Christmas is just a week away, but if you're like me, you haven't finished your Christmas shopping yet. It's (more than) a bit late to be ordering items that will have to be shipped from online vendors, but downloadable software is still an option, and you're local brick & mortar tech product resellers will be happy to oblige right up to next Monday.

With the cool, new Time Machine automatic backup feature in OS X 10.5 Leopard, anyone who has upgraded to the new system will want to have an external hard drive in order to take advantage, and in most areas, you should be able to find one at a local reseller in plenty of time for Christmas.

I was skeptical about Time Machine, when it was first announced as a Leopard banner feature enhancement, but I've quickly become a convert. Time Machine is slick. Basically, you just connect an external hard drive and let it do its stuff with no fuss or bother. It's the slickest backup software I've ever used by a wide margin.

There is a vast selection of external hard drives available...

I have an older FireWire External Drive and a couple of USB 2 units. Two of these contain relatively small-capacity hard drives pulled from 'Books that have been upgraded, but the third is a very swish SimpleTech SimpleDrive styled by the illustrious Italian design firm, Pininfarina, which has created the delectable shapes of Ferrari automobiles since the 1950s.

My Pininfarina SimpleDrive is a 3.5", 7200 RPM, 500 GB USB 2 unit, but these drives are optionally available with a second, FireWire interface. USB 2 is more than adequate for using with Leopard Time Machine, however, and since my PowerBook's hard drive is only 80 GB and far from being bung-full, I'm laughing with excess capacity.

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