dacs.doc electric

THOSE OF US who work daily with digital systems are all too familiar with the myriad problems with which we deal day after day. One can easily discern the truly heavy computer users by their characteristic "nervous twitch." You see, these people know all too well that disaster is imminent: At every click of the mouse there could lurk a nasty surprise; and it usually involves a fatal exception, fatal error, or the irascible "file not found."

Well folks, I have a way to fight back! That's right, when you have just saved that Word document, having deftly deleted all your charts, there is a way to GoBack. I have been using the software that sells by this name for a few months now, and it has given me a new sense of immunity. Having a Type-A personality, I have never had time to actually back up my data on my laptop. It only holds my business sales records, my e-mail for the past few years, all company correspondence for a like period, and just about any critical stuff you could imagine. Hey, I like to live on the edge! But now, I've taken a few steps back.

GoBack allows the user to step back in time-back to a time when all things were blissful-at least on your computer. If you load a new software program and it trashes a .dll file used by some other program, you can fix it. If you save a Word document and lose valuable data forever, you can GoBack and resurrect that file in the state it was before you altered it. If you contract a new virus and everything is wacky, you can GoBack to a healthier time. And for those times when only a computer nerd can only understand when your computer is really messed up, there is a way back.

This program keeps an image of your hard drive available for certain "safe points" during your computing days. When a problem occurs, you can simply invoke the terminate stay ready (TSR) program and select a cure for what ails you. If it's simply a wish to recover a file you mistakenly wrote over, just GoBack in time to a point which the original file was intact and copy it to a new file name. If you over wrote myletter.doc at 5 p.m. but you know that the file was OK at 3 p.m., turn the clock back to 3 p.m. and there's your file! That's all there is to it.

Suppose you install a new program. Sometimes you will find out a day or two later that some other unassociated program no longer works because its .dll file is corrupt or missing. This is often because the newly installed program's .dll file has the same name, and it overwrote the original. At this point I often start pulling hair-usually mine! No more. I simply tell GoBack to revert my entire hard drive back to, say, last Wednesday, about an hour before I installed that $%^@$%# new program.

Folks, these are superhuman powers I'm talking about! If you would like to get a good night's rest without having to fret about your mouse's goings-on during the day, get GoBack. Why, I actually feel I have a modicum of control over my computer now. That's a nice feeling, especially after years of it being the other way around!

The company says: "GoBack is an immediate, self-service solution to common PC problems, including system crashes, virus attacks, failed software installations, Y2K glitches, operator errors, and accidental data loss. PCs protected by GoBack can circumvent costly technical support by stepping back in time to a point when everything was okay. Because GoBack runs underneath the Windows operating system, it can restore a PC to working order even if Windows won't boot (no special disk is required). In addition, GoBack allows you to revert the entire hard drive to virtually any moment in the recent past--five minutes, five hours, even five days ago. You can also retrieve individual files or directories, even those emptied from the Recycle Bin."

For a free preview of GoBack, visit http://www.goback.com/products_gbs_preview.cfm on the Web.

System requirements: Microsoft(r) Windows 95 or 98 (GoBack does not run under standalone DOS or Windows 3.x). A version of GoBack for Windows NT/Windows 2000(r) is forthcoming. 486 or higher IBM or compatible PC. GoBack typically requires 10% of your hard disk space (user selectable). If you have less than 20% percent of your system hard disk available, GoBack will only use 50% of the available space. 16MB minimum RAM, 256-color VGA video or better; CD-ROM drive or equivalent from which to install GoBack, sound card optional (for GoBack movie). Cost is $69.95 purchased directly on the Web--a cheap price for insurance, don't you think? ;-)