Nope, you're not alone.

Noone actively wants to use these buzzword technologies, save for the firms that sell them, and a few transnational corporations for whom it makes sense.

But the vast majority does not think about the matter very much. Instead people passively rely on the information they had been fed through advertisements. Hence the feeling that cloud or any other buzzword is useful.

Having just been through this, I realize that I should keep a log of the changes made to my main machine — I missed some. It all sounds very tedious but if one makes it a routine it's no worse than doing the dishes. When the crunch comes, you'll thank that previous you for spending an hour, then, to save you five minutes now.

-cranioscopical (July 01, 2011, 07:03 AM)

If we are really insistent on complete redundancy, why not buy two of the same machine, make them identical on, say, a weekly basis through an imaging program like clonezilla or ghost if you are feeling particularly and ridiculously rich?

Here is an interesting piece on surge protectors and connected equipment warranties. Worth to read.