here are my impressions after playing with backup4all. i will be adding these to the current review.
bottom line: i was positively stunned at how good backup4all was - BUT it still has a couple issues that could use improvement.
the company who makes backup4all made a post on the forum and posted a code for 20% discount on there backup4all app.
thought i would just share my thoughts on the program after evaluating it a bit.
first the good stuff:
- First, i think the basic organization of the program, and its feature set are fantastic; maybe the best ive seen in any document backup app. i think they did an extraordinarily good job of organizing the process of making backups.
- Using zip file format was great decision.
- great incremental versioned backups (but see comments below)
- super easy to use
then the stuff that could use some improvement:
- seems somewhat slower than the other backup tools i've tried
- Initially i was put off by the unusual button icons, but that's a simple aesthetic issue and others may have a different impression.
- one other feature i couldn't find and would recommend highly if you don't currently support it (and i didnt see it): ability to specify *folder* patterns in the exclude and include filters.
- the options pages (wizard) when setting up a new project are superb - maybe the clearest i've seen. but one thing that would be nice is
having a "help" button on each page of the wizard that would take person to help page relevant for that subject. it would really be useful for things like choosing the type of backup, etc. - issues with exploring catalogs (see below)
extra comments:
I'm a very big advocate of versioned backups, and backup4all seems to do a very good job of it.
But it can be very difficult to find out what files were added to each backup set, and to in general search for modified files, etc.
I discovered that the restore wizard actually has a nice way of letting you explore each different backup operation and thus study which files were saved each time.
What i would really like to see is some integration into the main exploration display some more flexible ways of browsing through backup sets. for example maybe being able to select specific backup sets and see the files added, or the ability to search for a particular file by name and see versions.
I really love the way when navigating to a file the program shows a list of all versions and their dates, and lets me view or restore any version (though it was sometimes excrutiatingly slow to retrieve files from older sets)
i think with a few changes backup4all could likely win our best document backup tool were we to conduct it again, and could win it when we revisit the issue in 2006. The general interface and ease-of-use far exceed Genie Backup.
BUT i would like to suggest that backup4all authors look at the Catalog view in
Genie Backup, it allows you to explore and search the incremental backup
sets, and does a very good job of it, and i think this is something that i would really miss using backup4all.
its probably the only area which would give me pause in recommending backup4all.
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