I had to have a quiet chuckle when I read the following report on the BBC news website. I'll say! Never mind businesses, I think half of us wouldn't survive. Having lost all internet access for two days over a weekend recently, I was just about a basketcase by Monday. <g>

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A week without e-mail is more traumatic than moving house or getting divorced, say techies.
The findings come in a survey of information technology managers for the software storage firm Veritas which looked at how businesses have become dependent on e-mail.

Electronic mail is playing such a key role in companies that most people start to get annoyed after just 30 minutes without e-mail access, the study found.

But spare a thought for the techies in computer support. About a fifth feared for their jobs if they did not get the e-mail system back up and running within a day.

More than 800 techies in Europe and the Middle East were quizzed about the role of e-mail for the survey.

"E-mail has become far more than a communication tool, placing a huge responsibility on organisations to ensure that e-mail is always available," said Mark Bregman of Veritas.

"When information technology managers fail to keep the systems running, they inhibit the ability of the entire organisation to conduct business."

On the positive side, 99% of companies regularly back up e-mail and attachments.

But finding a specific message among thousands is trickier.

About half of the managers quizzed said it would be difficult to locate and retrieve a particular e-mail on the system.

And tracking down an old message could be virtually impossible. Only a fifth said they could recover an e-mail from further back than a year.

According to Veritas, the survey shows "alarming deficiencies in current e-mail system management and backup and recovery methods, placing businesses at risk and causing undue stress in the workplace."

And when something goes wrong with e-mail for a week, the experience can be more traumatic that moving home, getting married or divorce, at least for a third of those taking part in the survey.

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LabRat

It's true, it's true! Some of you will remember, last fall, my area was hit by a devastating ice storm. We didn't get power back for five days, and didn't get the cable (modem!) back for another two days after that. While all the power was out, I was fairly okay -- but once the power was up but the Internet connection wasn't, I started going crazy I'd have signed onto AOL if only my computer still had a regular modem! I think I was making plans to visit my husband's office, or a friend's house, just so I could check the boards...

Boy, was I glad to get back online!

PJ

LOL, thanks for posting that, Rat. I have to say it's true. I'm on day 1 of the "no chat, no movies, no games, and no music" ban at work, and frankly, I'm already starting to twitch. If only it weren't so darned quiet....

I have a slightly different take on the issue of email dependency from the viewpoint of someone who runs his own email server. Because I'm not an ISP nor do I have the resources of one, I run a single server which is at the mercy of crashes just like any other server.

If it goes down, I don't have redundant backups and such so I have to manually reboot the machine to get it back up and running.

This becomes difficult when I'm not at home. If I'm at work, for instance, I may have to go all day without personal email. That's tough. I've been out of the country, as well, when it's gone down. Imagine going weeks or a month without personal email. On my last trip out of the country, I had to ask a neighbor if she could go reboot my server for me. She would eventually get to our house in the next several days.

I still have my work email, but I don't use that for personal correspondence.

Once you get addicted to Internet, if you HAVE something to do and you're not just looking around, missing it is really terrible.

On Thursay we're going to go to some friends' house for a 4-day vacation away from Athens. Believe me, I'm REALLY not looking forward to leave my PC and you guys here. Not at all!
(And the fact that the girl of the family is not exactly a pleasant company makes it even worse...!)

What can I say?
I swear to God, when I'll have financial independence, the first thing I'm going to buy is a laptop!!

See ya.
AnnaBtG.

Have a safe and fun trip, Anna! We'll miss you too!

LabRat