I’ve never used prior versions of CBU; I’ve used CBU4 for 2 days; my experience so far…
- The software feels fast, responsive
- It has almost everything I’m looking for: disk imaging; file backup, to include incremental, differential; file/folder synch
- “Almost” because it lacks a user-friendly bootable recovery CD
- Mounting/browsing archives is fast; I really like that
- The UI is, honestly, horrible; I know what I want to do and CBU can do it but I keep stumbling around the UI to figure out how to do it (with limited success); the UI is a hurdle to the user rather than an extension of the user
– The UI isn’t consistent:
— The scheduling button is like playing “whack-a-mole”, for it isn’t always there; additionally, there should be a central scheduling location.
— There’s a different look and feel between the tabs (clickable links inside an entry vs. a drop-down menu vs. right-click (sometimes)
– What are “Profiles” supposed to be? They’re neat little one-offs I suppose but this is a backup program, not a file-copying program. I assumed Profiles could be used to create backup jobs/schedules but I haven’t figured out a way to do that. For example:
— I created a new profile to synch files between my PC and my wife’s. I hit “backup now” to test it. I then edited it to exclude some items and was finished. I wanted to schedule it for “automatic” runs but I see no way to do that besides recreating it via “Custom backup” rather than “Profile”.
So far my impression is that CBU4 is a really awesome program, soup-to-nuts backup solution (sans easy recovery CD) that I want to use (I may suffer through the UI). I’d want others to use it as well but I can’t embarrass/frustrate myself in walking them through it. It’s like trying to drive a Viper with a steering lever from a “horseless carriage”.