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Uniblue Systems WinBackup 2 Professional (discontinued)

Uniblue Systems WinBackup 2 Professional

Entered CNET Catalog: 03/03/2006

SKU: WinBackup 2.0 Professional

Manufacturer: LIUtilities

Product summary

CNET editors' rating:
3.5 stars
Very good

The goodThe good: Intuitive interface; good data-verification and encryption features; affordable.

The badThe bad: Shortcuts feature supports only a few Windows programs; tech support could be better.

The bottom lineThe bottom line: WinBackup 2 Professional, a well-designed file-backup program for Windows, is intuitive and powerful; it's a solid buy for small-business owners.

Average user rating: from 7 users
1.5 stars

User opinions

Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

User Rating: 2/10

Their registry booster n driverscanner are dangerous!

Pros: Support is poor and they broke my computer

Cons: I ran their registry scanner and driver scanner. Now my secondary monitor not recognized my my computerand the computer is much slower. They don't have phone support and no one has responded to the online support request filed a couple of days ago.

Review: Their products do more harm than good!

User Rating: 1/10

DO NOT USE !!!

Pros: Nice shape/color icon

Cons: Backs up files not requested for backup, crashes system, slow

Review: This is the worst backup software I've ever seen. There is NO, customer service and if there ever was a product that needed it this is the one. It is slow, backs up files I didn't specify for backup. Download took 3 tries. Overall a total disaster.

User Rating: 1/10

Users beware!!!

Pros: Very nice and shining

Cons: Trojan included at no cost :)

Review: This program contains a Trojan Downloader-BAI.sys.gen identified by Norton Antivirus. Do not under any condition download and install this software. File included or distributed by this program: wincom32.sys plus all others!!

User Rating: 2/10

Nightmare ordering process

Pros: Wish I knew

Cons: Only one vendor, I can not get the product

Review: Part 1
I read the review and ordered the product. The only way to get it is to download it. They sent me an email saying click here to go to the download page. I did that clicked on download and I got an error message. Too late to call the company I sent them an email. Next day I get home, I have an email from Sonic@Digital River. A different company, they said to clean out my cookies. What??? They have a link in their email to a download site, I go there, it says enter your email address and last 5 digits of your credit card number. I put that in, press enter, and I wind up at Symantec downloading a rebate form for Norton System Works, a product I purchased 2 weeks ago. I call the company. Of course they are not open.
Tomorrow they saga will continue.
Updated
Part 2
Got up early this morning and called before leaving for work. The Sonic staff said that my firewall was preventing the download. I told them I did not have a firewall and that I can download from CNET anytime with no problems and from any web site I have ever had to download from. They would not budge and just kept repeating that my firewall was the problem. Finally I just had to demand a refund. Then I was sent back to Atomic Park who requested that I fill out a form that they emailed me and return it to them.
I proposed that they just mail me the product on a disk, but they said this was not possible. So no product.

User Rating: 3/10

Great software with serious restore flaw!

Pros: user interface, backup process, open file manager

Cons: serious flaw in restoring incremental backups

Review: I'd give this product a 9 except for a serious deficiency in doing incremental backups. If all you do are full backups, disregard this review.

Each time you do an incremental backup, WinBackup copies only new/changed files. When you want to restore a file or set of files, you have to choose which backup file to restore from.

Since incremental backups only copy new/changed files, you are forced to search through many, many backup files to find the file you want. Even worse, if you are backing up a data directory, such as a QuickBooks folder, some of the data files & index files will change, and some won't, over time.

So if your QuickBooks data gets corrupted and you need to restore the entire data folder, you will have to manually search through *every* incremental backup file (starting backwards) to find all of the files which comprise the data folder. Since you may not even know what files existed in that folder, it's a very difficult task.

What is needed is a version administrator, as part of WinBackup, which knows which files live in which incremental backup archives. BounceBack has features like this (though that program is horrible for lots of other reasons).

User Rating: 9/10

A great backup software

Pros: The Outlook Agent is awsome! The user interface makes it possible even for me to perform a backup.

Cons: not much to say

Review: I am not a computer tech sort of guy, but this backup software makes me feel like one. I perform backup on emails and important documents and it really works great. The outlook agent is a nice feature.

User Rating: 4/10

Works well but tech support and housekeeping leave much to be desired

Pros: Solid, easy to use reliable backup & restore

Cons: Uniblue is unresponsive to e-mails & Winbackup leaves Outlook with errors after uninstall

Review: From a backup and restore perspective everything worked well. The main thing for backup/restore software is trust and reliability and WinBackup 2.0 scored well on those points.

After downloading the trial version I immediately got a friendly e-mail from Uniblue asking if I had any questions. I did have and replied immediately with lots of valuable feedback to them and my questions. I am still waiting for a reply to my e-mail 2 weeks later!

I decided to uninstall and go with another solution. After removal via control panel/ add and remove programs there were two issues.
(1) Registry was not cleanup up properly. This is all too common but still sloppy in my opinion.
(2)I was left with errors when starting up OUTLOOK. The uninstall process did not remove the WinBackup add in for OUTLOOK. Detect/repair did not solve the problem. I had to manually look for and disable the add in before OUTLOOK started up cleanly again.

I intensly dislike software that does not clean up properly when uninstalled and leaves the user with problems that they need to figure out on their own. On this count alone WinBackup lost out with me.

Keywords

software   |   Applications   |   Utilities   |   Backup   |   Recovery   |  

About CNET Archive BETA

Welcome to the CNET Archive, a library of product reviews, user opinions, videos, specifications, and manufacturer descriptions for products no longer offered by the manufacturer or most retailers. Here you will find information on replacement parts and replacement ink cartridges. Read what others had to say about that used laptop you are considering buying. Take a trip down memory lane as you browse and reminisce about your favorite old video game or that first digital camera.

Uniblue Systems WinBackup 2 Professional specifications

  • General
  • Category Utilities
  • Subcategory Utilities - backup / compression
  • Version 2.0
  • License pricing Standard
  • Software
  • License Type Complete package
  • License Pricing Standard
  • Distribution Media Download , CD-ROM
  • Package Type Retail
  • System Requirements
  • Peripheral / Interface Devices CD-ROM drive
  • System Requirements Details Microsoft Windows 2000 , Microsoft Windows 98 , Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition , Microsoft Windows XP
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