The Wargamer

Introduction

Since computers have been around, crashes, failures, and complete meltdowns have been an unavoidable evil. Any Windows 9x user will know this computational fact-of-life all too well, and has likely experienced first-hand God-forsaken bugs like “Windows Protection Error,” which forced the user to completely reload Windows and slowly rebuild their entire driver retinue. Hours were frequently lost recovering from these crashes.

Over time, operating system technology improved and with this advance a drop in catastrophic system failure occurred. However, computer nuisances are far from a thing of the past as wargamers like ourselves are no doubt painfully aware. Today, the headaches and obstacles that plague regular, useful computing come in much less dramatic ways but they are nevertheless just as disconcerting. Things like substantial virus infection, file corruption, malware invasions, improper shutdowns, and accidental file deletion all strike even the most knowledgeable user. Few argue that the usefulness of a computer far outweighs the aggravation caused by dealing with an obstinate machine, but shouldn’t there be more protection for users against these modern-day inconveniences?

The folks over at Armor Card certainly think so, and to combat the aforementioned annoyances they’ve devised the Jackson Armor Card.

So what is an “Armor Card”?

The Jackson armor card is a tiny hardware device and driver that connects to any standard PCI slot on a computer. As the product’s name implies, the Armor Card provides a layer of protection against crashes, infections, accidental system damage, and other virtual maladies. The Jackson Armor Card backs up a system before loading the operating system so as to protect against any unfortunate events that may occur while using the protected machine. Even a serious driver conflict or complete system breakdown can be gracefully recovered by the Jackson Armor Card since it can reinstate a previous operating system configuration that worked. The premise of the card is not unlike that of the “Windows Restore” feature that Microsoft offers with Windows XP, but the Jackson Armor Card is much more than that. Because the card starts working just after the BIOS is initialized but before the operation system can kick in, all backing up, preservation, and protection takes place before any malicious or faulty software has a chance to mess everything up. Specifically speaking, the card contains instructions which tell the hard drive to backup any information or operating system data before any software on the drive is actually loaded. This can happen at a regular interval or on a manual basis. Due to compression and shortcuts, the Jackson Armor Card can save all of one's data without taking up an alarming high portion of a hard drive. Since the file backup takes place before any operating system is loaded, the card will work with almost any operating system, including Linux.

Installation and Documentation

Perhaps some of the more technologically timid readers of this review are a little put off that the card is hardware and that it has to be operated outside the comfy interface of an operating system. However, the engineers at Armor Card are way ahead of the curve in this regard. The directions supplied with the Armor Card are abundantly clear and, while certainly not as simple as installing a brand new strategy game, installation should not require any large amount of expertise to go smoothly (although it probably helps).

When attempting to install the card myself, I encountered a bump in the road called a “Fat Error.” Embarrassingly enough, this setback was entirely due to my failure to follow the directions but, more importantly, Armor Card’s substantial support page included a sizeable list of errors and mishaps that users would most commonly encounter with clearly articulated solutions for all of them. As it turns out, I forgot to defrag my hard drive with the Windows-supplied disk defragmenter. After letting the defragmenter work its magic for an hour or two, everything continued on smoothly. I was very impressed with how quickly and easily I was able to find my exact problem on the support page and solve the problem – a no doubt essential feature for users who are less technologically inclined.

Documentation on operating and troubleshooting the Armor Card was just as substantial as the installation support. Many of the initial questions I had were answered almost immediately by the brief instructions provided on the screen when in the card’s options screen, but anything I couldn’t figure out intuitively was amply explained on their website.