Edit: Carbonite Is a cool backup solution

Edit (1/31/09): I wrote the following without thinking about the dates. Apparently most of this happened in 2006, and some of the older review posts in question were recently deleted.

Carbonite is a needed service, they're a local company (Boston) and they have significant infrastructure so they're more likely to stay around in this screwed up economy, so I'm pulling for them.

I don't understand David Pogue reporting this like it's news, and I'm left figuring out whether I want to try the service myself - the backups I want to do are my photos that are probably 80 GB and completely disorganized - maybe they're the perfect solution.


People think they need a good system for backing up their computers. That's not exactly right - they need a system for restoring their computer in case there's a problem.

Online systems seem perfect, pay a little money, load a client, and your computer is backed up into the cloud. When there's a problem, simply get a new drive, hit "restore" and wait a little while.

Well, Carbonite seemed like the perfect solution, it's not expensive, it has some well known personalities that are fans it's got good reviews, etc.

Unfortunately it's not so simple, while it seems to back up pretty well, restore, not so much. Then when you need customer service, not so much either.

And then it turns out, there's widespread review-padding from employees. Yuck.

Oh well, I guess I need to look at another option.

Mac users have time machine - maybe PC people will get something similar someday, and we don't have to go buy a Drobo( the coolest drive out there ), but it still needs swell software.

Perry