Carol, hopefully others will come along with their ideas so you can pick the best of the bunch that suits your style. I am like Randy and use Acronis True Image, mine is version 7, for my backups. You would need something similar for the initial backup. I got mine when Acronis made it a free offer for a while. The idea was to get us to use it then buy the upgrade, a nice ploy too but I have stayed with version 7 so far. Regarding the timed backups of your personal data you might consider creating one folder for your work with sub folders for each program you use rather than allow each to store their work where they want it. Then it is a simple matter of copying that folder with all it's sub folders to the external drive any old time your heart desires. Using the method I have described you will overwrite the previously saved data folder. You will be prompted to agree to overwrite so you then have a choice of renaming the folder if you want more than one copy of your saved work.

You are probably right about ME but whatever the reason it was a major headache. We kept 98 on our old computer until its demise a few years ago. Our other computer was 2000 and I didn't upgrade until XP2. For a non-tech, my workday is spent on my computer. I don't have time, nor knowledge to spend getting my computer to work nice with my software and settings, nor the funds to hire a tech. It took many hours to get everything working the way I needed and wanted. When I sit down at the machine, I need it to do what I want as my day is busy. My computer is networked with my other computer they work well together. I use remote connections from home and can work from here. XP is agreeable and familiar. It is so much more than 98 was. I remember all the 'restarts' and love the stability of XP. I think if I had gone from 98 straight to Vista I probably would enjoy Vista, although what I have seen and read about Vista doesn't inspire me enough to change. I hate MS Office 07. It was forced on me when I purchased this machine a year ago. Why they made the changes they did make no sense. It is non-intuitive and confusing to use. I have decided to stop using it and do all my work on my machine at work which still has 03. I can't express how angry I get each time I need to type a letter on 07. Hate it! At my age, I find computers frustrating enough, and don't want to add to it. I'll wait a few years, Jane

Bigger question is are you looking for backups or to transfer the files around? If you want backups, how privacy conscious are you? If you don't care about sharing your videos, there are literally dozens of cloud services that can store or back up your videos, some for free, some for a fee. Many of the backup services can also back up any files on your computer, and make them available to pretty much any other computing device, OS etc... If you're privacy concerned, make sure you have multiple local copies of any files you want to back up. Flash drives are great for transfers, i.e. temporary storage while moving files around. They're not great for archival, they do tend to fail with no warning at all. So either have 3 or more copies on different flash drives, or use a different backup method. There are lots available, again at all different price points. In any case, you want multiple copies. Here's where DVD-Rs are useful - they are write once, so they can't be accidentally erased, they now are very cheap, so you could have 20 or more for the price of a 4GB flash drive, and if stored in a cool dark place, usually last at least a couple years. There are more expensive archival ones that claim to last 70 years, though I'd probably still check every few years if I really cared about the data, if only to migrate to current formats if necessary.

That's the big question: How Much do you want to spend? What Game/Games is he looking on playing? What Processor is Required for that game/games? How much RAM is Required, I assume it's 8GB (Minimum)? I'm assuming that you need a 2GB Video Card for this game, right? Need to figure out what size Power Supply is needed and then buy from a reputable Manufacturer! For a Gaming Computer, I would recommend having one built or building it yourself. This way you can get exactly what you want, not the cheap part most Prefabs bring to the table. Although these days the major computer manufacturers do offer choices as to some of the components, but not all! For a Gaming Computer, don't skimp on the Power Supply! BTW, if he is Gaming online against others, he'll most likely want to play with a LAN Connection (Local Area Network) and not WiFi Connection. The LAN Connection will be much faster and will supply the speed at a more even rate than the WiFi Connection. For example: My Desktop LAN Connection got a Download Speed of 73.60 and an Upload Speed of 75.80. My Laptop with a WiFi Connection got a 38.60 Download Speed and a 48.90 Upload Speed. My Laptop has Better specs than my Desktop, but it really doesn't matter when talking about WiFi or LAN. If I would hook my Laptop up with a wired LAN Connection, I'd get right around the same speeds as my Desktop did.