RSS feeds and computer issues

I have come to LOVE RSS Feeds. For those of you who are unfamiliar with these, basically it is a way you can sign up to be updated from your favorite websites through Really Simple Syndication (RSS). The headlines from those websites are posted and you can click on links to take you to the rest of the article. I have signed up for these feeds for my favorite blogs and even news websites. It helps me feel more connected without trying to figure out where to go and when. I find I'm saving a lot of time now that I don't have to click on someone's blog every so often to see if they've posted.

But I am a little frustrated (yet there is hope). I am currently writing this blog entry on my desktop, which is the computer I use for work. My laptop was something I purchased originally to use as a writing computer. I updated the RAM modestly, but never expected to use it nearly as frequently as I had been. With the modest RAM on my laptop making that computer run far smoother than my desktop, it quickly became my favorite computer. But in order to work from home on the desktop, I had to upgrade my RAM on here, so my desktop is now running as smoothly as my laptop (or more smoothly, actually, despite the vastly greater storage on it). Anyway, a while back (probably several months ago), my desktop stopped connecting to the Internet wirelessly. I thought there might be a problem with my wireless card, but since I had a wireless USB adapter that Joe purchased for my desktop, I used that to still be able to connect to the Internet without having to plug my computer into the router.

At one point in time I contacted HP support. I spent quite some time on the phone with them. I tried removing and re-inserting the wireless card. Eventually, after exhausting ideas with them, we decided to send my old wireless card in and have it replaced since my laptop was still under warranty. Unfortunately, that didn't help. The odd thing is that on occasion, the computer WOULD recognize the wireless card, allowing me to take out the USB adapter for the time being. But once the computer turned off, I lost that wireless connection through the wireless card yet again.

Just the other day, I received an email from HP. Apparently this issue was not just one I was having. In fact, they are offering free service repairs for people who are experiencing one of 3 different issues (the issue I'm experiencing is one of those three issues). I guess they're going to replace the motherboard. So, I have to send in my laptop for repair. They're going to do a system recovery. Now, I'll be happy if everything is resolved by this repair. However, I will be losing all the miscellaneous things I have saved on that computer from songs to documents to my RSS Feeds and bookmarked websites. Bummer. That's going to be more work for me to do when I get the computer back. I just have to make sure I've backed up everything on the computer before I send it out and make sure I know what RSS Feeds I'm subscribed to so I can still get those updates. I definitely don't want to be out of the loop.

If anyone has any suggestions on ways to back up this information and clean off my computer before I send it in for repair, I'd love to hear those ideas (that means you, Dad). We do have an external hard drive and some thumb drives, so I can use those in transfer/storage of information.

Also, if you have a blog and do not have RSS Feeds enabled, I'd love for you to consider it, even if you don't have your entire blog syndicated, just so I'm aware when you post. :)

And if you have any other feedback, I'd love to hear it!

Thanks!