This is the kind of day around which Macintosh geeks plan their lives.

Unless you're a Mac faithful who's just awoken from a coma, you already know that Apple is releasing its new operating system known as system 10.5, or Leopard, Friday.

One of the benefits of working an IT job is early access to new stuff, which is why I've been using Leopard for most of this year.

I've watched it evolve into a really sleek operating system worthy of the praise it will undoubtedly receive.

The feature getting the most hype is Time Machine, a built-in backup program that has a unique way of restoring files.

You set up Time Machine by adding a second hard drive to your Mac and designating it as a Time Machine drive.

You can set up your whole drive to be backed up or just a particular folder or file.

Let's say you have Time Machine backing up your home directory, which includes iTunes songs and iPhoto pictures.

If you add photos on one day and accidentally delete one a few days later, you can open Time Machine and turn back the clock to the last time the picture was there. It then magically moves into the present and your file is restored.

Impressive, and it works well.