I highly recommend Red Gate SQLBackup. Last I checked, pricing was much more reasonable and performs just as well if not better. It also supports object level recovery.

I really agree with Eddie.  I was in the same boat, having been a SQL Server DBA for almost 8 years now and not knowing which route to take.  Since...

I agree with StevefromOZ.  Kimball's books are the way to go, especially since it is independent of any platform.  I got my feet wet with these books and built my first...

Kevin,

I would highly recommend not running update statistics during heavy load periods.  The reason I say this is because we have a daily process which updates one of our reporting...

DTSBackup 2000 is the way to go.  http://www.sqldts.com

We use SQL Compare but I also recommend x-SQL Object (http://www.x-sql.com/).