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visorcentral.com >> Products & Reviews >> Software
Schedule backups with Backup+


Wed Oct 24, 2001 - 9:19 PM EDT - By Michael Ducker

Using the Backup Module, you get the most failsafe and simple backup of your Visor possible. But if you forget to backup your PDA for a couple of days, the info that the backup module contains quickly becomes outdated. Handfort Solutions, a recent spin off of Brayder technologies, hopes to make sure that you always have an up to date backup with the automatic backup features of Backup .

Backup 's main and only goal is to provide automatic backups. To do this, it has taken the exact same easy to use interface that the original Handspring Backup Module has, and added a scheduler. From that scheduler window, you can assign an exact date and time to do a backup, or have it repeat; every hour, every day or every week on specific days. You can also set it to ring the standard alarm when the backup occurs. If the backup module is not in the Visor at the scheduled time, nothing happens. If it is, the backup takes place.

Automatic backups may not be worth $6.95. But having a backup that is 3.5 times faster is! Yes, you heard me, backups are more than three times faster. While testing this app I thought that backups were going much faster; so I did some tests, and seven backups later here are my results. I did seven backups, in this order: Control backup, Handspring Backup, Backup , Backup , Handspring Backup, Handspring Backup, Backup . Doing this made sure that one program wasn't affecting the others ability to backup quickly. My results shocked me. Backup consistently got within
two seconds of 2:05 minutes. Handspring Backup consistently got within two seconds of seven minutes! Not only does this save you time, it also saves a ton of battery life! I asked Hari Stirbet of HandFort why this happened. Hari'rs eply was that this is probably because his backup software is running off the Visor, and not the Backup Module.

Backup works as advertised, but it does have a couple of minor annoyances. Once you have scheduled a backup the only way to cancel it before it starts is by moving the date to yesterday, hence putting the scheduled backup in the past. Also, if your backup has any warning windows, you will have to do a manual, non scheduled backup before the scheduler will work. And last of all, when you use both Handspring Backup and Backup , every time you go from one app to the other, the application thinks the backup is from a different handheld. I wish that Backup would of resided in the module originally, but than I found out that the backup module stores its software in ROM, not RAM, making it un-updateable Also, a danger of backing up unattended is if your Visor crashes when doing a backup and gives a fatal error (rare), automatic turnoff does not work. Only when your batteries at the verge of loosing data, will the Visor turn off. I think that's an inherent flaw of the Palm OS though, not Backup.

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Product Info
Details

»	Name Backup+ 1.0
»	Company HandFort Solutions
»	Fact Sheet & User Opinions

Availability

»	Unknown

Pricing

$5.95

References
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Links

»	HandFort Solutions

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