mi-scha I've got XP on my new VAIO. When it comes factory installed on a new PC from a major brand name vendor, they take care of the activation at the factory. I chose an external hard drive for backup. Bought an external firewire enclosure, popped a (formatted) 120 Gig Western Digital in it. - Works flawlessly so far. Reviewed 12-15 software apps for backup. Settled on InSync Directory Syncronizer. (Shareware, downloaded from ZDNet, & registered online after about 2 days of testing). Once configured, it copies all your chosen folders to the backup drive. Once they're there, every time it runs, it adds any new files, deletes any that've been deleted from the original, and updates any that have changed. With the firewire drive, it works pretty quickly for updates. Was this the info you wanted?