<Thanks for making that clear. Sounds like M$ missed the mark on backup!
What the heck good is backup on a laptop then?>
It's not their backup application. Microsoft has no backup app of its own.
The backup application included with XP is a lite version of Backup MyPC
distributed by Stomp Software and created by Veritas,
http://www.stompinc.com/index.phtml?stp
<Then one must have less than half the disk drive in use! Pretty screwy!>
Not necessarily. You really only need to back up your data, you should
have disks for your applications and operating system. Also, given the
price of hard drives today and the availability of external drives, even for
laptops, a user could easily come up with the necessary space.
<At least M$ left some market that.>
And that's the reason why the backup applet is not as full featured as you'd
like.
All that said, I'm not being an apologist. The third line in my signature
is proof enough of my feelings on the importance of a good backup. From the
days of Windows 3.1 and DOS, there's been a backup application included with
the operating system, albeit, third party but usually as full featured as
necessary. Given the mass market to which computers are now sold, it is
appalling to me that every computer is NOT sold with a full featured backup
application that could handle most needs of the common user including
backing up directly to CD and now DVD and disk spanning if necessary. And
it doesn't necessarily have to be included with the OS. PC manufacturer's
include all sorts of software bundles with their systems yet they often
leave out the single most important application they could supply the user,
a good backup application.