Save Early! Save Often!

How many times do you think people need to be told this when working with computers?... especially windows software....

At around 4:59pm today a guy from work got a email containing a joke spreadsheet, so after opening the email then the attachment, said guy has had enough and closes the spreadsheet joke and of course is then shown the do you wish to save this really really important document that you've worked on all day dialog, in a moment of denseness he just clicks no, not actually reading the prompt and hence loses a days worth of unsaved work, then starts whining and moaning about the fact that he has fucked up.

I do have sympathy for him because many a Microsoft product has eaten my work, but there is only so much a software company can do. If you are not going to save and backup your work then you are just asking for trouble. Yes MS office could be more people aware and save automatically from time to time. Then give you methods of retaining that work, with something like a history in a browser sort of setup, but as I said there is only so much they can do. It's not going to help in the case of hardware failure or natural disaster. Consider this your natural disaster warning. Save early. Save often.