Need a reasonable windows laptop

[308Mike]

The outlook files should be part of the user's directory in Windows... Just not in My Documents. IIRC they are in %username%/outlook/

Typically a backup of just personal files in Windows will copy the whole user directory not just My Documents.

It probably is all in one location at least with Windows 8 (hopefully, not having a Windows 8 machine and Outlook installed, I haven't examined a machine to see where they are now putting the PST and WAB files plus Outlook Express files). If my neighbor get a Windows 8.1.1 machine, he'll probably let me poke around in it to see where all those data files reside.

Should be the case for XP and 7 too

Not for XP, at least you can specify the location of your PST files in Outlook, but the default is not in My Documents. Outlook 2007 would normally put the PST files in the default location of: C:\Documents and Settings\(PROFILE NAME)\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. The WAB file is located: C:\Documents and Settings\(PROFILE NAME)\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book, and the OE IDX files are located in another place. If you weren't aware of these locations and backing up just your data, you'd completely miss your email files - unless you or someone else modified the PST file locations.

[mekender]

Which is why any good backup will backup the user profile directory and not JUST the My Documents directory, which is what I said earlier... My Documents also does not typically include your desktop, downloads and other things too.

[308Mike]

Which is why any good backup will backup the user profile directory and not JUST the My Documents directory, which is what I said earlier... My Documents also does not typically include your desktop, downloads and other things too.

Unfortunately, if you grab the entire profile, you'll also get a whole lot of other crap too. Most people doing data only backups know to also grab the Desktop too - and if you're using Firefox, their default downloads location is also located in the My Documents directory. I also have data scattered off the root of the drive, but I know what's there and which ones I want to save. It's all about knowledge & education of the user and the person setting up and/or performing the backups. I don't have available space to make full image backups of our laptops (eventually we'll get a couple of multiple terrabyte drives for our backups). Right now, our largest drives are 500GB, and my laptop is 7-8 years old (company's old Dell Lattitude). I either manually grab my data files, or use Karen's Replicator (GREAT tool!!).

[BDK]

So, is there a reason HP is so much cheaper than Dell?

I looked at the tough books, but if I want to spend that much, I will buy another Mac.

I'm debating about getting a tablet for travel/personal use, and a larger laptop for work.

What about a "portable desktop"? For security reasons, I want to have the computer encrypted, and will be taking it with me from work to home every day. (I would have to carry the drive, one way or another.)

Would it be practical to run everything off a solid state portable hard drive?

[Weetabix]

What if you set up the SSD with an operating system on it and the machines at each location were set up to boot from the USB connection?

[Greg]

What if you set up the SSD with an operating system on it and the machines at each location were set up to boot from the USB connection?

Doing that with any kind of portable bootable media - CD/DVD/USB thumb drive, etc - is very old hat.

[BDK]

So... I'm not a tech guy, as you may have gathered, how would I go about buying a system set up to work that way?

[Weetabix]

What if you set up the SSD with an operating system on it and the machines at each location were set up to boot from the USB connection?

Doing that with any kind of portable bootable media - CD/DVD/USB thumb drive, etc - is very old hat.

Are you saying that a) everyone in the world does it, so it's not a new idea, b) that's a dumb idea, so go away while the grownups talk, or c) something else?

[Greg]

What if you set up the SSD with an operating system on it and the machines at each location were set up to boot from the USB connection?

Doing that with any kind of portable bootable media - CD/DVD/USB thumb drive, etc - is very old hat.

Are you saying that a) everyone in the world does it, so it's not a new idea, b) that's a dumb idea, so go away while the grownups talk, or c) something else?

I'm saying that people have been doing that since there were bootable cd-roms. (The idea goes back even further with customized boot floppies, but those were too limited to be general-purpose they were really just specialized rescue tools.) It's an old idea and there's lots of information on doing it out there as well as a number of pre-packaged solutions. There are entire Linux distro's designed to be run off of portable media, without ever actually being 'installed' onto a computer, for instance.

It's also not particularly hard, but it's probably something you're going to want to customize for your own needs and preferences.

[Weetabix]

I've created and used bootable CD's and flash drives before, but those seem more limited use.

I hadn't thought of a bootable external SSD until he mentioned the SSD. I'm sure it's been done lots, but it seems to me that with SSD's getting more affordable and given their speed and size, it might be practicable for the non-geeks by now.