My first reset

So my tablet was in sleep mode, in the case, with a fully charged battery. I went to awake it by pushing the power button, and nothing happened. I wondered if the tablet was really just turned off, so I held the power button in, waiting for the boot screen; no boot screen - nothing at all on my screen. Thoughts of horror flashed through my head: is it broken, I've only had this tablet a month, how do I recover apps I downloaded?

I got out the Coby User's manual and found how to do a soft reset, by pushing in the small button on the rear of the tablet. The manual said to use a paperclip, but I was able to depress the button with my finger. The tablet's home screen immediately came up; great news! So the tablet was sleeping like I thought; it just wasn't responding to the power button. So why did this happen? I wasn't loading any new apps. Years ago when my Palm would hang up, it was usually when I was loading new programs. Hopefully this won't happen often with my Coby tablet.

This minor event still brings up some important questions. How do I back up my data and apk's in case I need to do a hard reset on the tablet. Most of my data was moved to my tablet from my PC, so it is backed up. My WikiMind app is configured to save files to my SD Card. NoteEverything can export my text notes to the SD Card but it is a manual process, which I should start doing on a weekly basis. I need to find out if Docs to Go can be set up to save new files to the SD Card by default. If not, I will have to manually copy them over to the SD Card.

The other question is how to back up apk files. Because my tablet is not rooted, I can't use the Android Marketplace, so I have been downloading apps from other sites, such as Amazon Android market. I would like to copy these apk's to my SD Card for safe keeping. Now I have to search my tablet to find out where the apk's live. I have only purchased one app so far - Docs To Go; I have the license key for that, so I should be able to figure out how to restore that app. When I find out the process, I will post it here.