In Praise of the Cloud


After having put Fedex and HP down in a couple blogs I thought I ought to say something good about a company. After the external hard drive crashed last October and then the computer service tech I took it to erased the hard drive on my desktop I signed up for the Carbonite Cloud. It is an ethernet back up service that takes the worry out of backup.

I am an artist and I admit for losing complete track of time about backing up my computers. Or loading photos into my FlickR account. With the cloud I just have to be on line and anything new I post is backed up. And I can be on any device to access the cloud and pluck down information. I first used it when I had forgotten to download a file from my desktop to my laptop before taking off to a fair. Then again when the desktop failed yet again. I bought a new computer and upon receipt of it could immediately get the backupped data from the cloud and put it on the new one.

Now my desktop (still under warranty with HP) has failed and just before a couple exhibitions I want to enter or need to print photographs for. The 7-10 working days for repair is already past 6 and the computer is still in my living room because HP forgot to include the shipping label in the late arriving Fedex box. It won't even go to repair until tomorrow if Fedex delivers the label on time. Day 8. So I have been into the cloud more than once and no doubt will go there again.

Carbonite just reminded me that my backup on the desktop is a week late. I replied that Charley VII was broke again and received back a very nice e-mail from them offering a link for downloading the data from my sick computer when fixed and an 800 number to call if I had any problems with that.

I was amazed they had an e-mail that was not a noreply one like Fedex and HP. So right on Carbonite. I could not have made it through this year without you.

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