I just got my new Dell(160g hd with 2gmemory) and am trying to setup for best backup and restore solution. I have a new copy of Partition Magic 8.0 and Norton Ghost 9.0 with drive image. I am a subscriber to Fred Langa's newsletter which address this issue but not in the detail I need. Any help would be appreciated.

You might have a bit of trouble with that, since new Dells have PC Restore(Check to see if your system has it since it has only recently started shipping on new systems), which is pretty much a ghost image already on them. Any alteration of the MBR will screw up the ability to restore that image. I'm unsure of what problems it might cause when you are trying to use other apps to create/manage partitions and images but I do know it takes up 4-5GB and it keeps you from being able to use many Recovery Console commands because of the modified MBR.
There are also plans to later add the ability to add to the PC Restore image, which makes it more like Ghost.
PC Restore is made for Dell by Symantec and is based on Ghost.

Below is some info about PC Restore:
http://support.dell.com/support/top...kb/en/document?dn=1090152&c=us&l=en&s=gen&cs=
http://search.dell.com/results.aspx...C Restore&img=True&sum=True&ssum=False&qmp=10
http://support.dell.com/support/top...kb/en/document?dn=1090198&c=us&l=en&s=gen&cs=