BackupBuddy for Windows 2.0 Review

   BackupBuddy for Windows 2.0 German Review

Handheld Computing Magazine
Winner for second year in a row! Best Products of 1999, and 2000 awards. BackupBuddy is awarded the Best Utility.

Palmgear
Palmgear's top 50 downloads.

Tucows
Rated 5 cows at Tucows.

CNet
A CNet top download's pick

ZDNet
ZDNet's Editors Pick

SearchPalm
SearchPalm's "Cool Stuff" pick

This company has a superb product that has real meaning in the world of PDAs. I honestly think it should be the first program any PDA owner buys. It should be considered standard equipment. I even think Verizon Wireless might want to consider bundling it. It will save your tech support people and, heaven knows, your customers an enormous amount of time. Every time my Treo gave me problems and your tech support "front line" people were casual about telling me to do a hard reset and reinstall everything from scratch I became extremely frustrated because it was a milder version of MS techs telling you to format the hard drive and reinstall Windows and your apps. That's great advice for someone playing games and listening to music, but for a business person with serious configuration customizations and little time to waste, it's a nightmare. Well, Backup Buddy pretty much reduces the chances of being stuck with problems to as close to zero as we're ever going to get in the real world. Even replacing a device is now a piece of cake!

Also, I had opportunity to confer with their tech support a while back when I first bought the product and installation was interrupted by the old Treo when it underwent an unwanted hard reset during sync. Their main tech guy was very responsive by email, extremely so in fact, but I wanted to raise the level of dialog a bit just the same and asked to have it escalated to a more senior tech. The next thing I knew, the CEO was writing me answering my questions, asking my feedback and suggestions for improving their tech support, and making herself entirely available for any and all questions I had. I was truly amazed by that.

I can't recommend it highly enough.

Jay Newman, President & CEO
Invision International

This morning I was using my PIII and it told me to hotsync and change batteries. So I did. The PIII was without batteries for 5 to 10 seconds. I was quick. To my surprise, the PIII seemed frozen when I put the batteries back in and after a soft reset, I had lost ALL my data. I freaked. I came to your site and I read the instructions. Backup the directory, put the PIII in the cradle and hotsync. I'm like "yeah right, it can't be THAT simple".

I'm eating my words right now. Backup buddy restored EVERYTHING, it seems like nothing has changed. All my data, all my programs with their DBs, every-single-little-thing.

I am now a true believer. Those are the best $$$ I have EVER spent. I would've gladly pay $50 for this program if I knew it was this good.

Thank you for saving the day. You are my new hero.

--David Renteria

Dear Alexander:

Just a note to let you know how pleased I am with the latest release of Buddy, BackupBuddy NG.

I read a review (I think on Palm Central) went to your web site and decided that it looked fairly easy to use. I had looked at this months ago, but thought it might be too hard to use. Then, being somewhat of a skeptic, I installed the trial version on my office WinNT system, backed up my Palm Personal (upgraded to a Palm III) and then pulled the batteries out of my Palm to erase everything and to start from scratch. I had made note of some of the settings and have lots of stuff loaded, apps, novels (almost the full 2 MB worth) and am using TRG's Flash app.

Well, I set the desktop to overwrite the Palm and did a complete reinstall of everything with no effort. EVERYTHING, EVEN INDIVIDUAL APP SETTINGS!!! The whole process was over in about 20 minutes, a far cry form the times I had to rebuild my whole installation from scratch, which took an entire evening. No apps to dig up, no registration numbers to install, just effortless efficiency. My novel in Aportis Doc was right where I'd left off and the cards in Kondike! were laid out as they were left. Pretty amazing!

Needless to say, I WAS impressed and will be going to PalmHQ to register for a "legal" copy. You've got another convert and I was already proselytizing a friend at the office, noting how neat the product was and wasn't it a shame that WinTel systems couldn't be restored in a similar painless manner...

Thanks for a great product.

Sincerely,

--Tony Reynolds

One still can find software that give you much for little money.  BackupBuddy is the best example I know among these.  It's both the best $$$ I ever spent in software, and the best utility I ever purchased for my Palm III.  Not only it saved my a** a good number of times, it also gives me the peace of mind and the confidence that all my critical data are really protected and, in any event, will be restored in the exact same state in a matter of minutes.

Thank you Alex, for having written this excellent piece of software.  Thank you also for being helpful and responsive for technical support.

I'm looking forward to any future Palm III software you release!

--Michel Bouissou

I just wanted to say, congratulations on the new BackUpBuddy! You have really outdone yourself on this one. Your program has saved my butt more than once (yeah, I shouldn't play with so many hacks and so many new apps in Flash, but....) BackUpBuddy has turned out to be the best applications I ever bought for my Pilot. Thanks again!

--Troy D. Helms

BBuddyNG - is the coolest thing on earth.

Several times I have had the occasion to hard-reset my Pilot and it took me days to re-install it all.

Now that I have purchased BBNG, all that now takes a matter of seconds. And all that without a PRC on my Pilot's.

VERY WELL DONE.

--Ole Gossklaus

Just gotta say it.. Backup Buddy saved my data today.. I got a memory fatal exception, and had to hard reset to get out of the welcome screen loop. I blew it out with confidence, knowing BB had been merrily backing up my changed data with every Hotsync. 15 minutes later, I was back up and running. The BEST $$$ I ever spent. Your program saved me from losing 3 months worth of inventory data, and a book I have been writing. I would have weeped openly if I had lost that data.

--Chris Mauricio

Writing to thank you for BackupBuddy, which magically restored all of my numerous files when my Pilot crashed yesterday.  My first, hurried, reading of the instructions had left me with the idea that there were complications both in restoring programs and files, and with activating TrueSync.  So I was pleasantly surprised to find after I initially hot synced that all my programs and files were exactly as they had been.  When this has happened in the past, it has required hours and frustration to get everything back into place.  Somehow, even the traditional problem I've had of getting incomplete uploads off the address and phone data bases have gone away in the presence of your program, which is now at the top of my list of absolutely necessary Pilot accessories.

--Jeffrey Barrie

I'm glad I purchased your software!!!!!  I had download a doc file to read and while I was reading it, my PalmPilot III said file error--reset.  After I did that I had a virgin Pilot.  All of the new items I had installed were gone including your software.  But--------I had just hotsynched before that happened.  BackupBuddy helped because I hotsynched again and everything was like before. 

Thanks BackupBuddy for saving my files.

--Mary Rehder

I have been using BackupBuddy since the beta days of it and I find it to be a GREAT piece of software for the Palm Pilot line, it ranks up there with HackMaster.

I have had multiple hard crashes, for 1 reason or another, and before backupbuddy I would always have to keep track of what apps I had currently loaded and even with HotSync the data never seemed to come back the way it was before the crash. Since BackupBuddy I have not seen this happen. I can easily say that I have hardreset (to include replacing memory boards) a dozen times and with backupbuddy all I need to do is to drop my pilot in the cradle (since IRSync isn't loaded yet), hot the button and about 30 to 45 minutes later (I got a 8 meg board with allot of stuff) my pilot is back to where it was before the hard crashÖwith the current version I have no data loss, zero, nothing. Everything is synced back like it is supposed toÖwere it not for BackupBuddy I may have given up on 3rd party apps and upgrades just because it was to much work to manually restore stuff after a 3rd party app crashed my pilot. 

--David Sawyer

Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your update of BackupBuddy and how much I really like the program.

It works so well in the background that you forget that it's not a part of the Palm OS, which it should be.

Anyway, a 100 kudos to you and BackupBuddy.

--Carl Quick

I just installed your new version of BackUpBuddy.  I find it's a fantastic program.  I have an 8 meg board with a lot of stuff in my Palm 3 and now my Hot Sync time is cut by about 75%!!

--Alan

BackUpBuddy is absolutely indispensable. It is unquestionably one of the best programs available for the Palm Pilot. The new desktop version is fantastic. I love the moving graphs that show how much data is left to be saved, a nice touch. BackUpBuddy has saved me a ton of time already and has been well worth the money. Thanks again.

--D.S.

BackupBuddy saved my a** this weekend. My Palm III went into a coma on Sat.  I opened it up and wiggled the switches (it would not turn on). I reset it a couple of times and it finally came to life....minus all data. I put the Pilot back into its cradle, pressed the button and 5 minutes later I had my Pilot back in exactly the original condition. Awesome. Whew.

--T.S.

Last week I upgraded my PPro to PIII with an upgrade board.  I use BackupBuddy, and after installing the new board I just hotsynced and *presto* it looked exactly the way it had before I upgraded... except that I had another meg of memory <g>.

I couldn't believe how flawlessly the process worked.  I swear by BackupBuddy, by the way. Without it, I think I'd have had considerable work to do getting all of my apps re-installed.  Regardless of which particular model you are upgrading to/from, I think a backup program makes the process a lot easier.

--Usenet posting in comp.sys.palmtops.pilot

This may be gushing, but I just used the TrueSync conduit w/ BB3.0.5 and it is absolutely fantastic.  You've cut my HotSync time by more than 50% and my Admin hassles by 100%.  I think this software is worth more than you are asking!!!  I believe that the greatest thing is to witness is an achievement.  Thanks again for programming.

--J.B.

Great program you've done!  You have no idea how many times I had to restore all my programs one by one because of data loss.  Not anymore!"

--A.R.

Just a brief note to thank you for BackupBuddy. I've had it installed for a month or so now, and barely noticed it... Until yesterday, that is.

Walking out of the office, I grabbed a folder, and knocked my Pilot to the floor, immediately prior to my 230lbs landing on top of it. :(  The one bright spot was that I'd just done a hotsync.

Got home, borrowed my wife's P5000 (which she doesn't use much), and popped in my PPP memory card. Pressed the hotsync button and...tada... Everything was there. Every app, every preference, the whole shebang. I sat with my mouth open, recalling the 2-3 hours my last hard reset had cost me.

Many, many thanks,

--D.M.

FYI- I had to hard reset my Pilot today (I was playing around with some undocumented functions in cbaspad) and BBuddy made the restoration a 3-minute job instead of a 3-hour job.  Thank you thank you thank you!

--Andy

BTW: You have saved my butt on a couple occasions. I kinda had forgotten all about BackUp Buddy, but did keep the most up-to-date version installed. I have been working with FlashBuilder 3.20...Anyways, upon resetting my flash, I hotsynced for the first time, to find my pilot restored to the way it was before, thanks to backup buddy. Thank you again for your great product!

--T.H.

I was very pleased to register Backup Buddy today.

I am participating in a beta that requires me to do a hard reset to my pilot on a regular basis. I dreaded this until I tried your software. Now I confidently "select all" and wipe the memory without even a flinch.

The software works flawlessly and the price is a bargain! I am an extremely satisfied customer!

--A.H.

I am really grateful to you.  Today my PalmIII fell down and did not work again.  I had to perform a hard reset, thanks to your great software, I got everything back.  Thank you very much, I really appreciate it.  I personally feel that your software is one of the (if not) the best application for PalmIII.

--A.A.