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Computers and I go back a long way.

I was there when the first personal computers were made available for sale. And when the first IBM PC's went on sale. I got my first system in 1983.

To date, I've had experience at running everything from a Commodore VIC20 (which still resides in a box in the barn) to a pair of IBM 390 mainframes. I hated MS-DOS along with everyone else who had to use it at that time. It's ironic that I almost bought a copy of DOS before Microsoft bought the rights to it. It was being sold by the very small Seattle company that actually wrote it.

I successfully stayed away from Windows until version 3.0. That was the turning point, as most of you know. It was the point where Windows actually got good enough to use on a daily basis. We all hated the fact that DOS would only do one thing at a time and Windows seemed to be a way around that. It didn't look all that good on a 256-color screen, but it was a start.

That's the basis of my experience. I've done some programming, here and there. Mostly, though, I've performed as tech support and program evaluation team for a close group of friends for many years. If it's done anything, it's given me a gigantic amount of experience in installing and running Windows software. It's never an easy job. In every install there are the seeds of disaster. Experience means that I have a better than average chance of figuring out what's gone wrong before it kills my system, but I still end up reinstalling the OS about once a month. Thank goodness for drive imagers!

That large body of experience also means that I'm a good software tester. If I can't break it, then it's a pretty darn good program. And if I can't run the day-to-day functions of a program without looking at the manual, you'll know there's something wrong with the user interface.

If you have any comments or suggestions about backup software please feel free to contact me at jeff@techsupport.com