I need a Backup plan. Someone help before it fails again.

My couson in Florida has had some bad luck with Hard-Drive failures, the first two I could understand because they were refurbished, but this latest one was a brand new Maxtor 80GB. I think it's the salt in the air. Anyway, I really want to come up with a general purpose backup strategy anyway.
So what I am trying to do is set something up on my cousons computer that makes it Automatically Dial-Up to the internet and send all the files he has in a specific folder to a folder in my computer (in Arizona, connected to a broadband connection), at a specific time of the week. I have'nt the first clue on how to do this. But I know it's possible, Please help.

Will I need a VPN, if so, where can I buy one, or is it included with windows, and do VPN's work with a Dial-Up connection?

I assume I would use the Task Scheduler to activate the Dial-Up connection, but how do I make it connect automatically to the Default connection without prompting for Username and password?

How would I make it transmit the files without any user-intervention, or would I just have Task Scheduler run a batch file that copies all files to a specific location, If so, what kind of command would I place in the batch file that will transmit the files to a location over the internet.

I'm not talking big files here, just things like saved game files and simple text files.

if someone could just give me a website that will explain some of this I would be greatfull.