Carbonite & Windows 7
Data backup companies are wasting no time touting their new, upgraded Windows 7-compatible backup systems for desktops, laptops, servers and online storage. But little or nothing has been upgraded in the actual backup apparatus—it’s virtually all in the user interface.
With the official launch of Microsoft’s Windows 7 on Oct. 22, the requisite announcements from myriad companies with products that support the new operating system are coming fast and furious.
This certainly holds true for a growing number of data backup companies that are wasting no time touting their new, upgraded Windows 7-compatible backup systems for desktops, laptops, servers and online storage.
Microsoft includes its own backup system in Windows 7 with the System Image and Backup feature. However, many users prefer their own trusted third-party backup software, and just about all the most well-known providers in the sector have announced upgrade versions that support Windows 7. These include Symantec’s Veritas, Arkeia Software, BakBone Software, Memeo, Connected, Dantz, RepliWeb, Seagate i365, Iron Mountain Digital and iDrive.
But this raises some questions: What exactly are you getting when you buy a “Windows 7-supported” backup system, whether online or not? How much difference does the operating system make?
And exactly how much of a marketing opportunity is this, anyway? A big one, apparently. Plenty of people believe that as soon as the new operating system comes out, they need to go out and buy a new “optimized” backup for it. This is certainly not always the case.
“The short answer: It doesn’t really matter what OS you’re using (we support XP, Vista, Win 7 and Mac OS),” David Friend, CEO of Carbonite, told eWEEK.
And were whatever changes Carbonite had to make for Windows 7 all about UI?
“Pretty much,” Friend said. “For example, the Win 7 Explorer has a different API, so to put our little green dots on files and folders required some code to be rewritten.”
But that was it.
So outside of a little extra code written to make the UI meld correctly with Windows 7, there is really nothing new in Windows 7 backup—no matter how splashy the “Win 7-optimized” ads and marketing materials may appear.
