• Always have a spare PC.
• Use more than one vendor for your PCs.
• Always network your PCs together.
• If you access the Internet use a hardware firewall.
• Among your backup options should be a DVD/CD burner.

Small Office and Home Office (SOHO) Computing with Window-Intel PCs (or in geek parlance - a wintel box)

First, a bit of caution: always have at least one backup box (PC) that is reasonably equivalent to your main PC. You'll sleep easier at night. Or more generally, in the SOHO environment have an extra box, e.g., for five workers in an office have six boxes. The extra PC can also be the office server as long as its data is backed up to at least one other PC in the office.

Further, if possible use a different vendor for at least one of your boxes. For instance, if you are buying off the shelf and most of your boxes are from Dell, have at least one from someone else - say Gateway. Once you have your off-the-shelf boxes, install an additional hard drive in each from a different vendor e.g., if the Dell boxes come with Maxtor hard drives then add a Western Digital drive large enough to backup the other drive and then some. If you can accomplish this during the order / configure process do it then.

On the other hand if you are rolling your own and most of your motherboards are from Asus then one of them should be from someone else, say Tyan. And of course each box should have at least two hard drives of similar capacities but from different vendors.

Always network your boxes for ease of communication and backup. If you access the Internet always use a hardware firewall. Linksys, Netgear and D-Link all sell inexpensive but adequate hardware switch/NAT-router firewalls. Invest in a network laser printer. Do not waste your time with inkjets for BW printing. Do not waste your time on USB printers. For security's sake do not use wireless routing. Run CAT6 wires for your networking. If that is utterly impractical make sure that your WiFi is completely secured and buttoned down. Most aren't.

At least one PC on the network should have a good, fast DVD/CD burner. Backup to your backup box's hard drives but also burn critical data files onto CDs. Once in a while backup entire drives to DVDs.

One other point: if you are in retail, always have at least two voice lines (not including fax) that are configured at your local telco CO to hunt (if one line is busy it will automatically go the second, no matter which of your voice line numbers the caller dialed). If you don't receive a great many faxes, use the fax line for outgoing calls.

You might also want to investigate one of the virtual, online PBX services such as Got Virtual Mail (GotVMail.com).