I’ve just finished reading the latest reviews and such about the new (Jan this year) Kindle eBook reader from Amazon. I buy nearly all my books from Amazon and have quite an extensive library now, shelves and shelves of hardback, paperback and manuals etc. In fact, I’ve been running out of room for all of them for a while now.

So, after reading the reviews I think I’m going to get one of these puppies. I just checked and a couple of books that I was going to buy are available for it.

Plus, you can get a FREE converter / creator that will allow you to put your personal docs and files on there too, sounds fair enough.

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A customer of mine was backing up their server data onto a ZIP 750MB. The disk started to fill up. They had outgrown the simple zip solution and needed more space to backup.

I priced an Iomega REV solution, which with 5 disks would have cost about $600. WOW! That didn’t seem like a very good option for my client. So I thought about it a decided we could get away with a removable external USB hard drive to backup on. The cost, about $100.

The only problem with this scenario is that the disk external hard drive would not be taken off site each evening. If the office burned down, all the data would go with it. Not a good scenario.

Then the clients accountant said to me ‘why don’t you buy 2 usb external drives and swap them every night? That’s what we do…’.

So we got 2 usb external hard drives, which are 40GB, do not need an external power supply and can be plugnplayed on just about any computer with a USB port. Total cost $200.

I wish I’d thought of that before I went and bought another REV drive! Ah well.

I backup all my data every night onto an Iomega REV drive. I bought my 1st REV drive just over a year or so ago. The 1st one burnt out within a month and it was replaced by Iomega.

I used the drive every day and it worked well, though sometimes the disk would stick in the drive and I’d have to use a paper clip to remove the disk. There is a tiny hole in the front of the drive and you push the paper clip in the hole and out pops the disk. Seems like Iomega new this would be needed.

About 2 months ago, the disk jammed as I pushed it in and, without going into the details, completely buggered the drive. Now the good news. It was out of warranty! So, I bought a new drive, plus an extended 3 year warranty for about 60 bucks! Total cost to me about $450.

So, whats the point of this story? Let me explain…