You should take a look at Acronis True Image there's a subscription where you can add Cloud Storage if you want, I use it for local backups only to an external drive and it has worked great the 2 times I had to recover data (one time the full System and other time only some files)

Should run on the PRO version!, the question is...will the keyboard be up to the challenge? don't know about you but when the time comes to code...the keyboard is REALLY important for me :)

Yes sir, your words are wise, you're welcome!

"about W8 and how it is so different than W7, gets rid of the desktop, etc" Ive been using Win 8 for a couple months now, the desktop is still there and that's where I spend most of my time, what is different from win7 is the new metro apps that run outside the desktop (think of the desktop as an app) and the start screen (which is kinda cool once you get used to it) "I do desktop engineering applications using WinForms and there is no way that these could be done on a tablet or smart phone, because there just isn't enough screen space to show everything." Agree with you, the new metro design thing its probably not for this kinds of applications but we should probably look at the problem of our own design ideas (after years of designing windows forms changing the whole layout of things its kinda hard to imagine but not impossible) the metro apps really give you a greater user experience than a desktop app "Turning the system into web apps seems to be out of the question for various reasons, including the massive amounts of data that would need to be transferred, high compute performance needs, and data security concerns." Ive been developing metro apps and they are far from being "web apps" they run locally like a desktop app would. I think this is a big shift from what we are all used to but I believe that as a developer I shouldn't close myself to new ways of doing things, probably the new metro design stuff and philosophy its not right for your apps but then again...I think the desktop is dying and if you stick with it...well...you're not gonna die but your opportunities probably will.