You don't have to use a smartphone for more than a few weeks to amass a staggering amount of stuff on it, from text messages and phone numbers to personal settings and photo libraries. And as with your laptop or desktop, a significant portion of this stuff is stuff you want to keep, whether you know it or not. And cellphone backup isn't just a matter of keeping copies of data that you consciously archive every day, like contacts, photos and notes—it's about keeping copies of information that you didn't even know you wanted. How many times have you needed to dig through an old text message conversation? Referred back to your received call list to recover a number you didn't save? In a lot of ways, your smartphone is more closely tied to your personal identity than your computer is. So, people: back it up. You'll feel better.

By platform:

iPhone

If you've got an iPhone, there's a good chance you've already sat through—and been annoyed by—its backup routine. iTunes updates your iPhone's backups at every sync, which makes users' lives a bit easier, and guarantees some kind of safetly net by default. But! As with most fully automated systems, iTunes backup is kind of enigmatic. It just sort of... happens, and it's not clear what you're saving, where it's going, and how to keep it truly safe.

What it's doing is performing a full backup equivalent. In other words, instead of just mirroring your entire device as a big image file, it's extracting all the useful bits, so it can restore your iPhone as if it had undergone a full, mirrored backup. This includes, among other things, bookmarks, app settings and data (including in-app purchases, but not the apps themselves), contacts, call history, Mail accounts, SMSes, videos and photos. In other words, pretty much everything. Backups are performed automatically, and restoring to one is a simple matter of plugging in your iPhone, alt-clicking on its icon in iTunes, and selecting "Restore from Backup."

Crucially, this is different from selecting "Restore" in the device summary page: doing that will revert your device to a clean, factory-default image, which will delete all your personal data. Which isn't what we're trying to do here! (In fact, it's the opposite!) If you attempt to do this, you will be prompted to perform a backup, which should be a red flag.

iTunes stores its backups as archived files in semi-cryptic directories, so if you want to pull them out of the closed iTunes system for proper backup, i.e. to an external HDD or online storage solution, you can find them here, as per Apple's useful support page on the subject:

On a Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

On Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

On Windows Vista: \Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

To add a backup to iTunes, simply copy it back to its default directory, and it should show up as a restore option, labeled by date, when you're setting up a wiped or recently capital "R" Restored iPhone or iPod Touch.

Android

Google's position Android backup and sync has been translucent, perhaps to a fault: Since it depends so much on web services, it doesn't need to be backed up, right! It's already backed up, in the cloud! We're freakin' Google, y'all! THIS IS THE FUTURE! (Carried to its logical conclusion, this is the Chrome OS ethos. Anyway.) To a certain extend this cloud-focused cheerleading is fine, and can be put to good use. Gmail and Gcal are always safe, and your contacts can be added to your Google account too—should you designate them to be saved as Google contacts, not just SIM or Phone contacts. To do this:

1. Open your Contacts list
2. Press the Menu button
3. Select Import
4. Tick the "Google Contacts" box

But for anyone who wants to back up more than their Google-service-based info, this doesn't really help. For that, you'll need to go third-party. There are lots of backup apps for Android, but most of them are paid, either immediately or after a free trial. I assume just go with the best free(ish) solutions, all of which you can find by searching for their names in the Android Market.

Backup apps on Android are split into two types: the all-in-one apps that sync your data to a single file, and the piecemeal apps. Unfortunately, the AIO apps tend to be paid; doing this for free takes multiple downloads. Download these three apps: SMS Backup and Restore, Call Logs Backup & Restore, and APN Backup & Restore. Each one backs up its respective data to your microSD card (in /sdcard/*appname*BackupRestore/) for easy restoration on another phone. Using these apps is self-explanatory, since there are only three buttons: Backup, Restore and Delete.

Astro File Manager fills a remaining gap: app backup. It's a free file browser at heart, so the backup option is kind of hidden—once in the app, press the menu button, then click "Tools." Select "Application Manager/Backup," and you'll be able to backup your apps to your SD card. To restore, just install this same app on the device, insert the old SD card, navigate to the same "Application Manager/Backup screen" again, and select the "Backed Up Apps" tab. Astro is also a solid file browser, you can can manually move your data—like photos and videos—to a microSD card, where you should probably be storing them by default anyway. [Pic via]

There! Sprite Mechanic does the same in a slightly simpler way, but I'm hearing reports that it's a bit buggy on certain handsets (the Hero variant and Droid, specifically). Still, it's free, so it may be worth a try.

Lastly, if you've got a rooted phone, Backup for Root Users backs up virtually everything, and it's totally free. That catch? You need to have a rooted phone, or else it won't work. Which is either a crying shame, or a great excuse to root your phone.

Palm Pre/Pixi

Where Android's cloud-based not-really-a-backup system doesn't feel remotely complete, the Pre's is actually pretty good: Backup is performed automatically, every day, and linked to your user account. This just covers the basics, though. For example, a list of apps is kept server-side, but the app data itself isn't backed up; browser bookmarks are remembered, but no form data or website passwords. Media isn't backed up at all. Here's the full list. The solution is a bit hackish, but it works fine for most data. From PreCentral, a brief guide on backing up using either Microsoft' Sync Toy for PC, or with slight, obvious modifications, ChronoSync for Mac:

1. Plug in the Pre and select USB Drive.
2. Download SyncToy and install.
3. Click SyncToy on your desktop to run SyncToy for the first time.
4. Click Create New Folder Pair. For the Left Folder, Browse to the Pre's Drive (maybe E: or F:)
5. For the right folder browse to your documents folder and create a new subdirectory such as PreBackup and select it.
6. Choose to Synchronize and name your folder pair something easy to remember like PreBackup.
7. Click Run.

What you're doing here is essentially backing up the Pre's internal storage, bit for bit. Unfortunately, this doesn't back up settings and some application data, so restoring from this image won't ensure that you don't lose some data; just media, ringtones, etc.

Between this, Palm's backup and the natural backup inherent in being tied to online services like Gmail and Flickr, the only notable things not really backed up properly are specific application data and SMS conversations.

Windows Mobile

Microsoft has always offered some kind of backup out of the box, and as of the release of version 6.5, there are multiple options. The core backup utility, of course, is Windows Mobile Device Center, or as it's known in XP, ActiveSync. Pairing your device with these apps is quite simple, and gives shelter to most of the data you could want to back up, including contacts, calendar appointments and media.

In XP, download and install ActiveSync, and when you plug in your phone, start the ActiveSync app, which you should be prompted to open anyway. Set up a pairing relationship, select the data you want to backup, and you're good to go.

In Vista, you'll need to download Windows Mobile Device Center and do the same; in Windows 7, you should be prompted to install Windows Mobile Device Center as soon as you plug in a WinMo handset.

Now, let's assume you're not using a Windows PC, or you don't want to bother with setting up a sync relationship with a computer. You've got two free options, which together back up even more data than ActiveSync, without and external machine.

My Phone, another Microsoft app, is available for free to any Windows Mobile 6.0, 6.1 or 6.5 user. It's a misleadingly basic-seeming little app, which backs up nearly everything you store on your phone:

[By default]: contacts, calendar appointments, tasks, photos, videos, text messages, songs, browser favorites and documents between your phone and your My Phone web account.

Restoring from MyPhone is just a matter of logging into your Live account from within the app. You get 200MB of free storage, after which you've got to pay. Still: pretty fantastic, especially if you set it up to do scheduled backups.

If you want to back up your phone's data without a PC or a cloud-based service, there's PIM Backup. This utility feels and looks kind of ancient, but it's great at what it does. And what does it do? Everything:

- backup/restore appointments
- backup/restore call logs
- backup/restore contacts
- backup/restore messages (SMS, Mails, ...) NEW !!!
- backup/restore speed dials
- backup/restore tasks
- backup/restore custom files

Best of all, it stores your backup in a single file, which can be restored on any device using the same app. The procedure is dead-easy: Download the PIM CAB file to your device, install it, open it, check the data you want to back up off the list, and go. To restore, you go through the exact same interface, selecting "Restore" from the app's pulldown menu instead of "Back Up." In the spirit of safety, you may want to back up PIM's backup files on some kind of external storage. PIM lets you designate where you'd like to store its backups: select your microSD card if you have one, after which you can transfer it to any media your want. If not, you may want to transfer your backup to a PC or external storage device. (Unfortunately, the easiest way to do this is probably with ActiveSync or Mobile Device Center, since most WinMo phones don't allow you to browse the root storage in Explorer.)

BlackBerry

RIM has made life easy for BlackBerry users, who can back up their entire devices using BlackBerry Desktop.

First, install the app.

Under "Backup," select "Options," where you can specify encryption and data type parameters (encrypt the data for safety if you want, but make sure to select "Back up all device application data."

Click "Back Up," and select the destination directory for your backup. It's a single file, so it's easy to throw on an external HDD, USB stick or microSD card for safe storage.

That's it! Further instructions, including a detailed restore guide, are available here. [Pic via]

Symbian

Depending on which brand of handset and Symbian shell you're using, your backup options are going to differ. The Ovi Suite will do the trick. It's a full, automated backup suite, but it's PC-only and works exclusively with Nokia phones. Using it is as simple as setting up a sync relationship—just install the suite and plug the Nokia phone in via USB, and follow the wizard prompts—and it'll keep contacts, calendar items and media backed up. [Pic via]

Non-Nokia Symbian users—Samsung folks, listen up—can use a free app called The Symbian Tool. This will actually pull a full image copy from your Symbian phone, meaning that you can restore your phone bit-for-bit to the state it was in at the time of backup. There are also less severe options for basic media backup, or selective sync. More details here.

So, that's it! If you have more tips and tools to share, please drop some links in the comments-your feedback is hugely important to our How To guides, and your collective troubleshooting efforts have SAVED HUNDREDS OF LIVES, possibly. And if you have any topics you'd like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy backups, folks!

When your concerned friends and family insist that you have to back your data up (as anyone who's seen my atrociously beaten-down laptop in the last few months has done to me) they're effectively telling you two things: That backing up your data will save you a massive headache in the future, because more likely the not, your hard drive will fail; and, less bluntly, that you need to buy a hard drive. And who wants to do that? It's hard to lay out the cash for a backup hard drive, since the payoff is uncertain, and (hopefully) far away. It's a good investment—not an easy one.

The good news is, most of us cheapskates can still keep our most important files safe without spending a dime, or wasting more than a few minutes. Here how:

Note: These methods don't give you traditional, full backups—they are ways to keep copies of the files that matter most to you, like your documents, photos, music and videos.

Share

Do you live with someone else? Do you share a network with someone else? Then hey, you've got an ready-built backup system right there! There are a few ways to deal with this setup, from stupid-simple to moderately complex.

First, you need permission. Whoever your networked buddy is, sit them down and have a talk. Give them a glass of milk, and explain to them how important data backup is. Persuade them. Coax them. Scare them. Offer to store their backups in exchange for them storing yours. Great! Now you have a partner in data safety. Congratulations.

The easiest, most direct and least intimidating way to get free backups is to set up simple file sharing on your PC or Mac. On the PC, it's just a matter of ticking a few boxes and setting a few parameters (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7) and on Mac, it's not much harder (To another Mac, to a PC, courtesy of Lifehacker).

Now you need to decide what to back up, and how to do it. If privacy isn't an issue, like in a scenario where you're just syncing files between two open access family computers, you can simple copy your documents, photos, video and audio to opposing computers' shared folders, and voila. If privacy is an issue, like if you're trying to back up sensitive documents or embarrassing photos, you can simply create a password-protected archive of some or all of your data, then copy that over to the backup folder.

But this is all a little manual for my taste—for a longer term solution, I'd recommend something a little more automated. All we need with such a simple setup is a basic backup utility. For Windows, I've been happy with IdleBackup, a free little utility that'll copy selected folders to any destination you want—including network folders—while your computer isn't working. For Mac, Lacie's SilverKeeper is as simple and powerful a tool as you'll need, syncing folders locally or over a network on a set schedule—also free.

Go Online

Again, short of purchasing a whole lot of online space especially designed for the purpose of storing full backups, this'll be a scenario in which you're picking a choosing what you save and what you don't; your intention here is to save and recover the files that matter most, not restore your entire operating system. Luckily, with increasingly generous offers from online storage companies, you can put quite a bit of your stuff on someone else's servers for nothing. A few of the best:

Windows Live Skydrive: This one really deserves more publicity that it seems to get, because it hands you 25GB of no-strings-attached storage, for free. The 50MB filesize limit is a little low considering how large the online disk is, but for document, photo, and even music backup, it's hard to beat this.

File Factory: 100GB of free storage with a 300MB file limit. The catch? It can be a little slow, so this much data isn't necessarily that usable.

Dropbox: This is more than just a backup service—it has plenty of nifty file syncing and features, too—but it's a super-simple way to store 2GB of data online, with well-designed clients on every major platform

Mozy: Gives you 2GB of storage for free, or an unlimited amount for $5 a month. Comes with an extremely handy Windows utility that makes it easy to specify what gets uploaded, and what doesn't.

Orbit Files: Offers 6GB of space, but with fewer options available for non-paying customers, and no software client.

Scatter Yourself In the Cloud

The bad news is, this is the most time-consuming way to skirt proper backups, both in terms of setup and recovery. The good news is, you're probably already doing this, to an extent.

If my laptop died right now, I'd lose my settings, a little bit of music, a few day's worth of documents, and well, that's about it. That's because so, so much of my data lives in various online services, just by nature of how I work. Rather than undertaking a day-long effort to upload all your files to myriad websites, just consider changing your habits a little, and easing into a cloud over time. That these services provide useful backups is incidental—usually they're intended as web apps—but that doesn't mean they don't serve the purpose beautifully. Use them for their intended purposes-be it document editing, photo sharing, or music streaming—and you'll soon realize that, without even trying, you've create a wonderful, distributed backup of your most-used media across the internet.

Documents:

Google Docs: This one's a no-brainer, since a lot of you probably already use Gmail, with which Docs is tightly integrated. It can sometimes break formatting in files, but at least you won't lose important data.

Office Live: Microsoft's take on the online office suite comes with a free 5GB, which, let's be honest, is an awful lot of Word documents.

Zoho: As an online office suite, Zoho offers a few little features that Google and Microsoft don't. As a storage service, though, they only offer 1GB. Still!

Photos:

Flickr: The obvious choice for photography geeks, Flickr give you unlimited storage for free, at a rate of 100MB a month.

Snapfish: With fewer options for enthusiasts, Snapfish's draw is its unlimited storage and orderable photo prints.

Picasa: 1GB of Google's storage space for free out of the box, with a nice client to boot.

Photobucket: Another 1GB of free storage, but this one takes video as well.

Facebook: This might seem like an unlikely recommendation, but they've got one of the best deals going, in a way. If you're not concerned about the quality of your photo uploads—like, you just want them for onscreen viewing—you can upload unlimited photos here, 200 at a time. And in any case, a medium-quality JPEG is better than no photo at all.

Music:

MP3Tunes: Puts your music library everywhere, with a bevy of client apps for various platforms, including the iPhone. 2GB of free storage isn't much, but it's something.

File Factory: Mentioned above in the general storage section, FileFactory also has a web interface for music. 100GB is quite possibly enough to store your whole library.

Deezer: A French music streaming service that also lets you upload as much music as you'd like, for personal use.

Video:

This is the most hackish of the bunch, but YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler and the like usually support private or invite-only videos, which means they can act as last resort backup solutions, though the loss of quality and long upload times might make these plans a little unwieldy.

So that's about it! Please add in your experiences in the comments—your feedback is a huge benefit to our Saturday guides. Happy data-hoarding, and have a great weekend!

The benefit of the X-Power 1 is that it's both a backup battery and a charger all in one and you don't have to deal with carrying around an extra gadget. The built-in rechargeable battery backup unit will be charged very time you connect your iPod or iPhone to your computer using the X-Power 1 and you'll get more quality time with your gadget:

• Additional talk time of 4.5 hours on 3G and 9 hours on 2G. Up to 5.4 hours additional on Wi-Fi.
• Standby time of up to 270 hours. Audio Playback up to 20 hours and Video Playback 6 hours.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for extra time with my iPhone and less junk in my bag, but how the hell did that innocent USB cable result this:

[X-Power 1 via GadgetReview]

You can back up your purchased videos to any external USB drive, be it a flash drive or a standard USB hard drive. The video will show up on in a backup folder inside the drive, but you can't stream directly from the drive. So it's not like you can connect a 1TB USB hard drive and dump all your movies onto there for on-the-fly watching. You're limited to whatever space you have on your PS3's drive for storage, but you can swap in/swap-out from the external drive with relative ease.

So yeah, nice job Sony for putting out this video backup. It's great for the person who downloads a lot of movies from Sony's PSN service, which has a surprisingly decent selection for a service that's not that old.

Amazon S3 runs 15 cents per GB to store, 10 cents per GB to upload, and 17 cents per gig to download. Sounds pricey, but Time Warp's developers say that you only pay for the storage you use (unlike services that are flat $5 or $10 a month) and the program's compression and smart filtering keep it cheap—so 20GB of data would actually only cost around $1.50 a month.

How much are your Time Machine backs up worth to you? [Time Warp via TUAW]

Brent Freidman lays out exactly how to get Time Machine backups to work with any Windows Home Server machine in a point-by-point method that's pretty easy, despite some Terminal tinkering to make it work—follow that here.

If you wanna use just a generic NAS, you can do that too. Personally, I followed this guide by Adam Cohen-Rose—though there are others—to get it going on a 4TB WD ShareSpace several months ago, though WD now has a much cheaper consumer version. It's a hack that also takes a little bit of work, but ditching the USB cable is totally worth it.

If you're in the market for a NAS (if you don't have one, you are, even if you don't know it yet) check out our guide to finding the perfect networked storage.

Definitely a good weekend project, so let us know how it goes or if you have any tips in our fancy new comments if make the the attempt. [CompuGeek via MS Windows Home Server]

So, the Managed Copy spec, long in the making, has just been finalized by the Advanced Access Content System License Administrator—the Blu-ray DRM dudes—and now it has to be finalized by the studios, manufacturers, Blu-ray licensers, and likely, the Blu-mpa Lumpas.

Supposing they finalize it, then you still need hardware that supports Managed Copy—not the cheap Blu-ray player you got this Christmas, or even one you'll buy this Christmas. We're talking 2010. And even if the right player falls off the back of a truck in 2009, the AACS authorization server won't be running until 2010.

Okay, it's 2010, and you have the right hardware. So you pop in your disc and tell the player to authorize a managed copy—which the studio can charge you for, so it's not like you're making a copy, you're purchasing an additional copy at a lower cost, one using materials that you provide. (Raise your hand high if think studios are gonna not charge. Okay, everyone throw stuff at these people.)

If you decide it's worth it, you can put the managed copy on another Blu-ray disc, DVD, Windows Media DRM-compatible storage, SD card, etc. Oh yeah, if you grab the 50GB full-res copy, where are you gonna store 'em all? What a mess. And besides, who honestly watches real Blu-ray? We'll take the far simpler Digital Copy, thanks. [Video Business via Blu-ray]

New Acer® Aspire easyStore Home Server

Provides Access to Family's Digital Data From Anywhere in the World

Networks PCs, centralizes data and provides daily data back-ups for just $399

SAN JOSE, CALIF., May 21, 2009 – Acer, the third largest vendor in the PC market,(1) today announced the new Acer® Aspire easyStore Home Server for customers in the United States. Designed for households and home-based businesses with multiple PCs, Aspire easyStore offers a simple way to network home computers, centralize, share and protect digital data as well as access it remotely from anywhere in the world.

Outfitted with Microsoft® Windows® Home Server, the Aspire easyStore offers many benefits. For example, parents can access their children's homework while traveling for business. They can also upload videos and photos from sports events or summer vacations to the server, even while away from home. At any time, from anywhere, every family member with a PC in the home network can access photos, videos, music and other documents from the home server. This centralization of digital data saves significant time by eliminating the need to transfer data from one PC to another, every time someone wants a photo, video or other document that's stored on another PC. It's also a safeguard. If a netbook or notebook is damaged, lost or stolen, users don't lose their data along with it, since it's backed up at home. In addition, when a new system is added to the network, it's quick and easy to upload data from the computer to the server.

"The trend of multiple computer devices per household continues to grow, particularly with regard to mobility. A significant pain point for consumers is how to consolidate and protect their digital data that's spread among multiple devices," said Sumit Agnihotry, Vice President of Product Marketing for Acer America. "Aspire easyStore is the ideal solution for networking home PCs and providing round the clock data protection. Offering remote access to digital data at home from anywhere in the world and automatic daily back-ups, it's the perfect companion to netbooks and notebooks. It's an extremely practical and affordable way to simplify and manage one's personal digital life."

"It's great to have Acer as a valued partner for Microsoft's Windows Home Server in North America. Acer's solution gives consumers new options for purchasing Microsoft Windows Home Server. And Acer's reputation as a key contributor in the PC and consumer electronics field further demonstrates the industry's commitment to this growing product category," said Kevin Kean, General Manager, Windows Home and Small Business Server Group at Microsoft.

Small and Stylish Design, Significant Storage Capacity
Smaller than standard servers, the handsome black tower measures just 8.3-inches (H) x 7.8-inches (W) x 7.08-inches (L). HDD status LEDs emanate a soft blue light and complement the handsome black bezel. The power button is located on top for easy access and reach. One-touch USB copy enables quick file uploading. Users just plug in the USB device and push the button. The data is automatically sorted and stored by file type into designated folders.

Outfitted with an Intel® Atom™ processor 230 and 2GB DDR2 memory, the Aspire easyStore AH340-UA230N Home Server has the guts to organize and back-up files quickly. The 1TB hard drive and three hot-swappable hard drive bays available for storage expansion provide enough room for filing, storing and backing-up a vast library of songs, videos, photos, games and documents.

The hot swappable HDD cage enables users to increase their data storage, by adding up to three 3.5-inch internal hard drives, which means it offers up to about 7 TB of total data storage. The cage is outfitted with release levers for each drive to keep them secure. In addition, a recovery/reset pinhole provides additional data protection by enabling system restores and data recoveries with just one-touch.

The server works with DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) 1.5 Certified Home Server (DMS) and digital media player (DMP) to enable music playback as well as photo and video viewing on a TV. For internet security, Aspire easyStore comes with a six-month free trial of McAfee Total Protection Service.

Windows® Home Server Simplifies Home Computing, Enables Remote Access

Microsoft® Windows® Home Server centralizes digital media in one location, making it easy to access files, photos, videos and music from any PC on the network. It also protects critical data by creating an image-based backup of every home computer every day, so users can restore a single file or an entire PC. With Windows Home Server, users can access the home network from the office or the road, for full access to their files and applications, just as if they were sitting in front of their home PC.

Specifications, Pricing and Availability
The Acer® Aspire easyStore AH340-UA230N Home Server is available in the U.S. via leading online technology retailers and authorized resellers.

Acer® Aspire easyStore AH340-UA230N Home Server: Available now for a MSRP of $399.99

* Intel® Atom™ Processor 230 (1.6GHz)
* Microsoft® Windows® Home Server
* 2GB DDR2 Memory
* 1TB Hard Drive (2)
* Three Empty Hot Swappable Hard Drive Bays
* Five USB 2.0 Ports
* One eSATA Port
* 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
* 200 Watt Power Supply
* RJ-45 LAN Port

[

[Acer]

You plug it in, agree to the Terms of Service and it copies your entire hard drive—then every so often, records changes you make, so if your girlfriend has second or third thoughts about that home video you made together and deletes it to keep it from haunting her future Senate career, you can just zoom back a few hours into the past and retrieve it. Or any other precious file that mysteriously slips into the ether. If your whole system crashes out, it comes with a boot CD that you're not going to want to lose that'll let you restore your entire hard drive. Also, it looks like a hard drive for aliens.

It's $130 for 250GB of backup, or $200 for 500GB. [BoingBoing Gadgets, Seagate]

It's designed as an easy way to use your current USB drives to store data, with a one-button backup that sucks your computer's files through the disc and into your thumbstick. It's quite useful if you have no real idea how to use traditional backup systems and have a lot of USB drives laying around. Otherwise, a standard USB hard drive and some backup software would achieve the same result. [Slashgear]

Setup on a Windows Mobile 6.1 phone (AT&T Tilt) was easy. Just download and install the package from the phone and you can pretty much start syncing from there.

The good news is, sync fairly well for the most part. Contacts, calendar and tasks are synced fine, but so are your text messages, your photos, your videos, music and documents—provided they're all under the 200MB cap. Contacts, calendar, and tasks are two-way, meaning you can create entries right on the web page. Photos, videos, music and docs are upload-able too, which makes this an easy way to transfer files onto your device OTA. Any inconsistencies (a calendar entry created on the phone went to the web fine, but one made on the web wouldn't sync to the phone) can most likely be attributed to this being a beta.

The downside is that this is (by default) only really useful for backing up your phone once a day. You can only schedule your phone to back up once a day or once a week or manually. It's definitely not push and it's definitely not meant to be. This is used for making sure your contacts and other phone data are always backed up, so you won't lose everything in case someone swipes your com.

One good use for this would be to sync multiple phones to the same data. You can attach more than one device to an account, so if you switch between work and home devices—or if you lose a phone—you can just sync up your data again. It's not live-updating push synchronization into the cloud, but it is a fairly good backup solution. [My Phone]

Two small inconsistencies that you should note. One, in the backup screen, WHS will display your machine as "Windows Vista Ultimate" instead of Windows 7. Not a big deal. Two, you can't use the newer Windows 7 backup option, where you can choose which folders, specifically, to back up. You can only back up entire drives, but you can (one by one) exclude folders from the backup. Tedious, but it works.

Other than that, everything else is snaztastic. Time to get one of these Windows/Mac compatible HP MediaSmart servers with Windows 7.

While there is no official HP policy on erasing the hard drive for minor hardware defects, its something that might want to be kept in mind when you send your laptop in. One of Consumerist's readers, Marjan, decided to send his computer in for repair when one of the keys egregiously decided to pop off. The laptop came back with a spanking new "P" but all of Marjan's data had been wiped clean.

At least back up when you are sending your computer in for repair—wouldn't you need that information anyways if you were being torn away from your precious? Look, I know we're all pretty lazy—this is America, after all—but springing for that extra hour to back up your hard drive may just be worth it. [Consumerist]

The stakes for RealNetworks aren't terribly high either, as sales of RealDVD might have been slow because of, oh, I don't know, the mountains of free software that does a better and more complete job. Within the day, Real filed a countersuit which could possibly set a new precedent for the interpretation of the Hollywood's DVD license. Even in a best-case scenario, the most legal headway that could probably be made would be to permit neutered software like RealDVD, which would still leave any useful method of DVD backup well outside of the law. [NYT]

SONY DEBUTS 8X BLU-RAY DISC WRITER DRIVE

Sub-$400 Model Leaps Ahead in Recording Speed; Includes Blu-Ray Disc Movie Title “Men In Black”

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 23, 2008 – Sony Electronics today announced its third generation internal Blu-ray Disc™ (BD) writer for the computer aftermarket, which at about $400 achieves a new level of affordability for BD enthusiasts.

The new BWU-300S model burns single and dual layer BD-R media at up to 8X speed, recording a full 25GB disc in about 15 minutes and a full 50GB disc in about 30 minutes. The 8X recording speed is achieved using 6X compatible BD-R media. The drive also records DVDs at up to 16X, CDs up to 48X, and supports DVD-RAM recording, with an eye towards data backup, making it an excellent replacement burner for a standard DVD drive while offering all the benefits of Blu-ray Disc technology.

To provide consumers with the opportunity to experience high-definition movie playback first-hand, the new drive comes bundled with a “Men in Black” Blu-ray Disc from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. “Men In Black” stars Will Smith (“Hancock”) and Oscar®-winner Tommy Lee Jones (“The Fugitive”) saving the world from a total intergalactic disaster in Barry Sonnenfeld’s smash-hit sci-fi action comedy. The “Men In Black” high-definition Blu-ray Disc boasts advanced BD-Live enabled bonus features, including a multiplayer trivia game, an interactive Frank the Pug advice generator, an alien subtitle track and much more.

Also included with the drive is CyberLink’s software suite for capturing, authoring, editing, burning and viewing high-definition personal content.

“Consumers are demanding a better experience,” said Bob DeMoulin, marketing manager for branded storage products in Sony Electronics’ IT Products Division. “Not only are we providing state of the art hardware, but also the industry’s most complete software bundle and premium content.”

“Sony's new 8X Blu-ray Disc writable drive significantly improves the BD recording speed, a key feature in the optical storage technology,” said Wolfgang Schlichting, research director for removable storage at IDC. “The explosion of digital media usage by consumers, whether in the form of high-definition video, music or data, continues to grow at exponential rates. Innovative products such as this next-generation drive will help fuel the acceleration of Blu-ray adoption in the years ahead with more than 100 million drives shipping worldwide by 2011.”

The BWU-300S drive can record up to 50GB of data for random access storage and backup on BD-R (write once) or BD-RE (rewritable) discs, or up to 230 minutes of high-definition HDV 1080i video on a BD-R/RE 50GB disc. It also supports recording on standard single layer 4.7GB DVD+R/+RW/-RAM discs, 8.5GB DVD+R double/dual layer discs, and CDs.

The internal drive features a Serial ATA (SATA) interface and standard 5.25-inch form-factor for easy installation inside a desktop PC with Microsoft® Windows XP or Windows Vista® operating systems.

The new drive is fully supported by Adobe® Encore® CS3 software, now included with Adobe Premiere® Pro CS3, and Sony’s Vegas Pro 8 and DVD Architect Pro 5 software, providing video production professionals with another option for outputting high-definition video on a Blu-ray Disc with MPEG-2 or H.264 compression.

Availability

The BWU-300S drive will be available through select retailers, resellers and directly at sonystyle.com starting next month. Pre-orders are now being accepted by Sony on the website.