[My first take on seeking redemption in puppy-land, but curb your canine queries. I'm not a goo.roo!]

With more than a decade of experience in IT and computers, I've had my share of adware, malware and virus-related agony and pain. I've camped at the safe boot for weeks-on-end recovering from unrelenting BSDs. And I have tried one solution after another to get things going.

Regardless of what my suffering was, my hard disks were always quietly gentle, even to the point of OEM restores. This is the first time my laptop died with a whirring, squeaky and noisy hard disk. Everything seemed be nice and calm, there were no warning signs but suddenly a month ago it crashed one night.

Anyway past is past, what do I do?

I now had a dead laptop and a live Nokia n73 cellphone with Internet but no way to get online from my laptop.

Well yes, my n73 did help me download loads of ISO's of live cds, some good, some dud. I could  burn cds and boot up to a mini-xp shell and also to an excellent tiny Linux distro, but in both cases, my n73 wouldn't let me dial the Internet through the phone modem to get the Internet connectivity which I desperately need for my digital survival. The windows live cd I tried, which is probably the only one of its kind, with its absolutely indispensable recovery tools just won't run the Nokia PC Suite so I could go online. The Linux live cd,  a tiny little Linux powerhouse had everything I needed except Internet connectivity. I wrestled with PPP, PPPOE and Wvdial day after vexing day, night after desperate night, downloading ISOs on my cellphone, burning cds and attempting to boot and connect  but always failing.

Anyway, after hundreds of hours and my patience nearing its limits, I found the Puppy route to laptop revival. What an awesome puppy!

I burned the Puppy Wary 5.3 ISO,  started the boot process not completely devoid of a lurking cynicism and couldn't believe my eyes when the screen came alive and carried the boot process through to completion, just seven clicks from start to the two "woof"s. I saw the welcome screen, the connect button on top-right, followed instructions mechanically and was online within a minute or two!

YES, it's true!

The amazing pupdial probed and discovered my modem, configured it, dialled and dropped me on the www like clockwork. My relief was so huge because my earlier attempts to configure ppp and wvdial were so pointless. I only had to enter the phone number of my dial up connection and the access point to get connected, so unbelievable!

This puppy, Wary 5.3 is the name, is a true hero, it's like a miracle to me.

So, is your hard disk dead, can't boot up and get online?

Take the puppy Linux route to online survival. Download and try Puppy Wary 5.3.

But be warned, it worked for me, your mileage may "WARY"!