Hi Danielle,
I think the easiest way to "backup" your stuff is to get an external hard
drive that connects to a usb slot on your laptop.
If you don't have a usb slot on your laptop, post again telling us that.
If you are running XP it will see and install the drive for you the first
time you plug it in.
If you haven't told applications to put data files somewhere else,
everything will be in
your "My Documents" folder somewhere, so all you have to do is "backup" your
my docs folder.
"Backup" just means copy it. There are software products to do this, and
more, but
I don't you don't need them if you are a "normal" pc user.
In addition to the my docs folder, you might want to backup your internet
bookmarks/favorites,
and also your email addresses/messages. The latter would depend on your
email client's peculiarities.
To backup the my docs folder, find the windows explorer icon, and click on
it. This is after
you have the external drive plugged in. It should be in the all progrmas
list: start, all programs
if you don't see it there, look in the accessories folder. accessories
should be in the list
of all programs. After you launch "windows explorer"
expland the "my computer" icon and click on the external drive. It will
open in the right hand pane,
and will probably be empty.
Then, all you have to do, is drag and drop the my documentss icon onto the
right hand pane.
Everything in that folder will then be copied to the external drive.
Mike