What a nightmare, I almost lost it all

[taffy19 Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close taffy19]

Why not have it backed up for you automatically? After two crashes in less than one week (the second crash was our external HD), we learned our lesson so we use Carbonite on all three computers now. I am sure there are other companies like it.

I am beta testing the Mac for them and it seems to work great but it works a little different than for the PC. Carbonite only backs up what is on your hard disk but you can still retrieve erased files for a certain time. I believe it is about a month. You can read it all on their web site. My notebook is old but I don't care if it crashes now. A very good feeling to have because it gets a beating on our trips.

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

Why not have it backed up for you automatically? After two crashes in less than one week (the second crash was our external HD), we learned our lesson so we use Carbonite on all three computers now. I am sure there are other companies like it.

I am beta testing the Mac for them and it seems to work great but it works a little different than for the PC. Carbonite only backs up what is on your hard disk but you can still retrieve erased files for a certain time. I believe it is about a month. You can read it all on their web site. My notebook is old but I don't care if it crashes now. A very good feeling to have because it gets a beating on our trips.

I second the use of Carbonite if you want to have an off site copy of the stuff on your computer. They do a good job and recovery is fairly easy. Also, the data is all encrypted when you do your over the air backups and restores. And they are relatively cheap for the service they provide.

[hebooregon Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close hebooregon]

Vista smishta 4 what it's worth....

I bought two new computers last year that came with Vista - before that I'd been using XP PRO, had problems with both Vista systems before long. The first thing my computer guy did with each of them was take Vista off and install XP. He said he can't count the number of computers he's had to work on because of Vista problems. I'm not a computer guy so I can't articulate what they all are, but he tells me that there's so many problems with Vista that Microsoft can't fix them all - they're working on a new operating system to replace it, and once it's on the market Vista won't be supported any longer. Since going back to XP we've had no problems, zero, zilch, nadda.

Jim Scharmota

[JWC Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close JWC]

Maybe but I doubt it.
Get one from Dell business with Windows XP next one Frank.

I agree with you 100%. I have purchased 5 laptops and 2 desktops from Dell Small Business. I have never had any problems with them and 2 of them are 6 years old and still working just fine.

I made a big mistake 2 years ago when I bought an HP laptop for my daughter because of the high rating from Consumer Reports. After a month, the wireless quit working and then later even a wired connection wouldn't work. No problem with the router as the laptop wouldn't work anywhere and my PC's all worked just fine with the router. HP service is non-existent. After going around and around with them, they said she would have to send the laptop to them and wait several weeks. This was unacceptable as she needs her laptop for her work. She was so frustrated that she just stopped using it and got a Dell instead.

I bought 2 new laptops from Dell Small Business in the last 2 months. I bought 1 for our son and 1 for me. They are both Dell Vostro 1510 with similar configurations and I ordered both with XP Pro installed which was an option. They are 15.4", Intel Duo Core CPU, 3 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, wireless, Optical DVD R/W, Microphone and Web cam, etc. There re some slight differences and 1 cost $579 and the other $598. The price and slight configuration differences are due to ordering the a few weeks apart. Anybody familiar with Dell know that their prices can vary by up to a few hundred $$ depending on when you check the price. In and event both of the new laptops are great.

[JWC Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close JWC]

One more thing about using XP instead of Vista apart from the reliability problems with Vista. A lot of the software that runs on XP and earlier versions of Windows will probably NOT run on Vista. For example I have Microsoft Office 97 Professional edition that I bought years ago. It suits my purposes just fine and I have just kept installing it on my new computers as I bought them. It is pretty expensive to replace with a newer version and I have no reason to do so. It installs and works fine on XP but NOT on Vista. This is just one example.