reason it would clear specific ones. I was waiting for another response and to see if I got a backup. I can't really tell because it doesn't say so. It was not asking to be backed up yesterday (or today) and I can't find where it is indicated. The new update changed stuff on icloud and wanted new legal acceptance (i gave it) but that was after I attempted the backup. BTW I actually read a little of the legal stuff and it included that icloud could wipe your backup if you didn't backup for 120 days!!! Anyway, I still don't really understand the purpose of this backup system. While attempting to follow various directions, I got messages that suggest if there are problems (I don't think there actually were) that I should Reset the ipad. I am suspecting that perhaps that is exactly when the backup would be needed because the Reset Would wipe everything back to a new pad. Not sure of that either.

I honestly don't know what I'm talking about here, haha. Daughter has an iphone, DH got me one for Christmas and now he has one. I turned off all programs/apps etc. that were connected to the cloud. It's only stuff from my phone, at least that I know of. I changed my phone plan with Verizon to the XL plan. 12 gigs of data for the price of 10. We already had 10. What I didn't notice until after I did the switch is we went from 25 GB to 5 GB cloud storage. DH is away on a hunting trip and was trying to take pics and send them and he can't. It said he was out of storage. He deleted a bunch of pics and videos but he still can send a pic to me. I thought maybe it had something to do with our cloud. I just don't know how to access it to see what all is stored there. On my phone when I go to settings, iCloud then storage I get a message that says "iCloud storage details are currently unavailable. Try again later." Has been like that for days.