Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!ncar!boulder!stan!dce
From: dce@Solbourne.COM (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Fastback II offer: is it a good deal?
Message-ID: <1514@marvin.Solbourne.COM>
Date: 26 Jun 89 19:14:28 GMT
References: <799@kosman.UUCP>
Reply-To: dce@Solbourne.com (David Elliott)
Distribution: na
Organization: Solbourne Computer Inc., Longmont, Colorado
Lines: 41

In article <799@kosman.UUCP> kevin@kosman.UUCP (Kevin O'Gorman) writes:
>Yesterday's mail contained an interesting offer from Fifth Generation
>Systems.  Because I am already a registered user of something of theirs,
>I can get FastBack II for 60% off.  I gather that this a new release.
>The price comes out to $US75.60.

Damn.  Any idea what program you own that got you the deal?  If it's
SuitCaseII or PowerStation, I'll be disappointed, since I own both
of these and just paid $109 for FastBack II.

>First, is this actually much less, or any less, than I'm likely to see
>it for in mail order discount houses?

Well, like I said, I paid $109, and I think I got a good deal.

>Second, is this a good package to have.  My concerns are speed,
>and reliability first.  Then, I do not like image backup software
>where you're always updating to the same disks.  This may just be that
>I'm not used to such stuff, but some of the consequences of this approach
>bother me.

I have used FastBack at work and found it to be quite useable.

It isn't "image backup", at least not the way I used it.  Instead, it
was incremental, where you add to the backup disk set.  The only
problem I ever had was that my catalog disk died (that's the only disk
that gets written to a lot), and I made some mistake (like reinserting
the bad disk), and had to completely rebuild the catalog.

Anyway, the main reason I ordered FastBack II is that it has data
compression.  With my current home backup system (freeware), it takes
145 floppies to backup my basic disk.  FastBack is already more
efficient with floppy disk space, and with additional compression, I
can't lose.  Even if the total reduction is only 10 floppies, it will
be that much longer before I decide to do a new backup (I do a full
backup when I hit 250 disks), and will take that much less time to
do the initial backup (assuming that backups are generally I/O bound).

-- 
David Elliott		dce@Solbourne.COM
			...!{boulder,nbires,sun}!stan!dce