loki

Very well said Mike. Well enough that I think it should be stuck to the top... :)

Right Here. You mean you haven't got yours yet??

Maybe they're just watching from a distance much like we keep a distance from the few remaining uncontacted tribes in the Amazon? They could be taking bets on how long we last... ;)

Mozy is owned by EMC, which is the 11th largest software company in the world, so that should prevent it from just going out of business. Of course that doesn't mean that EMC gets bored with it and sells it off etc. as publicly owned company's do from time to time. Mozy also has a deal with General Electric which should help keep it going for a little while at least. For the archival question, no I don't know if that has been suggested. They just state that their service is not an archival one, but they will take suggestions on adding it. I have come across another service that does offer versioning called Memopal. It's $50/year for 150GB for the home version, and you can use it on all of your computers (Mozy and Carbonite I think need a separate license for each PC). http://www.memopal.com/en/default.aspx What type of internet connection do you have? Most have far better download rates than upload ones. Plus more and more ISP's have begun throttling users that use "too much" bandwidth.

Mozy offers unlimited storage for $5/month (basically $60 for the year). They offer 2GB for free as well, but it wouldn't take long to fill this up with digital photos (for example). Mozy does seem to offer more options and control over what is backed up and some different options for restoring data, but I am still sorting through the differences myself.

I will certainly let everyone know what I choose to go with. Something I noticed this past weekend while helping both my brother and my girlfriend's dad pick out new computers is that Dell is offering an online backup service now. All of their computers look to come with a free 3GB account to start with, which you can then upgrade from. However, it looks more expensive than either Carbonite or Mozy. At least they are pushing off site back ups so maybe more people will use one. http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/shared/services/datasafe/datasafe?c=us&l=en&s=dhs

Thanks Mike. That certainly makes sense in your case. The other service I mentioned, Mozy Backup, doesn't do archiving either but they are taking suggestions from those that do want this feature. Currently they save the file on the server for 30 days before removing it if you have deleted it from your hard drive. As not much changes on my home machine these services do look like a great option for off site backups. And if people are concerned about security, the files are encrypted using a key that you can create before they are sent off to the server(s).

Mike, What didn't you like about the Carbonite backup system? Having got a fairly solid backup system in place at home, I'm looking at options for offsite and the Mozy and Carbonite options look decent for my use. I've found some pretty good reviews of the Mozy online backup as well.

Blog is short for web log. Basically an online diary. Many people have personal blogs for sharing with family and friends, while news sites use them along with, or in place of, editorial pages and some companies use them for direct contact with customers and the public. Some have also got to the point that the line between them and more traditional news sites have become quite blurred. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog