If your computer crashed right this moment, how much data would you loose? Would your business survive? How much downtime would you suffer?

I was forced to live thru the computer crash nightmare recently when her trusty HP laptop computer crashed. It failed to boot up. All indications where that the hard drive crashed. She took the laptop over to Laptop Exhchange.

James and Nick at the Spring Mountain location was very helpful. They looked up the serial number with HP to inform me that it was still under warranty. They suggested that I purchase a hard drive cradle from them for $40 that would allow me to take the hard drive from the laptop and connect it to my desktop computer to see if my data was recoverable.

I contacted HP and 24 hours later I had a brand new hard drive delivered to my first porch. Of course it was it blank leaving me to try to track down my original operating system disks to format the hard drive myself.

I was thrilled to find that handy dandy cradle held all of my data. This considerable minimized my downtime due to my computer crash.

The morale to this story, BACK YOUR DATA UP EVERY WEEK. Therefore should you have a crash, you are only out a week of work rather than months.

Thanks and gratitude to Laptop Exchange for their over and above customer service and to HP for having a great three year warranty on HP Laptops.

Now, go back up your data~!!!!

As much as the self proclaimed Gizmo Goddess loves the new marvels of modern technology, it is true that it is hard to get old dogs to do new tricks. Not that the Gizmo Goddess is a dog, but she was slow to jump on the iPhone bandwagon. Even though I was eligible for an upgrade a year ago, I was perfectly happy with my Cingular Pocket PC with touch screen, windows, slide out keyboard and my 100’s of ringtones. After all, every special person programmed in had their own special ringtone. Yes the phone was nearly the size of a brick compared to the iPhone, but I liked it and it worked.

Then one day last week, it did not work anymore. Actually it did, but it would no longer hold a charge. It was a great phone which traveled with me on many fun travels. Ok fine. I guess that is my sign to move on.
I was very surprised at how easy the iPhone was for Salvatore at the AT&T to set up for me. Ha Ha. He had no idea that he was setting up the Gizmo Goddess’s new cellular lifeline. I decided to keep the Gizmo Goddess undercover. After all, he was the expert on this new device. In just about an hour, I had the new iPhone with my contact all transferred from my old relic of a phone and my email set up. Although I was feeling pretty confident with the iPhone, I still needed to master the whole iTunes and Aps portion…Yikes.

I was extremely surprised at how easy it was to use iTunes, download applications, and sync with my Outlook calendar and contacts.

So after a week of iPhone use, I can honestly say that it was the best $100 I have ever spent.

I will be posting follow up reports on new aps, tricks, and other iPhone gems. So stay tuned!