I am an unabashed fan of Seagate's Replica, the automatic backup device so simple a chimp could operate it.  What I didn't know when I wrote the original glowing review was that the software that drives the Replica, that makes it easy to use and incredibly powerful, was licensed from a company called Rebit and that the software is available from them so that you can use it with any drive.

Replica from Seagate has quietly revolutionized the backup business for PCs. There are few products that receive “Must-Have” status, but no PC should be running today without a Replica backup system attached. It is cheap, simple to operate, and nearly foolproof. Replica not only backs up you documents – it provides complete image restoration if your computer is hit by virus or hard disk failure!

Note taking was was a problem that plagued my career as a student. "The five principle causes of the Civil War were..." would intone my professor. While I was writing I was also thinking about what was being said and invariably I'd end up with four of the five causes. If I had the Livescribe Pulse digital pen I wouldn't have had the problem. You see, as you take notes with your Pulse it is also digitally recording what is being said as an audio file.