Hi Al,

>My environment is very simple - I'm the only user ;)
Good to see my current and planned practices are mirrored more or less by the people responding. Well, except for the above ;-)

>- no VMs (yet, but I'm thinking about it for Web/e-mail)
>- all equipment in one room, absolutely no wireless. I really discourage it for anyone unless they really, really need it - wired is so much better
Everything is wired here too.

>- no wireless keyboards or mice, either - only wired PS/2 allowed (no USB)
Sometime in the future that will be a problem.

>- backup to USB stick for stuff that changes multiple times/day e.g. VFP dev, important Word docs etc.
>- daily backup of stuff that changes less often e.g. e-mail, to NTFS partition on external USB HD
Currently I am still lugging laptop, stick and 2'5 USB. One of my hopes is to get all of my dayly tools working from USB as well. Then the USB is the "current version" and each local machine has the last data as backup. I guess 2 weeks from the time I've got it working I'll have a major client forbidding USB devices<g>

>- monthly images to Linux EXT3 partition on external USB HD using ntfsclone on Knoppix LiveCD, with copy burned to DVD-Rs with K3B and stored off-site

YUpp, the offsite part can be a client saver<g>. As you mention ntfsclone I guess you don't have EXT partition access with your usual windows session via driver and EXT3 is a precaution against casual overwriting ?

Thanks

thomas