> My brother can't understand why I settle for an external backup disk. He says,
> RAID, RAID, RAID, all the way. He doesn't lose a keystroke after an equipment
> failure, and he sees no use for external backups.

It depends how much you value the work you would potentially lose 
between backups. For me personally I don't generate enough "work" on my 
home machine between backups (usually once per week) to justify the 
complexity, expense and education needed for running a RAID system. The 
other benefit of external backup is that you can take it to another 
machine very easily at any point. The other thing I do is to put a small 
number of critical files encrypted in a special folder that is then 
sync'd with a couple of online file storage sites. In case my HD and 
external fail together (eg huge power surge, house fire, flooding or 
some other disaster) then at least I don't lose the really important stuff.

> For the past decade or so, I have only used laptops at home. Power blackouts are
> frequent in my community, and laptops seemed the ideal way to get around that.
> However, my brother says that with my heavy computer usage, I should have a
> desktop system, and just buy a cheap laptop for traveling. Does this sound like
> a reasonable arrangement? I did have a battery backup, but it didn't take long
> for it to fail in my environment. Should I just resign myself to buying a new
> battery backup every couple of years?

Depends how often you get power outages, how long they are for and what 
you want to do on your computer during them. A powerful laptop running 
POV flat out will likely not even last an hour on battery, but if you 
just want email/web access you can get ones that will last 6 hours+. I'm 
happy with just a desktop because if there is a power outage I can still 
use my phone for web/email.

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