Let’s just say I was very lucky that the computer technician was able to breathe enough life into the desktop (the hard drive was dying) and I was able to backup everything, and transfer to a new laptop.

There are several online backup services available. If you don’t wish to use one (maybe you have dial-up) then there are portable hard drives that are reasonably priced. I have one that is 300GB and I will be backing that up to DVD.