Palm Online Backup Beta -- Pretty Nice

Tastypeppers · 04/12/2007, 03:09 AM

http://www.palm.com/us/software/backup_beta/

I unfortutely have WM Treos which sync everything to my Exchange Server all the time, so I have the same level of backup for the modest price of a few thousand bucks.

Fiffer · 04/12/2007, 04:14 AM

thats pretty sweet. I'm outsourcing my exchange and offers the same amount of data security.

sxtg · 04/12/2007, 04:35 AM

Pretty cool but looks like its PIM data only?

Christinac130 · 04/12/2007, 08:22 AM

It would work perfect for a clean install after a hard reset...

TurboTiger · 04/12/2007, 09:55 AM

Seems interesting but I think I'm gonna stick with my BackupMan/SD card solution.

prubin · 04/12/2007, 10:30 AM

I got the link through an IM, but when I go to it it says:

Your device does not currently support Palm Backup Beta. Treo 700p, Sprint. Any other link?

mbranscum · 04/12/2007, 10:57 AM

Cool...just installed...backing up now.

Hmmm....first time I ran it, I got to 74%, it locked up and eventually failed...trying a second time and it worked.

Bill Gamble · 04/12/2007, 11:03 AM

It says that it's free, but for a limited time; they won't be charging for the app, but for the storing of data on their servers. So, you'll be able to use it free until until it comes out of beta...then, you'll have to pay up if you want to use it any longer, ala BackupBuddy.Net.

Christinac130 · 04/12/2007, 11:12 AM

So, it's basically an extension of BackupBuddy? I think I'll stick with BackupMan...

Bill Gamble · 04/12/2007, 11:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christinac130

So, it's basically an extension of BackupBuddy? I think I'll stick with BackupMan...

No, I don't think POBB is connected in any way to BackupBuddy.Net.

Jaggrey · 04/12/2007, 11:51 AM

This is a good move if they're trying to get their lower-cost Palm devices (i.e. 680) to compete with devices like the Sidekick.

Christinac130 · 04/12/2007, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bill Gamble

No, I don't think POBB is connected in any way to BackupBuddy.Net.

Oh, I see. Were you saying you'll have to pay like a similar service BackupBuddy provides?

I'm still not clear on why people would pay to have backups when they can just purchase (or sometimes freely use) a backup app once and use an SD card? Is there an advantage I'm missing or am I just cheap?

sxtg · 04/12/2007, 01:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christinac130

Oh, I see. Were you saying you'll have to pay like a similar service BackupBuddy provides?

I'm still not clear on why people would pay to have backups when they can just purchase (or sometimes freely use) a backup app once and use an SD card? Is there an advantage I'm missing or am I just cheap?

The advantage is that its an "off site" backup. If you loose your phone, you would also loose the card. Or like a fire where you lost all your PC stuff.

greenawayj · 04/12/2007, 01:40 PM

I also have been an SD card backup person scheduled every evening, but every couple of months I also backup the SD card to my PC (I should do it more often).

The obvious benefit of online backup is in a lost-phone situation rather than in a hard-reset situation where SD is acceptable. In a 'lost phone' situation, I can imagine being up and running in < 1 hour (after buying a new phone) with online restore vs needing to get to the base PC to restore my SD backup to the new SD card or to perform a hotsync restore (especially since we all know the hotsync restore doesn't get you fully back to base state :-(

If this app only backs up PIM databases, I'd probably consider the Bluenomad backupbuddy.net solution instead.

One question I'd have about online backup is data security of my information. Any thoughts on the subject?

.

surur · 04/12/2007, 01:44 PM

This is cool, but its an incomplete package. They should one-up exchange by offering device management (e.g. remote wipe and provisioning of applications etc).

Surur

pmdied · 04/12/2007, 01:45 PM

Just finished backing up... pretty quick.

jhoff80 · 04/12/2007, 01:46 PM

It'd be much better if it stored everything, I haven't used Backupbuddy.net so I don't know if that does, but the ideal solution would be a combination of PC/device based. As in, whenever you hotsync, it could sync that to the server, in addition to the over the air syncing. That would give us the ability to quickly backup the entire memory (PIM syncing is not nearly enough for me), as well as keep the OTA portion of it. Since download speeds are much greater than upload speeds, could it really be that much of a problem to download 60 megs? (At least on EVDO it wouldn't be much of a problem.)

Edit: I guess it would still take 10 minutes or so but if something goes wrong and you need to hard reset in the middle of nowhere, it might be worth it. As for me, I'll stick to my 64 meg backup card that I keep on my keychain.

Christinac130 · 04/12/2007, 01:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sxtg

The advantage is that its an "off site" backup. If you loose your phone, you would also loose the card. Or like a fire where you lost all your PC stuff.

Okay, I get it now. I cut and copy my SD backups to three different computers, but I guess that wouldn't help if something happened to all the computers. Sheesh! How many backups of backups do we need for these things??

sxtg · 04/12/2007, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christinac130

Okay, I get it now. I cut and copy my SD backups to three different computers, but I guess that wouldn't help if something happened to all the computers. Sheesh! How many backups of backups do we need for these things??

Ever since I spent 6 weeks (8-10 hour days mind you) trying to recompile my business year via a check register, I have always tried to maintain an "off site" back up.

However, if I were to pay for a service like this one. It would be one that backed up my PC hard drives (which would include treo and SD data). Much more pratical.

GreenHex · 04/12/2007, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christinac130

Okay, I get it now. I cut and copy my SD backups to three different computers.

Not to mention that with NVBackup you can copy your data (ftp) to any remote server that you feel like... (it does take a l-o-n-g time though, to copy the full backup data with GPRS).