Roger tries different computer programs with his system. And one of the consequences is that his computer or computers occasionally lose track of things. So, when sending him information it is a good policy to request a return “read notice.”

The following is a safer philosophy for doing this type of work.

I myself have three active computers. One is a large portable laptop. One is a small and highly portable netbook or notebook. And the third one is a tower computer that can be easily expanded with special cards and memory etc.

The one that I use for all of my Internet and earthquake forecasting work is a fairly expensive and powerful computer that is protected by virus programs that won’t let anything through. In fact I have to temporarily disable some of the virus control features when I want to do any Web site work.

Used computers are so cheap these days that I obtained the other two for less important and riskier experimental work. One of them was actually given to me for free by someone who purchased a new computer. And I use them to do any experimenting and development work. If either crashes nothing important is lost. And my forecasting programs, E-mail, and Web surfing programs keep running on my primary computer. I won’t even let the True Basic compiler that Roger and I use run on that computer.

Windows XP appears to be an almost ideal program for use on backup computers. It requires relatively little memory and does the most of the important things that Vista and Windows 7 do. And it is simple enough that it is fairly resistant to crashes. I use the free Zone Alarm firewall program with my backup XP computers for the times when they need to go on the Internet to get XP and Adobe Flash updates etc.