Bandwagon iTunes backup revamps pricing plans

Rom- online backup is not for everyone. If external hdd (local or at your friend's) is good enough for you, then that's cool...at least you are backing up :)

You're of the opinion (correct me if I'm wrong) that Time Machine will kill everyone in the online backup space AND the DIY backup software (ChronoSync, SuperDuper!, etc.).

I disagree. I would love to hear from players in those markets and get their opinions though.

dunk- we will be supporting web hosting companies that have ftp access. DreamHost has a 200GB plan for $69/year (you need to find the coupon) so they are much cheaper than S3.

Michael- yes, we will be doing a "Bandwagon Deconstructed" blog series where we explain features in more detail. We hope to clarify competitive issues. A matrix comparison is also a great idea.

If you like, I can give you a preview version when ready, just ping me.

could get really expensive for those of us with large libraries... i've got 220gigs worth of itunes content at S3 prices that's going to set me back $33 a month or nearly $500 for the year. for that price i could buy a terabyte hard drive NAS take it to my friends house and i'm done.

i know, because i just did it :)

re: mp3tunes.com -- I'm testing it now and will post with my complete impressions. Not a good experience so far.

Terence, thanks for taking the time to clarify the aims and features of Bandwagon. Judging by everyone's comments, it might be helpful to do a comparison matrix against other services and "true DIY" backup to make the Bandwagon advantages a bit clearer.

I have Leopard as well - the thing is, Apple does not disclose all features until the product is released. Whilst I have not tried it myself but have you tried using a mounted drive with Time Machine?

It is off-site (which can be achieved via Michael Rose's article above) but dependent on your internet connection. No internet, no back-up. If your machine crashes, it will take you awhile to recover your library.

The "uh-oh I dropped my external HDD" and "uh-oh I spilt coffee" incidents are not common, afaik, specially with large capacity external storage devices. Heck, store the drives somewhere secure, of course.

We actually have Leopard on one of our systems and played with Time Machine. The problem with Time Machine is that it works only with an external hdd. We haven't checked if it works on a SAN.

Ours is an offsite solution, not a local storage solution so data is protected from theft or the whoops "I just dropped my external hdd" or "spilled coffee"...

So what happens when Leopard's Time Machine comes out?

The html tags were stripped so here's the link to Jeremy's list:
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/007641.html

Hello all and thanks for the feedback.

1. mp3tunes only covers music, not videos, playlists*, preferences, etc. Also, it does not preserve metadata. Restores are also a doozy. BW restores in one click and tells YOU what is missing, no manual file/folder selections.

2. XML discussions: we are going to be posting a "Bandwagon Deconstructed" series on our blog soon that better explains why we do what we do.

One thing to keep in mind, BW's mantra is "ease of use" (backup is painful enough for most people). To that end, our target customers are people who prefer not to dabble in the ITL and XML files and are willing to pay $1/month for that convenience and our other features.

However, there are some people that prefer to do things the manual way. Jeremy has a list of free tools that help you in this regard.

*We support playlists, not smart playlists.