Advice about land lines and computers

AnnaMaria Andriotis of SmartMoney.com suggested "A Few Things You Shouldn't Plan to Buy in 2010." In general, I agreed, but have alternative opinions on two of her suggestions.

Regarding home phone service, AnnaMaria suggests that land lines could go the way of the rotary phone. Although that is true, there is a downside of which most people I talk to are unaware. 911 service is tied to the address of your land-line phone, and emergency personnel can be directed to your home. When you dial 911 on a cell phone the operator will not know your street address, so you must provide it or your location, if you are able. You lose safety and service by going cell-phone only. And, regarding external hard drives, There are downsides that caused me to go back to using an external hard drive for my backup. First, it took about three days for the company to backup my hard drive. Then, when my hard drive crashed and I got a new computer. It took multiple calls to sometimes-competent and helpful support personnel and a couple of hours of hand-holding to do the backup which, again, took about three days.

So, for six days some of my data was vulnerable, and a two-year subscription for the service was about the cost of a fast, large hard drive that can perform a back up in a couple of hours.

One other restriction of the online backup service is that the data can be restored to only one computer. I now weekly back up my data onto my external hard drive and I can restore the data to any computer I choose.

Jim Orme

Wheaton