I'm not an IT pro. But, sometimes I get to play one at home (which is scarier than on TV). I'm always amazed when forced to dive deeply into the PC abyss at how things have changed with managing and maintaining desktop PCs and laptops. Let's just say that my skills have not kept up with the times... (vision of me bowing my hands and head to those of you that support desktop users out there!)

A tip of the hat goes to Colin for pointing me to www.knoppix.org. This CD-bootable distro of Linux is pretty sweet. After trying a bunch of tools to boot a completely toasted XP Pro laptop, Knoppix had me up and accessing the file system in less than 30 minutes. Very sweet. Very useful. And, only just a little ironic.

I'm sure many of you are turned onto this already. If not, you might want to check it out and keep a CD handy in your toolbox for emergencies.