It's not that I don't think catastrophe will strike my trusty little iBook. It has -- a couple of times -- with expensive results. (You'd think I'd have learned from the countless lost papers, assignments and various assorted stuff over the years. You'd also think the horror stories I heard during my stint as an Apple Tech Support Specialist would have sunk in. Maybe I secretly do think I'm immune to computer catastrophe.)

The first time it happened, I was in the middle of a big project, helping a friend on a tight deadline. All of a sudden, my computer went kaput. Hard-core kaput.

Of course, I hadn't backed up a thing. I hit the restart button and heard what is commonly referred to in the Mac world as the chimes of death. Panic set in. (If you're a Mac user and have heard those tones, you know the feeling.)

I took my beloved iBook (nicknamed Nahla) to the shop. Turns out they had to send the computer home to Cupertino for a new motherboard. Badness was abounding.

I purchased an external hard drive and asked the shop techs to back up what they could. Turns out they got pretty much everything. Crisis averted.

With my new external hard drive, I swore I would be religious about backing up my computer. And I was. For about a month.

Everything skated along fine until a couple of months ago, a couple of weeks after the warranty on the new motherboard expired (of course).

Chimes of death. And when I finally could get it to start, the screen was black.

I could hear the comforting whir of the hard drive, so I knew my stuff was in there -- somewhere. With a blank screen, I just couldn't see it. And because I couldn't see it, I could get at it, which means I couldn't back it up.

Back at the shop, I was told my well-traveled Nahla would be taking another trip to beautiful Cupertino. Had I backed up everything I needed?

The guys knew I had an external hard drive. After all, I'd purchased it from them not terribly long ago.

I endured their reproachful looks as I admitted that I had not backed up. I gave them my external drive so they could do it -- for a fee, of course. The box was dusty.

The backup went just fine and I again thanked the computer gods for sparing me certain digital death and reaffirmed my pledge to be a good backer upper.

I didn't even make it a month this time.

I don't know why. Backing up to an external hard drive isn't difficult or even terribly time consuming. But with a laptop, it can be a little inconvenient. I mean you have to haul out the drive, hook it up, plug it in find a place for it. I know. I know. It's way tough.

That's when it hit me. I have a broadband connection. Why not try online storage? Brilliant idea!

The thought was about as far as I got. That and a couple of Google searches with mental sticky notes to check out the sites later.

I haven't had another computer catastrophe ... yet. (I so don't want to tempt fate here.)

But I did have another problem. I was trying to send a friend an image file, but even compressed, it was too big.

Enter DivShare.com. Two birds with one server. Actually, they probably have several, but you get the idea.

DivShare is a free (free!) file hosting and sharing service.

Created and run by the good folks at Diversion Web Publishing, a Web design and hosting company, DivShare bills itself as "the Internet's new virtual hard drive," and promises "unprecedented freedom and simplicity."

They just might be right.

DivShare, which opened its servers in on Dec. 18, 2006, is wicked easy to use. (Easy enough, I think my techno-challenged sister could do it.)

You have a couple of options -- sign up for a free account or don't.

An account is not required unless you want to track your files or make them private. There are some other benefits, too, but I'll get to that later.

If you just want to upload a file (or two or three or 100) to share, there are three and a half little steps.

1. Choose your file. (Click the "Upload Multiple Files" link to upload up to four files a time.)

2. Enter the e-mail address of person (or people) with whom you are sharing. (If you're not signing up for an account, make sure to include your own e-mail address in the list.)

2 1/2. Click the check box to agree to the terms of service.

3. Click upload.

Boom. You're finished. All you have to do now is check you're inbox and click the handy, dandy link. It seriously could not get any easier.

Yes, I think my sister could do this.

I gave DivShare a test run (several, actually), uploading a 35.5MB file. Waaaay to big to e-mail. It took it a couple of minutes for the file to upload, but it was not an onerous wait. (Yes, I have a broadband Internet connection at home, but it's a shared one.)

I also made a quick little photo gallery of my cat, Hercules. (Isn't he pretty?)

If you're like me and plan on using DivShare as a quick-and-easy backup (It almost feels like cheating.), you'll want to sign up for a free account.

It's just about the simplest sign-up form I've ever seen -- name, password, e-mail address, confirm password. No prying questions about your marital status or how much money your household brought in last year. Nor do they spam you. The whole sign-up process will take you about 60 seconds -- if you're a slow typist.

Signing up for an account allows you make files private (requiring a password to view and download -- a good thing), lets you add a logo and link to co-brand your download page, stream MP3s on your download page and more.

The one gripe I did have about DivShare's upload process, and I uploaded several files large and small, is that there's not a progress bar. It's just an animation that tells you your upload is in progress, but it doesn't tell you how far along it is or how much time it's going to take.

That's it. The one gripe.

On the plus side -- and there's lots to say here -- it's free. You can upload as many files (up to 200MB per file) as you want. There's no disk-space limit. The files stay put "forever" (however long that is). You can "co-brand" your download page (add logo, site name and link). And, perhaps best of all -- aside from the free part -- there are no annoying pop-up ads, and the few embedded ads they do have on the pages are unobtrusive. (Here's a pledge from the DivShare Advertise link: "... [W]e also promise never to invade your DivShare experience with loud, unstable or otherwise obnoxious ads.") You have to love that.

I know I do, and I'm not alone.

According to DivShare co-founder David Altschul (half of the development team at Diversion Web Publishing), more than 10,000 users uploaded more than 50,000 files in the site's first month alone. Altschul said at this point, DivShare is bringing in between 300 and 500 new users every day.

Clearly DivShare is doing something right. Make that many things.

It's free. You can upload unlimited files and they'll stay online permanently (or until you delete them). You can serve unlimited downloads. And it's super easy to use, friendly to even computer novices.

It sounds too good to be true, and you know what they say about that.

I went looking for the catch and couldn't find one, so I asked Altschul, and in keeping with the simplicity of DivShare, I got a six-word answer.

"There is no catch. Absolutely not," Altschul said.

He explained that they are planning a premium service with a variety of additional features down the road, but said that won't affect the DivShare services that are available now.

"Everything that we have right now will be free forever," he said.

Everything they have now is a long list, one that's expanding almost daily. In fact, they've made some changes since I last logged on a couple of days ago (the option to add file descriptions, for example), and they'll be adding some social networking features in the near future.

"This is 100-percent our full focus right now," Altschul said.

But how can the services they have now stay "free forever"?

"We're a profitable company," Altschul said.

Between the company's low overhead and a healthy profit courtesy of Google AdWords, DivShare is in a great position. It's such a good position that they plan to be very selective when it comes to advertisers who might approach them. It goes back to that promise to steer clear of "obnoxious ads."

While DivShare is by no means the only online file-sharing service, it's by far simplest to use (at least in my experience). That's one of the main reasons Altschul and co-founder Rob Howard built it.

"We knew it could be easier that what was out there," Altschul said.

The pair has a decade in Web development so they came up with something they would want to use. The goal, according to Altschul, was pretty basic. "We wanted to make the Internet easier for everybody," he said.

A lofty goal to be sure, but in the little corner of the World Wide Web that's DivShare.com, they just might have done it.

So, now I have no excuse for backing up my computer. We'll see how I do with that.

Give DivShare a whirl and let me know what you think. I believe you'll be pleased.