Tying in with my ode to Dropbox under the “What I Use” section, is this recent Lifehacker article that does an outstanding job of covering how to make reliable backups for the relatives most geeks provide tech support to, that are also transparent enough to pass the Aunt Hattie test. The article also points out how to set up fairly painless password storage (I also love 1Password for that), and remote access for giving them a hand. While it doesn’t cover much on local backups, modern Macs have the excellent Time Machine, and for Windows, the recommended Mozy will not only backup offsite, but will also back up to a local drive for faster recovery than the offsite backups.
In short, this “for your relatives” solution is also perfect for the small, home-office or one one-or-two computer type of business for setting up reliable backups and remote support.