If you’re like me, and you type by hunting and pecking (looking at the keyboard, and not the screen), then you may occasionally find that you have ACCIDENTALLY HIT THE CAPS LOCK KEY, AND TYPED A WHOLE SENTENCE OR PARAGRAPH IN UPPER CASE. (DOH!)

My left hand’s position obscures the Caps Lock key, and its little indicator light, and I don’t see the (tiny) visual warning that the Caps Lock function has been activated.

But I worry about it no more, because it’s CAPS Warn – 3.1 to the rescue!

CAPS Warn is designed for anyone who presses the Caps Lock or Num Lock keys frequently by mistake.

CAPS Warn is a Preference Pane that provides: A) on-screen indications of when the Caps Lock, Shift, Function (fn), Control, Option, or Command keys are pressed (or stuck on by Sticky Keys) or B) warnings that: 1) you have turned on the CAPS Lock and/or 2) you have typed a specified number (default 5) of keys with the SHIFT key (or Sticky Keys SHIFT) or CAPS Lock and/or you have turned on the Num Lock. CAPS Warn warns you regardless of what application you are typing into.

I have mine set to emit a super-creepy low voice through my speakers that warns me; “Caps Lock On!”

This saves me several precious seconds of time each day formerly spent undoing all caps text; time which I now devote to my new distraction of choice: X-Plane 9.

CAPS Warn – 3.1 Warns you if caps lock, num lock, or modifier keys are on. (Mac only)

SuperDuper makes an exact copy of your entire hard drive onto another hard drive; usually an external drive connected by Firewire. (Since my computer has room for 2 hard drives, I copy to the second internal drive.) But this back up method is different than an archival back up in one important way.

It’s more like SuperDuper syncs your back up drive. Each time it runs, any new data is added, but any data deleted from your main drive is removed from the back up drive. That’s why it’s not an archiving system. It merely creates an exact copy of your main drive each time it runs. (Since most new computers come with fairly massive drives, most people won’t have to worry about running out of room on the main drive, and have to archive data somewhere else to make room.)

What this is for, is to protect against a catastrophic failure of your main drive. All of your documents, address books, family pictures, music, movies and everything will be right there on the other drive. But the really useful thing about SuperDuper is that it copies the entire drive, including the actual operating system and all of your settings and preferences. If your main drive ever fails, you can actually start up your Mac using the back up drive, and everything will be there, fully functional, ready to keep using. You would just replace the defective main drive, and copy everything back over to the new drive.

So the trick then, is to run SuperDuper often, as you are only as safe as your most recent back up. To this end, SuperDuper has a schedule function that can run late at night while you are sleeping. Sleeping safe and sound.

Extra hard drives are fairly cheap these days, and $100 to $200 dollars will get you a second drive that’s big enough to copy to. SuperDuper only costs $27.95. Not too bad considering that a professional hard drive data recovery can cost well over $600; if they can recover your data at all.