Lately there have been programs in which online support is offered. This can be good or bad. The good is there are various programs you can choose from, and bad is you might choose poorly and get stuck with a worthless plan - which in long run will cost you more in time and money. Sometimes online support is a much more economical choice in getting help and support - because you can avoid an up-front service charge from a hands-on repair shop and often get enough information to fix something yourself. It won't work in all cases, but perhaps it will save you some money in many cases.

One online support company, for which I am a technician, at http://sisugal.supportfreaks.com is a good example of a program run correctly. People can ask a question and if it can be answered fairly quickly, there is no fee - this can include support via email, or chat, or phone. By chat or email, you can assess technician's capability before you end up requesting help from him/her. You will have opportunity to fund your support account - and then use it any time you need - no monthly requirements or outlay. There are over 1000 techies knowledgeable in nearly any capacity dealing with computers, Internet, peripherals, etc.

Major Earthquake - Those of us who live in California understand earthquakes. I've personally been through at least five significant quakes (6.8 or greater) without suffering any damage at all. In many people's mind, a major earthquake is disaster scenario.

One day "big one" will come (in California) and who knows what will happen at that time. In fact, my boss and I were able to convince CEO of our company to create a "hot site" (a duplicate site which is already ready to take over in event of a disaster) because of a recent significant earthquake.

One of first things that we did is contact Caltech (the experts on earthquakes) to commission a study to determine where we should place our disaster site. The primary criteria was that site be relatively close (within 50 miles) but on a different geologic plate so earthquake would not flatten both locations.

As we studied possibility of this disaster, we realized that building and computers might emerge from earthquake entirely intact, but infrastructure (power, phone lines and so forth) might be destroyed. In addition, a major earthquake is a unique disaster because it's more likely that your people will be in complete shock and more interested in their families and homes than in restoring your computer operations.

The thing to do here is be sure you've got infrastructure issues covered cold. This includes phones, power and network. Make sure you have a disaster site (or very good backups kept off-site) ready to go. Rehearse your disaster plan, and make sure your people know what to do.

Minor Earthquake - A minor earthquake might be easy to survive (we've been through several of them with no issues) and it might introduce some interesting quirks on it's own. The power might be out, phone lines might be down and take weeks to repair, and general infrastructure (roads, food shipments and so on) might be disabled. In addition, earthquakes tend to put people into a state of shock, so it might be difficult to get people to recover and get back to work.