One of the perks of being a guide is getting great tips from readers. One of the best tips I have ever received concerned Roxio's GoBack program. After hearing raves for it over and over again, I finally decided to take a look. After a very short trial run, I realized I could never Go Back - as in never go back to not having GoBack on my system.

Roxio, the same folks who brought us Easy CD Creator, modestly portray GoBack as a program that "delivers quick and easy system recovery, giving users the power to instantly undo serious PC problems and greatly reduce downtime and service calls." It is the understatement of the year. GoBack is a sanity saver. Always a bit cautious about testing unknown software on my main computer, GoBack has turned me into an intrepid adventurer unafraid of even the most gnarly beta code. If something goes awry, I simply let GoBack take me back in time to a pre-testing, pre-crashed state.

From an antivirus standpoint, GoBack is a great tool for removing infections. Simply revert the drive back to moments before you opened that email attachment in delirious anticipation of something great just to experience that sinking "oops" feeling. In fact, GoBack can recover from nearly all types of viral disasters, allowing you to choose to revert directly from the GoBack console or during bootup. GoBack also allows you to retrieve individual files and, according to the manufacturer, can even recover drives left unbootable - without the use of a rescue disk. This latter feature was not tested. My faith in GoBack is strong, but my tendency to protect my computer is stronger. However, I did encounter a buggy software installation that left my system unable to load Windows. Where I might have been left desperately cleaning up in safe mode, I simply chose the Revert option that GoBack presents during the boot sequence and calmly sipped my coffee while GoBack took care of the problem. When it was done, it was as if the offending software had never been there. And indeed, thanks to GoBack - it hadn't.

GoBack works transparently in the background, monitoring and logging all actions that affect the hard drive. System "Safe points" are created, allowing a range of choices if recovery should be necessary. For example, application installation trigger safe points, as do system bootups. Periodic time lapses will also trigger the creation of a safe point. Any of these may be chosen as the revert time and may be accomplished from the console or during bootup. Of course, all this recovery takes a bit of storage to accomplish. Roxio recommends ten percent of the drive be allocated for GoBack's use. Ten percent is a small price to pay for total peace of mind.

GoBack supports any Pentium-class PC running Windows 95, 98, Me, Windows NT4 Workstation/2000, or Windows XP.