The Cheapskate

If you're using a notebook and there's a sudden power outage, no problem: The battery will let you keep on workin'.

Desktop users aren't so lucky, which is why it's essential to plug everything into a battery backup (aka uninterruptible power supply). If the lights go out, you'll still have a few minutes in which to save your work and safely power down the machine.

Best Buy has an APC 550VA Battery Backup System for $39.99 shipped. It includes a total of eight outlets, all of them surge-protected and four powered by the 330-watt battery.

The 550VA promises up to 65 minutes of runtime, depending on the power demands of your hardware. It also has phone/fax/modem and USB ports to keep that gear from getting fried.

APC offers a $75,000 equipment-protection policy, meaning if your gear does get zapped while plugged into the 550VA, the company will reimburse you.

As someone who works at a desktop nearly every day, and who has lost work due to sudden power outages, I consider a battery backup essential equipment. Normally they're a lot pricier, so I'm liking this deal a lot.

Here's another great freebie from Giveaway of the Day: Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Personal. It's a drive-imaging program similar to Acronis True Image, and today only you can pick it up for nada.

Let me repeat that: today only (Wednesday, April 8). As you might guess from its name, Giveaway of the Day is a site that offers a different commercial program each day of the week. When the clock strikes midnight tonight, Paragon Drive Backup goes back to costing $39.95.

CNET hasn't reviewed the program, but there's a good overview at PC World. In addition to imaging your entire hard drive, Paragon Drive Backup can back up individual files and folders. Get the full feature rundown from Paragon's site.

I've used a program similar to this for years, cloning my primary hard drive to a secondary drive. That way, if the main drive croaks, I can just swap in the spare and get back to work.

Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 requires Windows 2000, XP, or Vista. It's a 241MB download.

Remember: today only. Grab this $40 app free of charge before it's too late, and start making full-system backups like you know you should.

Data disaster can strike anywhere, anytime. If you're not making regular backups, you're asking for trouble. Trust me. In that spirit of doom and gloom, I've rounded up five free backup utilities for preserving different types of data. All of them are "set-and-forget" programs, meaning once you've installed and configured them, they'll do their thing in the background. Doesn't get much easier than that.

• Amic Email Backup This highly automated tool backs up most popular e-mail clients at scheduled times and can restore the library to another computer (great if you have to move to a new machine following some disaster).
• Comodo Backup This full-featured utility lets you archive specified files and folders to any number of destinations: external and network drives, blank discs, an FTP server, and so on.
• MozyHome One of my favorites, MozyHome offers 2GB of free online storage and a simple utility for choosing what to back up. Unlimited storage costs a reasonable $4.95 monthly. The service is available for both Windows and Mac systems.
• PIM Backup Windows Mobile device users get a backup every time they sync, but this utility adds phone logs, text messages, and other data to the mix.
• Yahoo Autosync An oldie but goodie, Autosync (formerly Intellisync) synchronizes your contacts, calendar, and other data to the Web. That not only gives you a backup in case of disaster, but also makes your info available from any PC.

Did I leave out your favorite backup utility? If so, hit the Comments and share your fab freebie with the world. In the meantime, get "backing." No more excuses!

Sure, you can safeguard your PC with various freeware security apps, but there's something to be said for having a single program that protects you from viruses, spyware, phishing, hackers, and so on. Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare 2.0 is such a program, and Amazon has it on sale for $30--minus a $30 mail-in rebate. Shipping is free, bringing the grand total to zero dollars.

Windows Live OneCare 2.0 (wow, what an embarrassingly bad name) combines real-time anti-virus, anti-spyware, and anti-phishing tools with a managed firewall, a data backup utility, and system optimization. You can protect up to three PCs (Windows XP and Vista only) and get unlimited tech support via phone, e-mail, or chat. (That's arguably the key reason to choose a commercial security suite over a batch of freebies, which tend to come with little or no support.)

Renewing your OneCare subscription will run you $50 annually, so what you're really getting here is the first year free. I'm disappointed that the backup utility doesn't include an online option (why not link OneCare with Windows Live SkyDrive, Microsoft?), but otherwise this is a solid, extremely user-friendly security suite. (I'm basing that on a review of the 1.0 version I did many moons ago.)

The rebate deal is good until June 21, so you've got time to weigh the pros and cons. In fact, you can download the 90-day trial version if you want to take OneCare for a spin before ordering.

(via jkOnTheRun)

One of the nice things about using a notebook is that if there's a sudden power outage, you won't instantly lose your work. Desktop users aren't so lucky, which is why it's essential to plug everything into a battery backup (aka uninterruptible power supply). If the lights go out, you'll still have a few minutes in which to save your work and power down the machine safely.

Best Buy has a CyberPower battery backup on sale for $29.99. It includes six wide-spaced outlets, all of them surge-protected and three of them powered by the battery. The 240-watt backup promises between 8 and 20 minutes of runtime, depending on the power demands of your hardware. It also has a pair of phone/fax/modem ports to keep that gear from getting fried. CyberPower even backs your equipment with a $35,000 warranty. Battery backups can cost a pretty penny; here's your chance to get one on the cheap.

Are you making regular backups of your PC? Please, don't lie--it just embarrasses both of us. Don't tell me it's because you don't know how or you can't afford pricey backup software. Excuses don't pay the rent (or restore your data).

Buy.com has Norton Save & Restore 2.0, by all accounts a solid backup utility, for a mere $2.99 (shipped!) after a pair of mail-in rebates. Granted, one of them is a competitive upgrade, but just about any utility software qualifies: antivirus, antispam, firewall. You supply the proof of purchase (confirmation e-mail, a page from the manual, or even the CD itself), and Norton supplies the $20.

Save & Restore 2.0 can back up your entire hard drive or selected files and folders. It can also round up specific file types, like digital photos and MP3s. Computer Shopper rated it 7.0 (out of 10), the biggest knock being the price. That's hardly an issue now, right? Do yourself a favor and make regular backups, because hard-drive disaster isn't a matter of if, but when.

Symantec's Norton Ghost is a super tool for backing up your PC. The latest version, 12.0 (wow, is that like the first 12.0 version of anything, ever?), normally sells for $69.99, but you can get it free, kinda, from Buy.com.

You start out paying $50 (free shipping!), then get back a $30 Visa debit card as part of Rebate #1. To qualify for Rebate #2, a $20 Visa debit card, all you need is proof of ownership of just about any semi-related utility: "A stand-alone, retail (boxed or downloaded) version of any Norton or Symantec software or another company's antivirus, firewall, antispam, antispyware, utility, or backup software product."

That brings your total cost down to zero, as the debit cards are pretty much like cash. This deal's good from now until Saturday, December 1.

Whether you need extra space to store all that digital video you've been shooting or you're finally planning to start making regular backups (it's about time!), nothing beats an external hard drive. Just plug it in and you're good to go.

So, good news and bad news about the Vox 250GB drive: It's a 7,200-rpm screamer with USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces and a price tag of just $39.99, shipping included; but that price is after two mail-in rebates, and the deal is available today only. That means you better snag this puppy now, and be prepared to shell out $109.99 up front.

What's your feeling on rebate deals like this one? Too much hassle, or too good to pass up? Hit the Comments page and let me know what you think!

I may be cheap, but I'm not crazy enough to line up at 5 a.m. in the freezing cold on that glorious day known as Black Friday. Well, at least, not at the big-box stores. But I might just take a drive to Staples (how bad could the crowds be?) for a $79.98 Maxtor OneTouch 4 500GB. That's half a terabyte of external hard-drive goodness. And with the amount of digital video I'm shooting these days, there's never enough storage space.

Head to the aptly named BlackFriday.info for the full list of Staples' Black Friday deals, along with those of many other stores.