TrueImage is great when it works... However, Acronis do two things that really piss me, and a lot of their users, off. First, they release a new version every 9-12 months and require their user base to cough up for it. This is fair enough, but over three versions I've noticed (and this point is hammered home on their
users' forum constantly) that the new version invariably *fixes* major features that simply did not work as advertised in the previous version. Case in point is writing to DVD in version 9. It was advertised all over the Acronis website as a must have feature in version 9, and yet it never worked reliably (backup software MUST be reliable!). People complained strenously about it for a year without a fix. Lo and behold, Acronis brought out version 10 and it's been fixed. Read the
forum and you'll see constant complaining about this practice (and it is certainly not limited to the single example I've given). The point being that they release software that is advertised with certain functions that in practice do not work. The user base essentially pays to beta test features and are then expected to pay for those features when the problems with them have been ironed out. Wouldn't be so bad if they released a solid version (ie one in which all advertised features work) and then allowed their user base to beta test unstable and UNADVERTISED features, but of course they don't do this. Upgrades run in the $30 range, IIRC.
TrueImage 9 (which is the last version I paid for) works for me as I backup to USB harddrives. It works really well. However, I am tired of paying for upgrades and am leaving well enough alone. Note too that I can confirm the problems with DVD backups in 9, having backed up my wife's C: drive to three DVD's, verified the images at time of burning and TrueImage won't recognise them as valid image files!
Caveat emptor...
