Congratulations on your choice, and may you have many happy years of uninterrupted work and play! My first Mac was eight or nine years old before it began to fail (which it did slowly and gracefully, allowing me plenty of time to get the hard drive backed up. Its successors are all still working. I keep the G3 machine to run old software and use the G4 laptop to access internet etc. As that machine is now more than four years old, I have been looking out for ways to safeguard the thousands of lyric files and photograps I have accumulated. An external hard drive was my first choice, but I have also been scanning eBay recently to find something that would provide back-up should the lap-top fail. Various G4 processors are available, eMacs from £50, G4 Powermac tower units from £50-£100 and upwards, Mac Minis from £150-£200, any of which would be capable of doing anything the lap-top could manage.

I wasn't aware of the firewire method of linking computers, I shall give that a try tomorrow. An ethernet hub is a very cheap alternative.

For backing up smaller amounts of data, USB sticks are invaluable (and increasing in capacity all the time).

Good Luck!