I’ve been battling my computer for two days. At this point, it’s amazing I haven’t taken a sledgehammer and smashed it to smithereens. It all started bright and early Tuesday morning. After breakfasting on my deck while I scrolled through email on my laptop, I headed to my office to fire up my trusty desktop PC. I won’t say it’s old, well, yes I will . . . it’s old, but it’s always been reliable. For editing purposes, I like the big screen and easy accessibility of a desktop. Plus, as my primary computer, it’s where I store all of my files, including — and this is important — all correspondence related to the production of Global Traveler. The key word in that last sentence is “correspondence.” For years, I have been happily filing information received via email in designated folders in my Outlook Express program. (Those of you in the know will have just uttered a collective “Oh No!”) The problem with storing folders in Outlook Express is, as I learned the hard way this week, that you can’t back ’em up. Actually, I sort of realized this important fact a couple of weeks ago when, during the process of backing up my desktop in anticipation of its pending retirement (I had already purchased a new computer, but was waiting for a “good” time in our production cycle to set it up and do the file transfer), I couldn’t figure out how to back up OE. There’s a reason for that: It can’t be done. I didn’t realize that at the time, so I backburned the OE back-up, figuring I’d try again when I had more time. I’ll cut to the chase. Bill and his fellow tech gurus at Computer VIP in my hometown, Weymouth, Mass., fixed my old computer, so I have regained access to my OE files. I also set up my new desktop, a bright and shiny Mac, but I won’t be able to transfer my old OE files to the new computer. So, my oldie-but-goodie is sitting right beside the Mac where I can access it to proceed with production of the November issue. And for the next several weeks, I will gradually be emailing my most important OE files to myself at my Gmail address where I will be able to download them and save them to a real folder on my new computer. Technology is great. No doubt about it. But I can’t help thinking how much easier all of this would have been if I had filed all my data in old-fashioned manila folders! — Lisa Matte, editor in chief