Yesterday was interesting to say the least. It as just another normal day, two 1-hour jobs, one of which was about 65 miles from home. About 20 minutes into the job the laptop's screen turned white and nothing was visible. No problem. Finished the job using just the keyboard and amp, didn't worry about the lyrics cause most are imbedded in the cobwebs of my mind, and the few midi files that were used were also stored on the keyboard's USB Thumb Drive as backup files.

The next job, which was 25 miles closer to home was only 90 minutes after the first job, therefore, the entire job was done without the aid of the laptop. Again, it was a 1-hour job, which most of us can do standing on our left ear and doesn't require a laptop unless you cannot remember lyrics at all.

Today, it was a 3-hour job, followed by a 1-hour job. For this I fired up the backup laptop, a Dell that I purchased about a year ago just in case the primary laptop failed. All the files were identical, and everything went very smoothly.

The bottom line is if you are doing this stuff for a living, you need backups. Tomorrow morning the primary laptop will go to the repair shop. If the repairs will be $100 or less, I'll tell them to fix the old one. If not, Dell is selling laptops for $499 and I will order one if the old computer fix is too expensive.

I'm a stickler for backups. I have a backup everything, and while I do not have a pair or Bose PAS systems, I do have the Z-5500 and a Motion Sound to fall back on if the Bose fails. Also have a spare PSR-3000, spare mics, cables, power packs, Digitech VR, and even a spare van. The only thing I do not have a spare for is my wife, (though it has been considered at times! ).

IMO, you just can't have enough spares!

Cheers,

Gary

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Travlin' Easy