Well, I eventually concluded that maybe I did need the other stuff that came with .Mac and signed up.
Now that I've got it, I've got mixed emotions. Virex is very nice, I'm much happier with a virus checker that runs only when you want it to, rather than the "your machine has been assimilated" impression I've got when I installed Norton and found out all the other stuff it had installed without asking.
However, then there's Backup. Apple's little sum showing how much .Mac was really worth put a value of $50 on Backup. All I can say is that if it's worth $50, it's not US currency. It's not even Canadian.
Let's start with the fact that I've yet to successfully complete even a single, small backup to my iDisk without it losing server connectivity. I've managed to backup to CD-R although it had problems with one or two files. However, examining the resulting CD-R appears to indicate that what Backup did was not so much backup data, as copy it. Maybe it reset an archive bit here and there.
It doesn't appear to offer any form of incremental backup. Something like this would be invaluable for the iDisk backup mode, especially considering the reliability of iDisk connectivity. It'd be nice to have on CD-R too, whereby the disk showed only the most recent session. Better yet, it'd be nice if it made some attempt to compress the data.
It'd be nice if it offered the option to backup to another hard drive. I've got 100GB of external disk in a Firewire enclosure, it'd be really nice to have backing up to that automatically every night done automatically.
Then there's the Quickpicks. Nice idea, lousy execution. First, there's the problem with not being able to delete the Quickpicks you don't want or need, so the window is littered with Quickpick options to backup data for packages I don't own. Then there's the inability to create *new* Quickpicks - so I'm stuck with a Quickpick to backup data from Apple's own mail package, but unable to create a Quickpick to back up the data from the mail package that I actually use, Mailsmith.
Oh, and then there's the crashing immediately on start. That's fun too.
I really hope that Backup is one of the parts of .Mac that's going to see substantial improvement over time. As it stands, the program is a joke. Despite being labelled V1.0, this is barely even beta quality software. Maybe they're going to let people try to use it for a couple of years then, when it works, move it out of .Mac and sell it as a separate $200 product
In the meantime, Stuffit, tar and gzip/bzip2 remain my friends.
Alan
Now that I've got it, I've got mixed emotions. Virex is very nice, I'm much happier with a virus checker that runs only when you want it to, rather than the "your machine has been assimilated" impression I've got when I installed Norton and found out all the other stuff it had installed without asking.
However, then there's Backup. Apple's little sum showing how much .Mac was really worth put a value of $50 on Backup. All I can say is that if it's worth $50, it's not US currency. It's not even Canadian.
Let's start with the fact that I've yet to successfully complete even a single, small backup to my iDisk without it losing server connectivity. I've managed to backup to CD-R although it had problems with one or two files. However, examining the resulting CD-R appears to indicate that what Backup did was not so much backup data, as copy it. Maybe it reset an archive bit here and there.
It doesn't appear to offer any form of incremental backup. Something like this would be invaluable for the iDisk backup mode, especially considering the reliability of iDisk connectivity. It'd be nice to have on CD-R too, whereby the disk showed only the most recent session. Better yet, it'd be nice if it made some attempt to compress the data.
It'd be nice if it offered the option to backup to another hard drive. I've got 100GB of external disk in a Firewire enclosure, it'd be really nice to have backing up to that automatically every night done automatically.
Then there's the Quickpicks. Nice idea, lousy execution. First, there's the problem with not being able to delete the Quickpicks you don't want or need, so the window is littered with Quickpick options to backup data for packages I don't own. Then there's the inability to create *new* Quickpicks - so I'm stuck with a Quickpick to backup data from Apple's own mail package, but unable to create a Quickpick to back up the data from the mail package that I actually use, Mailsmith.
Oh, and then there's the crashing immediately on start. That's fun too.
I really hope that Backup is one of the parts of .Mac that's going to see substantial improvement over time. As it stands, the program is a joke. Despite being labelled V1.0, this is barely even beta quality software. Maybe they're going to let people try to use it for a couple of years then, when it works, move it out of .Mac and sell it as a separate $200 product
In the meantime, Stuffit, tar and gzip/bzip2 remain my friends.
Alan