Ashley Bell

Snow Leopard users have reported that they've lost all their personal data when they've logged into a "Guest" account after upgrading from Leopard, according to messages on Apple's support forum. The MacFixIt site first reported the problem more than a month ago. The bug, users said in a well-read thread on Apple's support forum, resets all settings on the Mac, resets all applications' settings and erases the contents of critical folders containing documents, photos and music.

Users claimed that they lost data when they'd logged into their Macs using a "Guest" account, either purposefully or by accident. Specifically, Snow Leopard's home directory - the one sporting the name of the Mac's primary user - is replaced with a new, empty copy after users log-in to a Guest account, log out, then log-in to their standard account. Reports of the bug go back to Sept. 3, just six days after Apple launched Snow Leopard , or Mac OS X 10.6. Users who said they'd encountered the bug said that they had upgraded their systems from Mac OS X 10.5, known as Leopard. All the standard folders - Documents, Downloads, Music, Picture and others - are empty, while the Desktop and Dock have reverted to an "out-of-box" condition. "I had the Guest account enabled on my MacBook Pro," said a user identified as "tcnsdca" in a message posted Sept. 3. "I accidentally clicked on that when I went to log in. All of doc, music, etc. gone." "Add my parents to the list of people waxed by this bug," added "Ratty Mouse" today on the same thread. "Brand new iMac, less than one month old, EVERYTHING lost. It took a few minutes to log in, then after I had logged out of that account and back into mine, my [entire] home directory had been wiped.

Just as I convinced them to go Mac after years of trying." On the thread, several users urged others to disable any Guest accounts to prevent any accidental data loss. This morning I had access to Guest Account and than all my data were lost!!!" bemoaned someone tagged as "carlodituri" last Saturday. "I had 250GB of data without backup and I lost everything: years and years of documents, pictures, video, music!!! Some people were able to restore their Macs using recent Time Machine backups, but others admitted that they had not backed up their machines for weeks or months. "Just my luck I hadn't made a backup since 11th August," acknowledged "rogerss" on a different support forum thread. "So annoyed now, in the process of restoring from Time Machine, but have lost loads of my work due to this fault." Others users, however, had neglected to back up their Macs. "Nooooo!!! Is it possible to recover something? Some, for instance, wondered if the data loss would be triggered on Macs upgraded to Snow Leopard when the Guest account was simply set to "Sharing only," which is the default.

Please help me!!!!" Not surprisingly, users unaffected by the bug were reluctant to attempt to reproduce the problem. Apple did not respond today to questions about the bug.

In good news for the semiconductor industry, IDC today reported that worldwide computer chip shipments skyrocketed in the third quarter. IDC reported that shipments of mobile PCs, including netbook computers based on Intel's Atom processor , grew by 35.7% from the second quarter. After chip makers struggled through quarter after recent quarter due to a down economy that tightened consumer and corporate budgets, third quarter PC microprocessor shipments jumped 23% compared to the previous quarter, according to IDC. Analysts there credited the sharp uptick on the increasing popularity of low-cost mobile computers. Meanwhile, desktop PC processors grew at a more moderate 11.4% quarter over quarter while shipments of x86 server processors grew at a rate of 12.2%. "The story about 3Q '09 leads with Atom processors being sold in mini-notebooks manufactured and sold in China," said IDC analyst Shane Rau in a statement. "While Atom processors led the PC processor market to reach record unit shipments, on the revenue side, their low average selling price led to notable price erosion, more than 7%. As a result, while market shipments rose 23% compared to 2Q '09, market revenue grew less, 14.1% compared to 2Q09." Rau added that one of the most notable aspects of third-quarter performance is that PC processor shipments overall exceeded shipments in the third quarter of 2008, which was a record quarter at the time. "We know that the processor market is recovering," he said.

That's a big change from IDC's February projection that processor shipments would decline in 2009. Microprocessor unit shipments will decline by about 15% in 2009 compared to last year, noted Rau 9 months ago. Based on the market's recent performance and strong indicators moving into the fourth quarter, IDC today raised its forecast for PC processor shipments in 2009 to more than 300 million units and a unit growth rate of 1.5% compared to 2008. "Compared to where the market was at the beginning of 2009, PC processors have come back remarkably strong," said Rau. In today's report, IDC said it remains cautious in projecting processor shipments for 2010. "While it's clear our concerns about the second half of the year weren't necessary, we're still watching for a 'gotcha', possibly in 1Q '10," said Rau. "The market's growth has been due to shipments of inexpensive Atom processors being sold into markets like China, which is being stimulated by government incentives there. There are lots of places where inventories can hide. The Chinese market can be very opaque.

We have to be on the lookout for when China decides it can't consume more processors. Meanwhile, the U.S. market is still hamstrung by housing foreclosures and rising job losses."

A proposed amendment that would have given Congress more oversight over the White House cybersecurity czar and at least 17 other czars appointed by President Obama was shut down in the U.S. Senate today. Susan Collins (R-Maine), sought to restrict federal funds for the expenses of White House-appointed czars unless two conditions are met. The amendment, proposed by Sen. One of them was to require the president to agree that every czar would respond to "reasonable requests" to testify before Congress on matters related to the office.

The proposed amendment was in an Interior Department environmental appropriations bill on the Senate floor. The other required White House-appointed czars to issue a report to Congress twice a year. In a statement , Collins said the amendment was needed to ensure greater transparency and accountability. The amendment however was ruled "non-germane" to the pending bill in the Senate this afternoon and will not move forward, a spokesman for Collins said in an e-mail. "The amendment fell," following an objection by Sen. She had claimed that direct White House appointees were largely insulated from congressional oversight and often duplicated or diluted the statutory authority and responsibilities of Cabinet-level appointees who had been vetted by Congress. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), he said.

At a committee hearing in May on strategies for securing cyberspace, Collins had said that putting the White House in charge would make it harder for Congress to exercise oversight over critical cybersecurity policies and budgets. Collins, who is the ranking minority member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, had raised similar concerns previously, especially with regard to Obama's plans to appoint a White House cybersecurity czar, or agency coordinator. Collins proposed instead that the government consider adopting the model used in setting up the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). The NCTC, which was established in August 2004 on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, works in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), a setup that allows for greater congressional oversight, she had said. The president announced the position in May and stressed the need for a national strategy for securing U.S. interests in cyber space. The developments come amid a delay by the White House in naming a new cybersecurity coordinator.

The delay in making the appointment has fueled speculation about the likely candidates and the nature of the job . Earlier this month, the Reuters news service. quoting an unnamed source with "direct knowledge" of the matter, said the front runner for the post was Frank Kramer , an assistant defense secretary under President Bill Clinton.

Intel Corp. announced the availability today of a tool kit to optimize the performance of its X25-M consumer-class solid state disk (SSD) drive with Windows 7 operating system. The Intel SSD Toolbox allows users to more effectively monitor and manage the SSD's health. The Intel SSD Toolbox with Intel SSD Optimizer and firmware update was created for the company's latest 34nm Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA SSDs, which were released in July . The tools are designed to help better manage and retain the out-of-box performance of Intel SSDs, Intel said in a statement. The firmware upgrade and Intel SSD Optimizer use the Windows 7 ATA Data Set Management Command (known as Trim) to help keep the Intel SSD running at continued high performance.

The Trim attribute of Windows 7 synchs the operating system's view of deleted files with those that are deleted, but not erased on the drive. In addition, the SSD Toolbox and Optimizer also allow the respective enhancements to work with Windows XP and Vista. "Not only will Windows 7 users receive the performance enhancements of the Trim command, but so will our Windows XP and Vista users," said Pete Hazen, director of marketing, Intel NAND Solutions Group. Trim tells the SSD which data blocks are no longer in use. For X25-M owners with 160GB of capacity on the dive, the firmware update also offers a performance boost to sequential write speeds by delivering up to 100MB per second, a 40% performance improvement over the existing firmware version. Intel said this helps stabilize the performance and health of the SSD over time. The Intel SSD Toolbox provides SSD management tools and information about the drive, including comparing Self-Monitoring and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) drive attributes to manufacturer threshold.

The Toolbox also features a graphical user interface that will allow end users to schedule and run the Trim command independent of the operating system. It provides basic and full diagnostics, along with recommended actions. Intel recommends users install the firmware update and toolbox, and run the Trim function daily to ensure best performance.

Hewlett-Packard has added support for an additional 38 printer models or printer series to Snow Leopard, delivering on a promise made shortly after the release of Apple 's new operating system when angry users complained that older devices didn't work after upgrading. According to HP, 38 DeskJet, OfficeJet, and LaserJet drivers were added to those made available on Aug. 28, when Apple launched Snow Leopard . Although a list showing only the new drivers has not been published on either Apple's or HP's Web site, the complete list available on the former has been updated to include the new drivers, said Rick Spillers, a member of HP's Mac Connect team. On Thursday, Apple posted a printer driver update for Mac OS X 10.6 , aka Snow Leopard, but did not call out the specific drivers added to the 51MB driver download.

Among the newly-supported printers are the HP 910 inkjet printer, the DeskJet D1300 series, the OfficeJet 5500 series and the LaserJet M1120. Almost immediately after Apple started selling Snow Leopard, users who upgraded began griping on the company's support forum that their long-reliable printers were not being recognized by the new OS. Others became angry when an HP representative told them they should buy a new printer if a driver wasn't available for Snow Leopard. HP 1280 working!!!" crowed another user, "omarz," in a message Thursday. "I just update[d] to Snow Leopard 10.6.1 and now suddenly it was detected and it's working!" A driver for HP's PSC 1200 series was one of the 38 included in yesterday's update. After Thursday's update by Apple, several users reported on the same support forum that they were now able to use their formerly-bricked printers. "Today, I downloaded all the update software for printers and Mac [Snow Leopard], and everything now works fine," said someone identified as "AndyGump" on the same thread where users complained two weeks ago. "Incredible! HP's Spillers recommended that users update to Mac OS X 10.6.1 before applying the separate driver update. "Make sure that the printer is turned on and connected via [a] USB cable before launching Apple Software Update," said Spillers in an e-mail reply to questions. Apple built support into Snow Leopard for some printer makers' all-in-one devices, adding the functionality to the Image Capture application.

Spillers also said that there has been confusion about how owners of HP all-in-one devices - which both print and scan, and in some cases also fax, documents - get their hardware to work with Snow Leopard. "The other interesting thing I've found is trying to educate customers on the new scan interface for HP inkjet All-in-Ones that we've integrated with Snow Leopard," he said. HP has posted instructions on how to use its all-in-one printer/scanner hardware with Snow Leopard on its customer support site. Looking at the [support] forums, it seems that HP is the only print vendor really participating ... not sure I see much input from other print vendors." Snow Leopard users can manually download the HP driver update from Apple's site, or install it using the Mac's integrated update service. Spillers also took a shot at HP's rivals. "In general," he said, "HP did a great job providing full updated 10.6 drivers for almost all of our products, including LaserJets going back 10+ years.