Autosave

My laptop battery has now reached a point where it cannot hold even for a second, and that requires the machine to be connected to the mains all the time. This works as long as it works, until there is a power failure. This happened recently and it was a reminder that things that we now take for granted were different only a few years ago. In those days, we were reminded to save our work frequently and for those unlucky ones who lost an hour or more of work, we would laugh at their plight.

Now, we don’t pay attention to saving frequently because:

• OS’s do not crash often
• Power supply is reliable because the battery on your laptop will give you enough warning before it drains out completely
• Most email clients will autosave your email drafts every few minutes
• Most text editors will save a recovery file that can be used for recovery

Recently, for some reason, I turned off the backup file in my Vim editor and realized how misguided that step was when I lost just 10 minutes of work due to a power failure (remember, my laptop battery cannot hold even for a second). Every single minute I spent reproducing the lost text, I kept saving the text while cursing to myself about what had just happened.

Of course, the solution is simple. Next week, I will find a replacement for the battery and just to be safe, have turned on the backup files in my Vim configuration. I hope to forget about having to repeatedly save files once again.