When your hard drive finally crashes, you’ll regret not having a recent backup of your hand histories, photos, electronic statements, and MP3s. But backing up onto CD-Rs or DVD-Rs is a pain in the ass and an environmental disaster. And while a month-old snapshot is better than nothing, why not work off the latest version of your files?

The most convenient way to perform back-ups is to use another hard drive. With a second hard drive, you can use a program like Second Copy to perform daily automated back-ups of the files you want to preserve without having to insert blank media 72 times. There’s a deal for a 250GB Seagate internal hard drive at Fry’s Outpost.com — only $69.99 after rebate, which is 1 cent per GB cheaper than the Seagate I bought back in July.

I’m tempted to get it myself, but I actually already have an external hard drive I use for back-ups, and I think I’m about to spend a lot of money on a clutch repair job.

Back when I was putting together my poker machine, I asked Glasstrack for tips on the hot deals in components. The prices were good then, but some of them have gotten even better.

Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Elite Keyboard w/Tilt Mouse Combo

Purchased: 3B Tech.net

Price (after tax, s/h, rebates): $53.00 Now only $19.89!!! Crazy.

Ben’s Bargain Center has the scoop on the 24″ 1920×1200 Dell Widescreen LCD for $780 shipped. If that’s more screen than you need, Ben’s also got info on the 20″ widescreen ($395) and the 19″ regular aspect ($276). The latter two, however, aren’t quite big enough for four-tabling. Now that Party’s letting you open 10 tables at once, you really should pick up two of the 24 inchers.

Fry’s Electronics, the legitimate face of Outpost.com’s evil empire, has a great deal on Polk Audio R30s:

One speaker goes for only $49.98. Limit two per customer. You can probably pick up these babies at most of the CA Fry’s locations, but you’ll want to act quickly, since Polk Audio has decided to discontinue this and the R50. Call ahead to make sure your local store has them. Burbank’s got at least 40-50 of them.

By comparison, etronics has the speakers selling for $199.95 per pair. Even if it weren’t double the price, I’d probably shy away from etronics just because the name. I mean, like… what? So they shortened “electronic electronics” to “etronics?” Pffbt.

Anyway, I picked up a pair this afternoon and canceled my Outpost order this evening.

Outpost.com has a great deal on Polk Audio R15s:

One pair goes for only $49.98. Ground shipping to my office starts at $18.72/pair; additional pairs get a price break on the shipping. By comparison, J&R (who has bad-ass customer service) has the same speakers for $89.88, which is also a good price, but obviously not as good as Outpost’s.

Note: Stay away from microuse_stores. They offer the speakers for $38.95, but they’re just an Amazon affiliate. If you go to the Amazon Marketplace, a sketchy company is selling the R15s for $38.95 per speaker, saying that they must be ordered in pairs. But none of this is obvious if you go through the microuse shill link, which takes you directly to the Amazon cart.

Oh, and J&R rocks because they offered me an additional $10 off per pair for speakers that had already shipped!