Play music from a standard audio CD.
Hold as much as 700MB of data from my desktop machine without
demanding that much space on the hard drive within my laptop.Display a few hours of the latest Hollywood blockbuster or clinker,
sometimes a reasonable use of my battery (or a connection to an airliner
power source) on a long flight at the end of the day.
Serve as a removable backup storage medium while I am on the road.It’s that last facility that gives me the most comfort when I am thousands of
miles away from home and I have created some spectacular words of wisdom
for my next book or some irreplaceable digital photos that will one day hang
on the wall of my office to remind me of places I’ve been.Fact is that laptops can be stolen, can fall to the floor, or be fried by an
unfriendly power surge. But if I’ve followed my own time-polished rules I will
have made a backup of any new data on my machine at least every other day;
if it’s been an especially busy trip, I make a backup to a CD-R every night.And then I store the CD-Rs in a place other than my computer bag. You fig-
ured that one out, right? What use is it to have backups in the same bag that
might be stolen for the laptop itself. I keep the backups in a carry-on bag, or
in an inside pocket of my jacket, or even put them in the mail and send them
back home to await my arrival.With the price of a CD-R somewhere around 25 cents there’s no excuse not to
practice what I preach. Think of it as the cheapest data insurance policy you
could possibly find.A Set of Emergency Disks ............................................................................
Well okay, this does not quite fall under the category of favoritethings, but it
sure does qualify as an essential. My computer kit bag goes nowhere without
a thin plastic carrier that contains two CD-Rs created in my office and fully
tested on my laptop.Here are my two CDs:A legal backup copy of the Windows XP installation disk, labeled with
the Product Key. I use Disk Copier, which is part of Roxio Easy Media
Creator, to make the equivalent of a photocopy of a program disk includ-
ing any hidden and system files. Note that I am using this disk for these
purposes only: in case I need to boot my laptop from the CD because of332 Part VI: The Part of Tens