Only poblem with the viewer theory is you have to have the viewer on the cd. Then you have to make sure it will work in whatever OS and test/update it for newer OS's. I keep mine in text with uncompressed graphics. If I want to make it look nice I write it in HTML. HTML is simple text with control tags so if the www and html were to go away I still can open and read the text. The nice thing about html is creating hyperlinks to jump around and you can use common tools to create a site map/index. I've been able to read my data on everything from DOS to Windows, Linux to MAC, PC to PDA. HTML reformats well so I can read my info on large to small displays easily. I actually have a calendar file (ics format which is plain text) that is a hournal of my life foing back to 1988. When I started and quit jobs, school schedules, class notes, accomplishments, school notes, etc. All those years fit into a 2M file.