Get a portable hard drive (i.e. "jump drive") at Best Buy and copy them onto that.

What about e-mail? Is that possible? I funnel my gmail through the Mac mail program.

If you just want a backup copy of you music, writing, etc., then get an external hard drive and copy your itunes library and "Documents" folder over to it.

If you want a true backup of your whole system (so you don't have to muck about with reinstalling everything if you end up needing to replace your hard drive), then get an external drive and use a hard drive cloning program (like this), making sure you format it as a "bootable drive" (which means you can run the computer off of the external drive alone).

Email works the same way. Just copy the mailbox folder over to the external drive.

I recommend an elaborate system of sticky notes.

Just don't be like Kerry -- she got her backup drive stolen at the same time as her laptop. For really important stuff, email yourself a copy, too.

Buy an external firewire hard drive for backup. If you have a Mac, use Super Duper. It's easy to make a fully-bootable copy of your hard drive on a regular basis with that. If you use Windows, well, sorry.

In you're willing to spend a few bucks on software, get an external Firewire or USB 2 drive (I recommend the high-capacity LaCie drives) and some decent backup software. I use ChronoSync, and I don't hate it. Alternately, just use Time Machine which comes with Leopard, now that I think on't.

Anyway, I have a backup job that syncs my home directory to the backup drive. The home directory includes all of your pictures, email, music, documents, preferences, etc. I used to sync the whole drive, but I realized I didn't need to, since I have or can easily acquire the installers for all of my software.

Superduper or Silverkeeper. I have ext. hard drives (LaCie) at work and studio so if a meteor blows one of them up I still have all my por.. I mean images.

I! Am! Beowulf!

-- Beowulf