Backupbuddy review

So, you are flying high.
You have your shiny new PDA. You are in front of your congregation of youth and/or adults, most of whom are looking at you with marvel.

You have read up on the "Paperless Pulpit", and you are rarin' to go.

You take a step from behind the pulpit, PDA in hand. One small step for man, a giant, gigantic leap for mobile technology...

... and bam! Your sword (aka PDA) is frozen. Nothing works. Done.

For 10 minutes, during an agonizingly slow reset, as the impatient crowd start murmuring and pointing at you in embarrassment, and the choir refuses to bail you out with more "filler" song as you fiddle away with your device, you wonder why in the world you left the hard copies of your presention, with your hotsync computer, at home.

Your giant leap is beginning to look more like a ghastly stumble.

Amidst the boos and thrown balls of paper being thrown at you from the angry congregation as you race for the door, one thought pops in your head. You should have found a backup solution.

Backupbuddy, by Blue Nomad Software, promises to be the second chance you need, that insurance against the inevitable crash, loss or crippling event that prevents you from accessing your data in a timely manner.
Most people understand (and rely on) Palm's indigenous Hotsync process to provide backups in the wake of system failure. However, the inherent restrictions in the native hotsync process simply means that not everything may backed up.
And, for anyone who depends on his/her PDA to manage a gazillion contacts, tasks and meetings knows, if you are unfortunate enough to lose your information when away from your hotsync computer, you can be in BIG trouble
Thus, for the 21st century road warrior, a reliable backup solution is not just a frilly accessory, it is a necessity.

Backupbuddy promises to completely solve your backup woes. It comes in different facets with different capabilities, and I am actually glad that I was able to focus on one of their offerings. I had the opportunity to review BackupBuddyVFS Professional, a mobile, external memory card-based program that provides peace of mind on the go. I also spent time with BB for Windows, which resides on your desktop and is programmable to provide customizable data backups.

You have to forgive me, but I spent most of my time on my handheld.

BackupbuddyVFS Professional features a lot of user friendly functions. Downloading and setup was easy; I was up going in just a few minutes.
When you open up the program on your handheld, you are greeted with the actual date and time of your last backup. BBVFSPro allows you to backup up to a memory card, if you so desire. It also allows for the user to set up preferences as to how and when the backups are to occur.
It gave me the option of "quick" and "thorough" compressions, and whether or not you want the backup encrypted (nifty idea, even though only data files can be protected thus). What I loved about the program was the scheduling options. It can be scheduled to run every day at a particular time, at power off, or after a hotsync action. It can even be set to do a backup if a hotsync action has not occurred for a given period of time (To do this, you would have to make sure you have this program on your RAM).


Now, if these are just too simple for you, you can really take control of your backups.

Checkpoints mark the point of multiple backup sets by date. This way, you can go back as far as you have owned this program to find a particular combo that works, say, before you got into that crazy reset loop. With a click, I was able to perform a complete restore. I admit, I watched the whole thing.
You can also choose what files you want backed up, i.e setup incremental backups.

Think of what you can do if you delete a file, school paper or sermon by mistake.

If you are really, really serious about your data, BBVFS allows you to audit it by viewing its backup log.

And, you can have even more with the desktop doing the same thing in backing up your device info to your computer or laptop.

My experience with their support team was excellent. They were courteous and quick (shoutout to Bobby). Blue Nomad also has versions of their programs for Macs, and numerous other utilities for security and word processing, among others. More info is available at the Blue Nomad website.

Now, while peace of mind for some of us has a more serious connotation, when it comes to handheld data, BackupBuddy does a darn good job of earthly emulation.

When you get your courage back, and feel you can show your face in church again, you make sure you walk in there with your head held high.

Just remember to pray, stretch and click on the little, green "gatherer" a few minutes before service starts!!!

- Tre Lawrence, Associate Writer (OH, USA)