If you are like most folks, the immediate response is NO. It normally doesn’t pay for itself in the long run. But before you do that, regardless of whether you are a single user or a small business office, consider some of these key points:

• Do you know what to do or where to look when there is a problem?
• Can you fix most minor issues on your own?
• Do you proactively maintain and back up your equipment?
• Can you resolve an issue involving multiple third parties (ie–when they are pointing the finger at each other)?
• Do you have the time to research and implement updates and repairs?

Today’s IT warranties are tailored to you and your environment and are simple, expedient and on your terms. Your support solution helps resolve the situation, not get in the way. Many are also designed to provide tech-to-tech support, allowing your IT staff to fix the situation and free up your time to focus on the bigger picture.

Warranties may not be such a bad idea anymore, the choice is yours.

^JS

Well last night, while working on a problem for a customer of course the inevitable happened – my computer froze.  When I rebooted windows, the memory card gave me an error mesage about it being corrupt (can you hear my screams – ARRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH!).     Now for the positive:

Just like I tell you to do, my backups were up to date – the downside was backups run once a day at 1AM – so of course everything I did Tuesday wasn’t in the backup.  So first things first, I got myself a new memory card and started restoring my files to it.  This morning I have the crashed memory card in our lab attempting to recover yesterday’s work.

So what are the lessons learned from my experience?  Here’s the quick list

1. Backup, backup, backup (decide if you need twice a day backups even)
2. Know your hardware
3. Pay attention to little problems before they become big ones (I should have noticed the little things that were happening to the memory card)
4. Have a plan (what would you do if your drive crashed – panic, or know that you are prepared).

If you want to talk about the possibility of your drive crashing (no one really wants to talk about it) or you want us to help you build a recovery plan – just drop us an e-mail or call us and I’d be more than happy to help.    Here’s to a long hard drive life and no crashes!