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Anything that creates a mapped drive, such as the the dropbox client, will let you move folders as well as files.

Caveat: Keep in mind you are depending on any ‘cloud’ service to do 2 things:

1. Keep your stuff safe from hackers, viruses, etc.

2. Stay in business, or, conversely, not decide suddenly decide to monetize their service by holding your files for ransom.

That said, I advise – well, badger – all my clients to set up off-site backup. This works the other way around, too; If you keep your stuff on a remote server, back it up locally. There are many free programs that will do this for you automatically. E.g., Goodsync. Lastly, you can keep your stuff on a your main pc, and backup to a flash drive. Just store it in a different building than the one your computer is in.

Microsoft has a history of dumping software. Most recently, they abandoned their accounting program, and didn’t bother to provide an exit plan for existing users. So now you want me to trust them with my data? Don’t think so…

But as others have pointed out, it’s really a generic issue: You’re trusting a corporate entity to stay in business, keep you data secure, and actually be able to deliver your backup if you need it.

All that said, I do recommend these services to smaller clients with non-sensitive data, but only as a third level backup. For sensitive data, I recommend a NAS at home or other office, with a hardware vpn connection.

I also generally recommend uncompressed, individual file backup, as this eliminates two more potential points of failure.

I hate Photoshop: It’s slow, expensive, and, as mentioned, mind numbingly painful to learn. It’s like the programmers were competing to see who could come up with the most obtuse UI.

My choice? For five years, I’ve been using Xara Extreme. This easily does 99% of what photoshop does, is able to use most of the photoshop plugins, is incredibly fast, even with 60MB files, and by comparison, extremely easy to use. I’ve had a several clients who are Photoshop pro’s switch after trying Xara. Fairly painless, as it also imports/exports to .EPS & .PSD.

Oh, and the whole thing is $249. (If you do not need pantone and color sep tools, the the non-pro version is a measly $89.)

Hi Melanie,

If you’re enjoying the learning curve here, by all means, keep going. If not, you may want to consider wiping and reloading your machine, so you can get on with things.

First, though, make sure you’ve checked all the hardware; test your CPU, RAM, and try taking the router out of the loop, as suggested (I’d uninstall the belkin software, too; I’ve had problems with almost every belkin device I’ve run into). There are lots of free tools for doing these things, e.g., Ultimate Boot CD. If you can’t swap out the power supply to check the output stability, you can do it with a cheap multi-meter. (However this is a very unlikely culprit; power supplies usually just fail completely.)

Good luck!

–Mark