the technique, method, or system of operating or controlling a process by highly automatic means, as by electronic devices, reducing human intervention to a minimum.

~ automation. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved February 21, 2012, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/automation

[Bolding mine]

Automation can occur a couple of different ways, but it almost always boils down to the use of computers, either as a controlling device for robotics or as means of running a program and crunching data.

However, automation is a means to an end, not an end of itself.  After all, if there is no benefit, then there is little point in pursuing what hiring more human beings can do.  It may be a means to reduce cost by replacing simple human action by a more efficient automated process.  Perhaps it is a way to streamline getting a customer to the right expert to talk to, if not even to resolve the simpler issues.  Whatever the reason, efficiency is surely part of the strategy, because if it is not, then the automation has failed.  If the process requires constant intervention to keep it working, then it by definition is not efficient.

Let me repeat that: If it requires constant human intervention by someone other than an enduser, then it by definition is not efficient and is a failure.  You would be better off with inefficient but adaptable human beings doing the process.

Websites are no exception.  So, why are there so many poorly designed, buggy and frustrating websites out there?  A website is the company’s presence on the web, and if it is not good, then the perception of the company will suffer as a result.

Frankly, I have developed the opinion that it is because the IT department for that company is either arrogant, stupid or both.  I’m also of the opinion that it reflects really bad on the entire industry whenever these stunts are pulled.

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking: “Actually, they are quite smart and are doing it for job security.”  I will challenge that idea, because in this day and age it is nothing to replace anyone at any time and get an offshore resource to do it cheaper (not necessarily better, but at least cheaper).  Sooner or later, the slacker will be found out and that will cut her or his employment short.  Therefore, anyone doing it for “job security” might get away with it for a short time, but in the long run is falling under the latter category of stupid.

There are probably as many reasons for stupid websites as there are excuses for people not doing their jobs in general.  However, I’d wager that 75% of them have one thing in common: They disregard what and how the customer wants to get things done.  Therefore, when the enduser, the customer, does something “unexpected”, the system breaks, the customer is frustrated, the company is paying someone to provide bandaids for it, and the company reputation starts to slip.

I will remind the reader that I’ve managed software development processes, both online and desktop, and some of these would have been inexcusable at places I used to work.

And yet, these companies continue on, oblivious that any problem exists… and I’m amazed at how many I’ve come across just in the past two weeks.

The Utility

I recently had an issue with a particular website, which I should but will not name, in which I wanted to view the balance I owed on the account.  I couldn’t view anything.  I clicked on the link to reset my PIN.  It took me nowhere.  I wrote to them:

Fix your website.  I cannot login.  When I click on Reset PIN, it does nothing.  I cannot [more details].

They wrote back:

Thank you for your inquiry.

There is no need to fix our website, it is fine. There is no social security number in our records for you, so we need to enter a pin manually into our system so you can use it online. The pin number … has been updated. If you have any other problems, please call us … Monday-Friday 7am-7pm.

So, let me get this straight.  The system requires human intervention by a non-enduser, but it isn’t broken?  This exemplifies the problem!  In short, this is simple arrogance.

It also is rather scary.  Why does a utility company need my “social security number”, and how is that an excuse for my account not working?  They don’t, and it isn’t!  I certainly wouldn’t be knowingly willing to give anyone this incompetent my social security number, and I’m glad they don’t have it!

The Software Company

Yes, even software companies get caught up in their own hype and treat endusers like their time isn’t worth anything.  I’ll avoid some of the scams out there, some of which are unfortunately legal and done by name brands.

No, I’m going to focus on the ones that want you to “Click here for a quote” or “Call for price”.  What this tells me is that it is so outrageously expensive that I am not going to bother.  It also tells me that your transparency sucks, your hiding something, and I should go find someone a bit more straight forward in their dealings.

It’s particularly stupid because I might not even know if I’m going to purchase anything at all or when.  In fact, only 30% of the time I’m researching prices am I even sure I am going to buy anything at all.  So, how much of my time am I going to waste the other 70% of my time?  I’m more likely to just move along and look at other competitors.

Whenever I see this, what I really want to do is email them saying, “Are you going to refund me my hourly rate for the extra back and forth created by your inefficient process should I purchase this product?”

The Online Financial Application

Have you ever been unable to login because of a software glitch?  I’m sure we’ve all been there.  It does happen, even to the best of companies, so it is only stupid if there is no way to work around it and notify someone of the problem.  If you have to login to report a login problem … well, that is a stupid problem.

I want to stress how the problem can be stupid.  Yes, it reflects badly on the company, I’ll admit that, but I want to point out the difference between a stupid problem and a stupid company.

The nice thing was in this case, I was able to find an email address (hint: always be sure to check out the BBB with any company handling financial information, and you can at least rest assured of a point of contact in an emergency), and they were able to fix the problem.  At least in this case, it was a stupid problem and not an arrogant company that resided in Denial.  I present this case to point out the difference.  Stupid mistakes do happen even to decent companies.  Stupid companies aren’t able to respond and fix them, however.

The Clueless Grocer

I saved the worst for last.  They are the worst simply because they are the most clueless.  I’m amazed at how little you can gain by going to a grocer’s website.  If you are lucky, you can view this week’s shopping deals.

There is a particular grocer that does have their weekly deals online, however.  At first, I thought this was great.  I can look through them, put them on a list somewhere, etc., etc.  Even better, they seem to have their own online list!  Great, that should simplify it all, right?

Well, it all was a real disappointment, actually.  I’m not even sure where to start.  I guess the best place to start is to make sure you understand I had previously created a list online.  I had only one item in it, and it was from two weeks ago.  This is significant, as you will see later.

So, I view the deals.  This particular grocer doesn’t just list the deals, but they give you an online representation of the flyer they use.  OK, it seems sort of gimmicky, but I was willing to play along.  Little did I first realize just how bad this was.  I’ll just say upfront that I can only imagine that some geek somewhere said, “You know, this technology is just soooo kewwwelll!” and talked some manager into pressing forward with it.  There really is no other excuse for the cheesy gimmicks that at first seem amusing but turn out to be quite frustrating.

The whole flyer is quite small, as you can imagine.  When you hover over a deal, though, it provides a balloon blowup of the deal.  That sounds fine, until you realize that there are probably fifteen or more of these on any given page, and it takes time for these popups to appear.  It might take you seconds to scan a normal flyer page to determine whether or not you are interested in any items on the page, but doing it this way literally can turn into minutes.

It gets worse.

Since the pictures are so small, and since you have things popping up on the page, it is more often than not the case there is a balloon in front of whatever you might actually want to see.  So, part of the reason it takes so long is because you are trying to figure out how to do sneak attacks with the mouse cursor in an obstacle course of balloon popups.

It gets worse.

I want to remind you that you are looking at an online representation of the flyer.  You turn the first page over, and you see the second and third pages.  You flip the third page over, and you see the fourth and fifth pages.  Finally, you flip it all over and see the last page.

Someone, somewhere, must have realized that this would be a bit annoying for some people.  So, when on a page, you can click on some button at the top to view the PDF of a page.  A single page.  Only one page.  IOW, if you are looking at pages 2 and 3, you can view page 2 by clicking on the button.  Just page 2.  Only page 2.  There seems to be no way to view page 3.

It gets worse.

When you actually click upon something in the popup, you get an enlarged version of the special itself.  Finally!  Something useful!  There is a picture of the product, a description of the deal and how many items you may or must purchase for the deal.  There even is an “add item to shopping list” to put an item into your online shopping list.  An item.  A single item.  Only one item, even if you’re required to purchase three of the item to get the deal.

It gets worse.

So, you add all of these items to your Weekly Deals list, and then go to view the list, and what do you see?  The last saved list?  Huh?  Where did my list go?

Well, I figured out by accident that if you delete the old list, then you can get to the Weekly Deals list.  In the meantime, I had sent an email asking what did they do with the list.  Their response?

Thank you for contacting …  The shopping list feature should save for as long as you wish as long as you are signed in when creating the list. If you are not signed in on the site the lists will delete when you exit the site.

Clueless!  Obviously it DID save it even after signing out of the site, otherwise I would not have contacted them!  In addition, no answer as to what to do about my problem.  Oh, and I checked today, and the old “Weekly Specials” still exists and did not delete!

It gets worse.

So, I figured out how to get to the list containing a quantity of 1 for everything on the list, and I notice that I can increase the quantities on each item.  This would be a good time perhaps to up the quantities to what the weekly deals require.  It is just too bad that I cannot remember what the quantities are.

OK, so all I have to do is login on my mobile phone and view the list, right?  That would be nice if I could login.

Oh, but I see I can get an iPhone app for that!  Actually, after all this, do you really think I’d put your app onto my phone?  I did have to check it out for the comments, though.  Not surprisingly, it rated pretty low as well.

OK, so I can email it, right?  Think again!  You can print, rename or delete the list.  Yes, that’s right.  Even though you have an iPhone, you have to print the list.

So, not only did this all take about three times longer, but I’m still stuck with carrying around paper!  I guess I should’ve just kept the paper flyer in the first place!

Seriously, this is an epic fail.  This is the sort of stuff that most reputable companies would fire people over.

Conclusion

So, what can you do about stuff like this?  The only thing you can do is complain and hope they listen, and if they don’t listen then take your business to some place where they care.

Until businesses learn to use real people to test out their ideas and applications, they will continue to disappoint them.

Today, The Telegraph reported “John Glenn’s fury over death of Nasa space programme”, in which he “has launched an attack on the administration of George W Bush after Nasa was forced to retire the space shuttles”.  He was the first to orbit the earth.  While speaking at the Kennedy Space Center, he points out how much money the US has spent in putting up a space station but now have no way to get there without hitching a ride from other nations.

"If there’s one thing we have learned through the history of our country, it’s that money spent on basic research has a way of paying back in the future beyond anything we ever see at the outset," he said.

The space race indeed did fuel a lot of technology, and much of it has since extended into civilian applications.  The most notable might be the computer.  How much longer would it have taken to advance technology to the point it is today if not for the need to accurately calculate courses and real time course corrections?  Tang, which I believe is no longer sold, was one famous commercial spinoff from the program, but lesser known engineering products resulted as well.  According to “” on NASA’s page, LEDs, artificial limbs, anti-icing systems for airplanes, fire resistance, freeze drying, cordless vacuums and more have benefitted from the space program.

It goes without saying that military technology, not all of it offensive, has benefitted as well.  This point leads me to ponder something, though.

One of the signs of a superpower is controlling various strategic points of geography.  Chokeholds caused by land formations have always had to be worked around in any military campaign, and the ones controlling them can control the outcome of a battle.  Sea lanes developed various stations and points of reference as well over time.  Ships have to refuel on oceans and it can be expensive to go around certain land barriers.  Chokeholds in seas has recently been in the news with the possibility of Iran blockading the Strait of Hormuz.  Some have referred to these various chokeholds as “gates” for land points and “sea gates” for marine straits and passageways.  Air travel modified ports of entry and hubs for travel somewhat, but much of the time they follow land masses in case an emergency occurs.

In the 20th century, the nation that held supremacy in space was viewed as top dog.  I wonder.  Are space stations, satellites and such like strategic gateways that are controlled by a superpower?

I previously reviewed Ghost, Acronis and Paragon in “Backup Software: And the Winner is …”.  I’m not going to cover Norton Ghost again, and if you’re interested I suggest reading the previous article.  It has changed a lot over the years, and I’m not convinced it gives you the best bang for the buck.  In other articles, I have looked at present and past versions of Clonezilla as well, and it is certainly worthy of mention here.  However, it seems I didn’t write about EaseUS previously, so I want to round out the major choices with that software as well.  The last two should be considered because there are free versions for home personal use, but this review should aid you in knowing what you are getting for that price.

It should be stressed that I am not covering Windows Backup here for several reasons.  The biggest reason is that I am assuming that your needs goes beyond whatever version of Windows Backup you have, but at least look at the criteria list below to aid you in knowing whether or not your version does what you need.  The second biggest reason is that it changes with every version of Windows.  So, I may or may not advise any of the solutions in this article if you have Windows 7 unless you also have an XP machine, for example.

To paraphrase the criteria in the previous comparison article, of interest is:

1. Ability to image (sometimes called “snapshot”) the drive.  If the entire hard disk fails, you want a way of getting back to a working system in short order.  Some backups only capture data files, which will not get you a working system.
2. Ability to extract files from an image.
3. Ability to boot from a CD and/or USB should Windows not be bootable.
4. A reasonable and understandable license scheme.  There are two scenarios here, actually: a. An individual/computer license, and b. A tech license.  The first is the most common and is usually straight-forward because you buy a certain number of licenses for the machines you have.  The second can be harder to find or even require contacting someone, which means the company may or may not have transparency issues.
5. Ability to create differentials. If this is a differential from a system image rather than requiring an entirely different backup, then add bonus points. If it doesn’t do differentials, then does it at least do incrementals?
6. Whether or not you can boot into a recovery partition on the hard drive.  While this is more useful for techs, it can aid anyone in creating a custom recovery partition rather than a generic manufacturer partition that still takes two days to customize.
7. Whether or not it can resize partitions.  In addition, is the resizing only upwards or can it be done to shrink a volume?
8. Ability to wipe drive clean.

The above is more or less in order of importance, IMO, but the first three are pretty much mandatory.  A backup is virtually worthless if it cannot rebuild the system, if you cannot run it from a CD, DVD or USB or if the licensing costs so much that it breaks the bank.  However, there are other utilities that can wipe a drive or resize partitions if all else is OK.  The ability to create differentials or incrementals strictly speaking isn’t required, but you will be using a lot more disk space for your backups if the solution does not do those.  Likewise, if the utility requires you do a system image and then an entire backup in order to just pull off files, you’ll be wasting disk space and a lot of time fiddling around with that, which is why that scores a lot higher.

So, let’s look at Clonezilla, Acronis True Image Home, EaseUS and Paragon.

Clonezilla

Clonezilla is a wonderful free tool for imaging hard drives.  It is Linux-based, which means that you might have to pay attention while using it.  In like manner, Clonezilla is built with the UNIX mindset of do one thing and do it well.  Of course, the flip side of that is that it may not do other things in the way you expect if at all.

Disk Imaging

Now, my opinion is that you don’t have to be a geek to use Clonezilla, but it doesn’t hurt.  The first time you run it, you really do have to read the screens to pay attention to what is going on.  Seriously, a geek wrote the menus.  However, most of them aren’t terribly hard to understand, and even the most confusing ones aren’t impossible to figure out.  Having said that, this might not be for you if you are easily intimidated by technology and/or unfamiliar software.

Earlier versions would sometimes barf on me at the slightest provocation.  This points to the importance of having multiple backups, and if you are an IT shop, you should have two different imaging programs and use both when data loss seems like a reality.  Even the earlier versions of Clonezilla would sometimes be able to fix errors and create an image even when other tools would not, so YMMV.  The last two versions, though, have run as expected as long as the disk is accessible (which is really when you need to try multiple tools).

Normally, though, Clonezilla only fails on me when I allow the target disk to get full.  There really isn’t a good way to remove files and restart the program, either.  You can drop to a command prompt, but you have to manually mount the drive then before you can remove files.  It is actually easier to bring it up under Windows so you can see all the backups, what date they were made, etc., and then remove the older ones.  Of course, you must not forget to empty the recycling bin afterwards!

File Extraction

OK, but that’s a maintenance issue, so how about pulling files from the image?  Well, there is no way to do that from a menu or somehow mount the image to appear like a drive you can navigate and select files.  After searching the net a while, I found out that what you have to do essentially is extract all of the files from the image to a drive with plenty of space and then you can navigate that instead.  However, you’ll need to do this under Linux.

I’ve not tested any of this, as it’s a bit of a pain to have to work around the tool, but it should work from all the available documentation.

Check out your archive.  If it has “ptcl” in the filenames, it was made with partclone.  Likewise, if it has “.gz.” in the name followed by two letters, it is a split gzip archive.  While you probably have gzip on your Ubuntu system, you might have to download partclone from SourceForge.

If your backed up partition is sda3, then it probably has filenames like sda3.ntfs-ptcl-img.gz.aa, ab, ac, etc.  In Ubuntu, these files might be in /media/External/ClientBackups/2011-11-13-10-img just for example, then you would want to create a mountable image file by typing:

cat /media/External/ClientBackups/2011-11-13-10-img/sda3.ntfs-ptcl-img.gz.* | gzip -d -c | sudo partclone.restore -C -s - -O /media/External/hda3.img

This creates the mountable image file, hda3.img, at /media/External/.

Next, mount the file via the mount command:

sudo mount –o loop –t ntfs /media/External/hda3.img

You should now be able to navigate and use the “drive” normally.

Booting From CD/DVD/USB Drive

Clonezilla comes as an ISO file, so you can easily burn to a CD.  You can also create a bootable Clonezilla Live USB stick using various methods.  I have only tried the manual method, so I cannot speak to the others.

License

Clonezilla is free under the GPL.

Differentials

Sorry, but Clonezilla is a disk imaging tool.  What it does, it does well, but it isn’t really a backup utility as is traditionally thought of.

As a special note, it also requires an unmount of the disk being imaged, so you cannot work on the computer while it is being imaged.

Booting Into Recovery Partition

I have been able to do this with earlier versions of Ubuntu (9).  However, for some reason, it doesn’t work with newer versions of Ubuntu.  It does not seem to be anything Clonezilla has changed, as I’ve been able to boot the same version of Clonezilla that did not work on Ubuntu 11 on Ubuntu 9.  It makes no sense to me why, either.  It’s quite a shame, really, as it was one of the best ways I knew to setup a recovery system to quickly get the machine back to a known state, and it required no additional software licenses.  It was one of the main reasons for using it in the first place.

However, it does appear that there may be an answer yet.  On the Ubuntu forums are topics on “clonezilla grub2 entry” and “ISO Booting with Grub 2” which may provide the key to this dilemma.

Partition Sizes

Clonezilla makes an image of the hard drive and restores that image.  It does no resizing, which is why you cannot restore a larger drive image onto a smaller drive.  There are ways to make it resize if restoring to a larger drive, but frankly it is easier to boot into Ubuntu and just move them around afterwards.

Drive Wiping

Again, this is outside of the scope of the Clonezilla program.

Conclusion

Clonezilla is a good program to restore a static drive image, but it lacks the features of a normal backup program.  Of course, that means less program bloat, so it runs quicker than some other programs I’ve played with.  Since all programs have their weak points and their strong points, those who really need reliable backups such as support techs should consider using this as well as another imaging program to ensure the best backup rather than put all their eggs into one basket.  If licensing is a concern, then this is also a solid contender for applications like creating recovery partitions.

Acronis True Image Home

I have only played with the latest Acronis True Image Home (ATIH) 2012 a couple of times.  They have added a number of features such as synchronization, it seems, which could be a substitute for my prior Dropbox recommendation.

When I reviewed Acronis before, I concluded that it “seems like the only sane way to” do both backups and restores as well as disk imaging.  Things have changed somewhat to challenge that, but that doesn’t mean that Acronis didn’t set the bar quite high as much as others are slowly catching up.  Since some of this has been discussed already, I will probably gloss over quite a bit, but I want to give you enough for a decent comparison

Disk Imaging

Acronis does backups slower than Clonezilla, sometimes significantly more.  However, over the past two years of using both, I’ve seen Acronis back and restore things that Clonezilla would not touch and vice versa.  I believe it is because Clonezilla will try to check a dirty filesystem prior to imaging, and thus fixes some issues that way.  However, Acronis evidently does not, but that seems to allow it to ignore errors (after prompting) a lot easier.  Restores seem to be about the same speed.

File Extraction

Acronis provides an easy way to mount a backup on a system with it installed.  Acronis also allows you to choose which files to restore from an image and where to restore them to, all using a graphical interface.  If you are a tech, this is great because you can do one backup for multiple purposes.

Booting From CD/DVD/USB Drive

You create a rescue disk, and you can do practically everything you can do from the desktop program.

License

Here is where Acronis and others get weird.  The Acronis Product Licensing Table lists “physical machines”.  Even comments in the forums make it sound like the license is for the computer.  However, when I emailed them two years ago, they told me that the person who bough the license owns the license.  Therefore, selling a machine with Acronis on it requires you to remove it from the system.  This makes sense when you consider they have “1 physical machine”, “3 physical machines” and “5 physical machines” for their various licenses for their different products.

One thing I questioned them about was selling a machine with a recovery partition on it.  Did that mean that a full license had to be bought for each machine or could it even be sold that way in the first place?  At the time, they had no answer, but I now see that they have Acronis Snap Deploy 4 for PCs which is a license at reduced cost.  However, that does not allow for a recovery partition but rather an enterprise can setup a deployment server to deploy the image.

There does seem to be an Acronis True Image OEM product, however, that appears that it might fit this bill.  Pricing does not appear to be available from the website.  The full version of ATIH 2012 is $49.99 for a single PC.

A lot of this is not of any concern for the normal user.  However, the worst part is that there is no tech support type of license for computer technicians.  According to their forum as of 11 May 2010 (bolding theirs):

I completely share your concern, but still License Policy of Acronis Company cannot be changed, and it states that you need 1 license per 1 machine you are backing up/restoring (same with Bootable Media) . … Anyway this means that in case you are using Backup and Recovery solution even from the Bootable Media you need a license for recovering the image onto the new machine. You can transfer the license from the old machine to the new one only in case the old one is out of service and cannot be used anymore.

Differentials

ATIH can not only make system images, but it can make differentials based upon the images.  Optionally, it can do incrementals if that’s what’s preferred.

Booting Into Recovery Partition

Acronis provides a means of backing onto a separate partition, which the user can boot into by pressing [F11] at bootup.

Partition Sizes

ATIH provides a toolset in which you can manage partition sizes.  However, I’ve seen instances where this has failed while Ubuntu was able to do it quite easily.  My tentative conclusion is that it had something to do with memory.

Drive Wiping

One area Acronis shines is not only the ability to wipe drives, but you can choose the method you want to use to do so.

Conclusion

Acronis has some nice products, but they seem to be cutting out certain market segments unnecessarily.  If you are an individual, small business or enterprise, then the tools work well and aren’t all that expensive.  However, if you are a computer technician and either want to create factory recovery partitions on the machines you sell or use imaging software as part of the repair process, then I advise you to look elsewhere.

EaseUS Todo Backup

I’m including it for completeness’ sake.  In spite of it being free, however, I am pretty disappointed because it advertises certain features but only makes them available if you do a full install of the software.  The download, install and creation of a rescue disk went well.

Disk Imaging

EaseUS Todo Backup was able to create an image without incident as well.  I booted off of the CD and created an image.

File Extraction

When you view the Version Comparison chart, one of the items listed is Explore image in Windows Explorer.  However, there was no visible means of doing so from the rescue disk.  When I went to restore the image, I noticed there was no way to extract files from the image either.  I have come to these conclusions based upon what I’ve seen:

1. You must install the software onto the PC in order to Explore image in Windows Explorer.
2. Backup of data and a system image are separate functions with different file types, meaning that you cannot simply take a snapshot and go from there.

As far as I’m concerned, this is a significant design flaw that makes all else a moot point.  You will require twice as much disk space initially, not to mention twice as much time to do a backup.  Of course, you will probably need to do a system backup periodically, so it isn’t likely to be just a one time event.

Booting From CD/DVD/USB Drive

You create a rescue disk, but you cannot use it to explore an image.  It pretty much limits you to backup and restore.

License

Free is good, obviously, but only if it does what you need.  When you view the various comparison charts, though, it seems that many of the shortcomings I’m talking about aren’t different for the paid vs free versions.

They do have a technician license, and it is only $799.20 (special price, normally $999.00).  However, after seeing it in use, this phrase makes more sense: “Technician Edition must be uninstalled from the client’s machines after external service.”  What a technician license should allow is for you to not install anything at all but run it from CD!

Differentials

Todo can do differentials and incrementals.

Booting Into Recovery Partition

This is apparently not available.

Partition Sizes

This is only available in the business versions.

Drive Wiping

This and other tools are available, but I did not test them.

Conclusion

Using this product reminds me of the saying, “The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”  Until it acts more like an integrated product, I cannot recommend it.

Paragon Backup & Recovery

This is the one I’ve had the least amount of time to review, I’m afraid, so there’s likely to be a followup.  However, there are some promising things about it, and I’ve already used it once to backup a drive and restore the image onto another.

I’ll be reviewing the Free version, unless I otherwise specify.

Disk Imaging

Like I stated, I created a disk image on a drive that was near death and was able to pull off the data and restore it onto another drive.  I did not try this on the machine in question, however, as it had no DVD drive and I had other concerns as well.

File Extraction

I was able to mount an image in Paragon and extract out only the files I needed from the desktop interface.

Booting From CD/DVD/USB Drive

The tool to create rescue disk tells you that it will create a disk with all the functions available on the desktop.  However, the machine I tried it on had some difficulties.  So, I am going to have to try it out again.  However, if it truly does everything as the desktop, then that gives it an edge over EaseUS right away, and may make it comparable to Acronis.

License

Well, it’s free.  There is a paid version as well, but I’m really not sure what the difference is, but Backup & Recovery 11 Home is only $39.95, as compared to $49.99 for Acronis.  It gets pretty decent reviews on CNET’s download.com as well.

The business Hard Disk Manager Server must be purchased for the technician license, it seems.  The price for the technician license isn’t available on their site, but a standard tech license seems to be running about $2500 for three years.  What’s confusing is that the level of the tech license is variable by number of sites as well as PCs.  So, if you have a small business that goes and does backups at customer locations, you may have to pony up for the premium level license!  Once again, you have to wonder who or why these goofy rules get made in the first place.

Differentials

The ability to do differentials is available from a dropdown on the Wizards menu.

Booting Into Recovery Partition

This is apparently not available.

Partition Sizes

This is only available in the business versions.

Drive Wiping

This and other tools are available, but I did not test them.

Conclusion

This needs more testing.  However, Paragon obviously has a price advantage for both consumer and tech for the features it has.

Summing It Up

Clonezilla still looks like a good solid solution for recovery partitions (esp. if the boot to hard disk can be gotten to work) and for techs needing an alternate image to choose from when backing up and restoring drives.

Acronis is overall the leader in the field, but Paragon in particular is nipping at its heels.  Paragon appears to do almost everything Acronis does for less cost.  The one thing Acronis does that Paragon does not is the ability to boot into a restore partition.  On a personal machine, this might be a worthwhile consideration.  However, a tech building custom systems isn’t likely to want the additional cost of an Acronis license to install it (if that’s even legal, which isn’t clear).

EaseUS just continues to miss the mark.  Requiring a tech to install software and then uninstall it later is a messy way to design it, and having file backups and system images as completely separate processes in this day and age makes it stand out as old school.

I wrote not long ago about using Dropbox in “Backup Considerations 2: Using Dropbox (and Comparisons to Other File Sharing Services)”.  I did not include iCloud in the mix, but it has become quite popular because of its integration into iTunes.  I’m not convinced that it is yet really something I’d want to use for mundane types of files, however, nor have I tried.

However, even as immature as iCloud is, it may already be facing its worst competitor.  The Telegraph recently posted the article “Google Drive cloud storage coming ‘soon’”.  It will synchronize content with Android devices.  This means Apple and Google will both have services that sort of tie the users into them through the devices they use.  Will this strategy work for either?  Only time will tell.

However, it does not stop there.  The new cloud service will also integrate with Google Apps, thus competing with Microsoft 360 (aka “Office Online”) and it’s SkyDrive.

As The Telegraph’s article points out, though, Dropbox should not rest easy, either.  Dropbox rents its server space from Amazon, so Google is in a position to undercut prices.

While Google stands to win on any or all of these fronts, it isn’t a foregone conclusion that they will be able to push the others out of the market.

A lot of sync’ing applications have come and gone, but I’ll admit that Dropbox is the first one I’ve actually liked.  Microsoft’s SkyDrive puts way too many restrictions on what you can upload.  Others got pushed out of the way because they were for charge services that could not compete with ever less expensive storage.  In addition, Dropbox has a decent interface for most platforms, including Linux and Mac OS.

Not everyone uses Google Apps, either.  There are some rather die-hard Microsoft shops out there who will not switch, for one thing.  Using Groove Server and other add-ons, the integration with Microsoft 360 can be semi-seamless.  Then, there are the really small businesses that really only need a few files sync’ed now and again or for which each employee sets up his or her own Dropbox account because they really don’t need the team edition.

Of course, there are concerns about it being Google.  While the majority of users have used various Google services without incident, there are some, including myself, that have seen first hand that things can and do go wrong.  However, Google doesn’t have a tech support number you can call and get immediate action.  Furthermore, Google sometimes blocks services, such as Blogger and AdSense, heavy-handedly with no rhyme or reason.

So, perhaps it should always be said, but especially when dealing with Google, take advantage of what makes sense but have a solid Plan B.

Microsoft is unofficially scheduled to unleash its very public beta of the Windows 8 operating system on 29 February, according to an article published on 8 February on Fox News.  This will coincide with the Mobile World Congress event later this month.  The new operating system will sport the new “Metro” style interface that can be used across a number of touchscreens, and the unveiling during the event is called “convenient”.

In addition, the article points out that it has been designed to run on chipsets other than Intel, including the ARMs that power many Android tablets and phones.

Of course, there already is a widely available pre-beta Windows 8 Developer Preview straight from Microsoft for the brave.  See the note on the download page, as it cannot be uninstalled if it doesn’t work out for you.  Having read some of the woes of people who try to do things with pre-releases of software from Microsoft, I think I’ll wait at least until there is a real beta going on.  I have to save some time for getting some work done, after all.

There are many file sharing applications out there, and there can be just as many reasons to use them.  The major reasons seem to be:

1. A way to share files with other people without using email.  This is vital if the information is of a sensitive nature.  For example, you should never send an email with your social security number (SSN) on it!  Email is not secure by nature, and it may travel through dozens of servers before it gets to its destination.
2. In a similar vein, a way to share files between different devices.  If you have a desktop at home and a laptop you take on the road with you, then getting to that updated presentation to show your client becomes a must.
3. A way to backup files.  While online backup systems are nothing new, within certain limits they are often free.  Backing up your most important files online ensures that if anything happens to the computer itself (fire, flood, theft, etc.), then at least your most important documents will be safe.  A backup drive at your home or office is a good idea, but if both the backup drive and the computer are in the house during a house fire, then you have still lost your data!

A word about online backups: They are great for your most important data.  However, you don’t want your entire system backed up online, as it would take days to backup and restore.  Not only that, but there is a cost beyond certain limits that eventually exceeds the risk.  If you really need offline storage that bad, then either do it yourself by renting a safety deposit box or hire a reputable company to do it for you.

Confidential?  How Large? How Often?

If all you need is to share files with others, then you need to ask yourself how often you intend to do it and how large the files are.  If you are going to share a 1MB file one time, then it hardly seems worth it to setup an account somewhere just to do a one-time deal.  If the person is online, then email will work for most cases.

However, there are cases where email just won’t do:

1. If the file contains confidential information, then you might want to fax any document rather than email it.  If faxing isn’t practical, then it is worth your privacy to use a file sharing service.
2. If the file is large, then email is not the medium to use.  I hate it when someone sends me 7MB attachments via email!  Email was never intended for binary file sharing, and it is a kludge that makes it work at all.  There also is no guarantee that it won’t get cut off at the end if it is too large.  Most of all, it is downright inconsiderate to make someone download a file they may or may not even want right at that moment.  If you’ve ever tried to work online and send/receive emails while something in the background is tying up your machine, then you know what I’m talking about!  When it turns out to be a > 5MB attachment, that’s a good way to encourage me to block all of your future emails!
3. If you are going to share files on an ongoing basis, then email might not be the best strategy in this case either.  While any of these might be a consideration on whether or not to use a file sharing service, though, this particular item will help to decide which file sharing medium to use.
4. Likewise, are the communications one way or will the recipient(s) edit the file and send it back?

Confidential, Not Often, One Way

If you are only going to share files occasionally and the recipients really aren’t going to edit the files, then a service like YouSendIt will probably do just fine.  While the notifications are sent via email, the actual file rests on a server, requiring the person to go get it.

What’s nice about the service is that most of the desirable features are free for infrequent usage.  In particular, you can choose to have the person verify who they are via the email address you use to send the notifications.  While this is perhaps not a perfect solution, it does add a level of security suitable for most personal information.  For example, I feel at ease using it to send financial information to an attorney.

However, there also are per-use options that are good for infrequent file sharers as well.  For example, you can get a return receipt for $3.99.  If you use this feature often, then you’re better off with a premium account, but for someone who only needs it once or twice a year, it’s nice to not be tied down to an account requiring monthly charges.

All this is great stuff, but I need to emphasize that this is not a backup solution.  The storage on the server is temporary.  It truly is a “file sharing service” in that it allows you to share a file with no frills.  This differentiates it from a collaboration service such as Microsoft Office SharePoint is meant to be.

Backups, Collaboration, Frequent Changes, Sharing Between Devices

If you want real collaboration, though, or if your main goal is to share with yourself (either as a backup or between devices), then you really want a real time tool.  The more edits and changes you anticipate your files to undergo, the more features and checks you will need.

In addition, the larger the files, the more likely you are to butt up against limits on any system, and YouSendIt is no exception.  Currently, the maximum file size for YouSendIt Lite (the free edition) is 50MB, and the maximum total storage is 2GB.

Microsoft Office SharePoint 2010 is the premier way to share and collaborate files.  If you don’t have an internal SharePoint server, you can still do this online via Microsoft Office 365 (used to be known as “Microsoft Office Online”).  If you have MS Office Professional, then you can also take advantage of Office Web Apps to backup and collaborate on your Office files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.).

Note that Office Web Apps replaces the Windows Live SkyDrive.  Also, Live Mesh is gone and integrated into SkyDrive.  The downside of this is you can only sync Office files.  Zip files and PDF (Acrobat) files need not apply.

If you don’t need the sophistication of SharePoint, you can still backup and share files using any number of other services.  However, many of them have fallen to the wayside (drop.io, for example).  Some of them require you to use a web browser, which can be difficult on smaller screens.

The latest tool I’ve put into my arsenal is Dropbox.  I’ve been using it for about a month now getting to know it, and it has an easy-to-use desktop application where you can literally drag and drop files into to sync them up with your account.  You can choose specific files or entire folders to share out.  Some files can be “public”, which do not require an account for others to access, or you can share specific files and folders by inviting them to create an account.  Best of all, it is multi-platform (yes, there’s an app for that!  Not to mention an app for this too!).

Dropbox isn’t exactly a collaboration tool, but it will handle conflicts by creating a duplicate file for the owner to merge manually.  It doesn’t presume to know what you want, but if you are using versioning in Microsoft Word, it actually isn’t that bad.  If the folder is shared out, it will become evident that there are conflicting changes, which may or may not be missed by emailing documents back and forth.

Dropbox is free for up to 2GB.  There does not appear to be a file size limit.  If you need more room, then Dropbox Pro 50/100 and Dropbox Teams are available.

The only gotcha I’ve found with Dropbox is that the initial sync can take some time to get started.  I honestly did not think it was working the first time I tried it.  When I shared out a folder to my spouse, she didn’t think it was working at first either.  You have to wait until you get a green circle with a checkmark in it before the file is fully sync’ed.

Other than that, I find it works quite well both for sharing out files and backing up the most important documents.

According to Fox News, Super Bowl advertisers going after ‘second screens’?, advertisers are going after the tweets and the posts that are happening during the game and especially while the ads being played.  Some are even offering apps that can be downloaded to rate commercials and other things, it seems.

It’s no surprise that the Super Bowl has become a huge cash cow.  The difference now is that instead of a more passive approach to social networking, advertisers are finding ways to make consumers more active in the event.

As rumor has it, “Facebook May File for IPO By Wednesday: Report”.  This is the one that many investors have been waiting on, but it has been delayed in part due to Facebook attempting various models of monetizing the social media site.  Some of those past attempts have outraged the online community over privacy concerns.  The question now is whether or not Facebook becoming a public company will increase or decrease their sensitivity to privacy issues.

There is no doubt that Microsoft Outlook has had an impact upon the average business user.  Yes, there are other alternatives, but Outlook is feature rich and really is more of a PIM than an email client.  You can get your email messages, calendar, contacts and notes all under one roof.  Outlook 2010 brings even more improvements to the fore with the ability to remove duplicate emails and its handling of IMAP.

However, Outlook 2010, as does its predecessors, does not come without warts.  Knowing them beforehand can save a lot of frustration (or money if you decide to go with another client).

Why Internet Message Access Protocol

What is IMAP?  Many are familiar with the POP3 protocol for receiving email, if for no other reason than having to know that is what they are using to receive it when they setup Outlook.  IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and the main difference between it and POP is that IMAP message changes on the client reflect message changes on the server and vice versa.  POP simply pulls (“pops” if you will) the message off the server stack and sends it to the client.  Under normal circumstances, the message is removed from the server, but you can alter this behavior.  IMAP messages, though, are not deleted by simply downloading the message.  Furthermore, if the message is moved on the client, say to a folder, then the server will try to replicate this.  If the message is removed from the message store on the client, then it will be removed on the server.

In effect, IMAP tries to mirror activities on the client on the server and vice versa, whereas POP only attempts to download new messages to the client.  That’s somewhat of an oversimplification of the differences perhaps, but hopefully it is sufficient to make clear the main difference between the two.  You can, however, read the gory details about it on the Wikipedia article “Internet Message Access Protocol” if you are so inclined.

What this means is:

1. You can have multiple clients connected and the changes will be reflected on all of the clients during the next sync.  These clients may be mobile devices or stationary desktops, as the email server will not care.
2. Since you can have multiple clients, this is a very attractive option if you have a reception area, administrative assistant or other who also reads and handles the email.
3. Even if you only have one client, if that client crashes, you still have your email intact on the server.

This last point is the one I particularly want to focus in on.  While IMAP has usually been the domain of the road warrior or the one who needs to share a company email inbox, it is also advantageous as a means of having a backup should the client fail.

Anyone who has tried to backup Outlook PST files knows the pain.  Locating them can be a pain, and they are next to impossible to backup without shutting down Outlook and all plug-ins.  If you have any sync utility, that can affect backups as well.  If you have emails spanning a significant length of time, then you can expect any backups to span some time as well, and you may or may not be able to use Outlook during those backups depending upon the method chosen.  IMAP gets around this by syncing up with a central server.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind, though.  First off, what you are really doing when working with an IMAP client is working with a cached copy of your email account.  Since it is a cache and not an email store, it may not be complete at any given moment.  Thus, losing access to the server may mean some emails will not be available.  Second, you obviously need to ensure that your email is being hosted on a reliable server through a reliable service company.  In a sense, IMAP was part of the so-called cloud even before the term “cloud” was invented.

Some of this can be mitigated by moving emails to offline folders, but then that sort of defeats the purpose of leaving messages on the server to begin with.  In spite of it all, I think IMAP is still superior if you must share email between devices and/or users.

What IMAP Won’t Give You

You need to remember, though, IMAP is an email protocol.  It will not solve all of your sync’ing needs.  It will not sync up your contacts, your calendar or your notes.  If you need to keep those in sync, I still recommend 4Team’s excellent Sync2 utility, especially if you are using Google.  Of course, you can also use it to keep emails in sync as well, although my experience with that end of it is that it can get easily tripped up, and that function requires access from a local area network (LAN) rather than from the cloud.

Alternatively, you can pay for Google Apps and use those synchronization tools to keep calendar and contacts both in sync (Google Calendar Sync is free but doesn’t do your contacts).  If you simply have Outlook and a smartphone, though, it probably came with ActiveSync, iTunes or some other synchronization program.

Why Outlook

With that last issue, you might be wondering, “Why Outlook, then?”  Indeed, if you aren’t interested in contacts, calendars and notes, then you might be better off with the free Mozilla Thunderbird.  I cannot speak from personal experience, seeing as it has been several years since I set it up and looked at it, but from what I understand it is a very capable email client which avoids at least one of the major warts that Outlook 2010 has when using IMAP.

I got used to using Outlook because most businesses use Outlook.  It truly gets tiring going between two different programs that behave differently.  When you connect remotely to get your email, you are usually better off with an Outlook client anyhow, especially if they are using a Microsoft Exchange server.

I should interject here that there are some companies that still use Lotus Notes, which has its own form of email.  Why they are still using it, I don’t know.  It’s a terrible system.  Lotus has been sold and rebought so many times that anything good they ever had has long been screwed up.  More to the point, they are now owned by IBM, so need I say more?  Just say “No” to Lotus Notes.

After getting use to Outlook, though, it really does have some nice features.  I have contacts that I’ve been able to update over the years and carry with me from machine to machine.  It is helpful to have birthdays, anniversaries, etc., that remind you of these important dates.  Even if not on Exchange, you can still send invites to people over the Internet and if they have Outlook, they can accept the invitation to have it put on their calendar.

Perhaps you’ve used Outlook 2003 or earlier with IMAP and have been disappointed.  You had to do extra steps to have something deleted, for example.  Outlook 2010 has improved a lot with IMAP, it turns out.

However, it still is not wart free.

Why Not Outlook

The biggest puzzlement ever is the integrated Inbox, or should I say the lack thereof.  If you have multiple IMAP email accounts and you use an iPhone (or Thunderbird on a PC I am told), then you have an “All Inboxes” which will show you email from all of your inboxes.  This can be a handy feature if you want separate accounts for any reason (say, to separate business email from personal email).

Now, if you are using POP3, you can pop all of your email into the same PST file, but Outlook forces the separate files for each account, and when you remember that each is a cache of what is sitting on the server in separate accounts, then you realize why you cannot do it that way.  There are kludges and workarounds, but all of them either end up duplicating email or worse require moving the messages outside of the IMAP folders which makes IMAP useless at that point.

Obviously, this isn’t that big of a deal if you only have one active email account.  Perhaps the majority of the people fall into that category.  However, what if you start looking for a job?  There can be valid reasons for wanting a different email address.  Perhaps firstname.lastname@gmail.com looks more professional than tooty.fruity@att.net.  Maybe you just got that personal account and want to protect it from spam and so you setup a second.  There are lots of reasons one may wish to have more than one email account setup in Outlook, and the idea that all these mobile devices can do it while Outlook cannot is pretty absurd.

Another issue is one of reminder flags.  Yes, you can flag an email message for follow-up later, but you cannot set a remind on it.  The official response is that IMAP does not support such a flag.  Again, we are approaching ludicrous here.  No one is asking the IMAP server to support reminders!  To put it another way, POP3 does not support reminders either!  It would seem very logical, however, to support that on the client end.  Each message should have a unique ID attached to it, and regardless of where the message is, Outlook should be able to track it and pop up a reminder when needed.

As they say, this ain’t rocket science here.  These are certainly among those “what were they thinking?” items.

And yet, these aren’t necessarily deal breakers, although they might be for some.  For one thing, if you keep an extraordinarily clean Inbox anyhow, then you will see there are unread items in one of them.  Follow up flags can be done via a task list or calendar reminder instead.  Some of these involve more steps, but they can be workable.  Whether or not it overcomplicates things, though, will certainly be an individual choice.

One more thing that is worthy of consideration is that some claim that Outlook 2007/2010 clients are slower than other IMAP clients.  Whether or not this is perception isn’t clear to me at this point in time, but there are things you can do to speed it up somewhat.

Setting Up IMAP

I’m not going to duplicate the already existing hundreds of instructions about setting up an IMAP account under Outlook 2010, but I’ll instead provide pointers.  A generic explanation for those sites that can do automatic configuration is given in the Microsoft Outlook Blog article “Better IMAP in Outlook 2010”.  If your particular provider doesn’t provide automatic configuration, then they will usually post instructions under their “Help” section somewhere on how to setup IMAP (note: there actually are some providers still in the 1990s who do not provide this!  My suggestion is to find one that does if that is the case.).

If using Gmail, the most popular IMAP server out there, then the How-To Geek has posted an article on how you can “Add Your Gmail Account to Outlook 2010 Using IMAP”.  In addition, Google itself gives some “Recommended IMAP client settings” that you might want to pay attention to.  In addition, you should go into your Gmail settings online and look at the folders you are subscribed to, and make sure “All Mail” is unchecked.  You will also want to ensure you aren’t giving multiple labels to any emails.  What happens is that Gmail uses labels instead of actual folders, so Outlook will actually make multiple copies of the email to place them into, including the All Mail folder.  Also, you can refer to the below video which can give even more hints as to some ways to speed things up.

Hopefully, these tips will give you the security and convenience you need for your email.

It has been said that when it comes to data security, there are three rules: Backup, backup and backup.  Usually, when someone says “security”, though, the thought is more about preventing access to unauthorized people rather than how to keep the data safe from unauthorized or unintended destruction.  While keeping access restricted to people who might use the data in ways that are less than desirable are a huge concern, keeping the data intact is necessary for authorized users to access the data in the first place.

I’ve been a little busy lately looking at various ways and means of keeping data safe.  Some of these I’ve looked at before, but it is always good to check back from time to time on certain items to see what if anything has changed.  Some of these items that I want to produce future articles on are:

1. Using IMAP with Outlook 2010
2. Dropbox
3. EASEUs Todo Backup vs Acronis TrueImage

The first hasn’t changed much, which is disappointing to me.  The second is something you may not have considered in light of “security”, but while it does create a few interesting wrinkles it also can make a mobile life with multiple devices that more livable.  The third might be a bit more obvious, yet a review of it is worth the write-up, I believe.