The gist of the discussion is that I won't have a back-up disk, since I don't understand the suggestions for action given.

I also read the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant article and couldn't make head or tail of it.

What is Time Machine?

Any back-up I might do, as I have for years, is just to burn everything on a CD from time to time. (I used Toast Titanium with my old iMac, but I'm supposing I could use this machine for such once I figure out how to burn a CD with it.)