TOPIC: Ghosting

Dominic - As you know, my computer obtusity frequently lends itself to making me look like a dope.  By computer "geek" standards I probably am and accept that.  I heard that Norton makes a "ghosting" program.  Do you recommend that I buy another hard drive similar to my PC and laptop's drives and ghost my two computers?  Both are 4 or 5 years old, have tons of stuff (which I am already saving on a Maxtor) and it would be a great catastrophe to lose either one if the current hard drive should fry. 

Do you recommend ghosting in addition to the Maxtor?

If not Noooorton!!, what would you recommend?

Grrrathiath!

Realistically, you don't need to be ghosting your computers. If one of them dies you are going to be buying a new computer. The important thing is that you just backup all your important documents to the maxtor drive, including any program files like the entire Home Inspector Pro folder. You can use a free program like Cobian Backup to do this for you.

The problem with ghosting is that your making an exact copy of your computer, including any problems that are causing it to slow down. It's best when your computer dies just to reinstall windows and all your software and then restore files from backups.

If you really still want to ghost, nortons ghost is a good program. I've used it for years for servers. You need to have an external drive as least as big as the originals to ghost everything about. Ghost can compress the drive but I'm not sure of the exact sizing.

I guess it all depends on what you plan to do if your computer dies. With a 4 or 5 year old computer, I'd be looking to pitch it and get a new one. If you've only been ghosting it then you'll need to restore the image to a hard drive, then attach that to the new computer and you'll end up just copying files over anyways.

Dom - further - in getting a new computer, two questions:
1.  If the Microsoft "file transfer" thing is used under accessories, is my thinking right that programs do not transfer?  It would just be files right?
2.  Since I don't do on-line gaming, and such - would it be more efficient to go to a computer repair company and have them build a system for me that suits my needs and not be filled with a lot of krappé?
As always, thanks.

Hi Jay,

It's actually the opposite. If you were a computer gamer I'd tell you to get a computer built for you. Otherwise just buy it online. Also, you can't really build tablets or laptops at a computer shop. What are you looking for? For HIP I'd definitely recommend a tablet.

Really in this day it's cheaper to get a computer from the big guys and you get decent support from most of them as well. Tell me what you're planning on doing with it and I can make a few suggestions.

Don't even bother with the file transfer feature, just offload all your stuff to an external hard drive. Reinstall all your programs on the new machine and then copy your files over.

No, nothing will copy your programs over. 99.9% of programs rely on the Windows Registry and you can't take that with you. Home Inspector Pro is actually one of the few programs that you could just copy across. We designed it not to use the registry to make it work with Windows, Mac & Linux

Beyond my vitamins*, I don't know what a tablet is.  I know that the top swivels or comes off or something, but beyond that I don't know what distinguishes it from a traditional laptop...

I take caplets and capsules too...

A tablet IS a laptop. The only difference is that the screen swivels and lays flat and you can tap directly on it. HIP was actually designed at first for 3 companies all using tablets. It's the ultimate in efficiency and they don't cost much more than a laptop now. Go to your local computer store and check it out. Bring HIP with you on a thumbdrive and check it out. You can run HIP from a thumbdrive easily.