Acronis 2009 Purchase Decision Delima

I just started looking for a backup solution for my home computer and saw a review that rated Genie and Acronis as number 1 and 2 respectively. I also read a TI 2009 review by a reviewer in PC Mag that did not recommend Acronis due to some problems he ran into. I decided to enter into a chat with Acronis and ended up feeling they were less than forthcoming in answering my concerns about the problems identified in the PC Mag article. I have included the chat session below.

My questions: Have any of you ran into the problems discussed below or in the PC Mag review (or any other significant problems).

Chat discussion follows
Alex: Hello! Thank you for contacting Acronis Customer Central! My name is Alex, how can I assist you?

Craig: I was seriosly considering purchasing TI 2009 for my home computer until I read a PCMag review that did not recommend the product and outline a serious problem they had with XP SP3, which I am running and also a well known bug on selecting items for backup.

Craig: Would you please comment on the problems the reviewer encountered and what you have done to fix them

Alex: I have a firm comprehension of your request and I will address it right now. there are no common problems with SP 3 and bug with selection of items. You can download the trial version of Acronis True Image Home 2009 using this link: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/ in order to see how it works on your computer.

Craig: Does this mean you are saying the article in PCMag was incorrect? I'm hesitant to try anything in the way of a trial that might lead to the problems the testor ran into. I'm not near as experienced as he is and he had a heck of a time getting his system back up. I doubt if I would be able to recover my system if the same thing happened to me.

Alex: I'm not saying that PC mag was incorrect. They tell their opinion about our software. We are not responsible for it. I would like to assure you that there are no common issues you mentioned and our program works stable in most of cases. So please do not worry to install the software. Anyway, you may contact us anytime so we will do our best to assist you.

Craig: You say there are no issues with the software but that doesn't help me understand why the author said the problem was noted on forums. I have included the part of the article discussing this below. Is the problem non-existant or has it been fixed?

Craig: The only anomaly I found was a bug in the program that's been widely discussed on the Acronis support forums. When I created a category-based backup job, and select a top-level category (like "Documents") and then deselected that top-level category, so that I could select one or two subcategories inside it (like "My Backups"), the subcategories that I deliberately selected never got backed up. After I had deselected the container category, the program let me fill the check box next to the subcategories, but completely ignored my selections.

Alex: Sir, i already told you that there are NO common issues you mentioned. You may simply check it if you use our trial version.

Craig: Alex - I asked you a some specific questions regarding problems that were identified in a review by a reputable computer magazine. You have steadfastly stated there are no problems with the product and encouraged me to use a trial version without directly providing any amplifying information on the problem encountered or the statement that the problem was widely discussed on the Acronis support forums. I would really like a more detailed response on the problems encountered by the reviewer.

Alex: We are not responsible for any problems mentioned in third part site. The only thing i may say to you is that most recent build for the software (9646) does not contain any major issues, we have fixed several task issue in it, but they were not major ones. Our software does not support Windows 2000 system, but XP SP3 is fully supported, and we did not face any common issues in this case.

Craig: Alex - Thank you for your time. Based on the limited inisight I have gained through our discussion on the PCMag review problems I believe I will continue to think about Acronis TI 2009 and other solitions like Genie Backup Manager.

 

If they don't think there are any major issue in the current build, maybe that expalins why they release builds without fixing major issues.

 

If any support chat has this result it is worthless...senseless.

But the forum can do something but it requires a little bit research and a responsible member:

We can collect all known issues with Ti2009 and all appropriate ticket numbers.
(Only issues with ticket numbers are usable)

Then the 'responsible member' starts a live chat with Acronis to talk about the problems. And there they cannot answer "there are NO common issues".
You can offer the concernig ticket...

But:
Who is able/want to do that?

 

I was considering Acronis 2009 also, but after reading SO MANY problems here at Wilders, plus the review at PCMag... plus the seemingly "bad" support from Acronis. Well the decision after that was easy to make, I have bought Paragon Drive Backup 9 Professional instead.

 

I wouldn't bother doing that. I would make the point with my money after my feet move me elsewhere.

The only reason I stick with TI is that for my manual imaging needs of my C partition it appears to work just fine. I've never had all the grief that is written on this forum but if I did I'm not so sure I'd still be using it.

I've said it a million times, there is a gold-mine of information on this forum for anybody who seriously wants to address the issues the customers are having especially if you combine it with the support contacts via other mechanisms.

I'm annoyed the missing .pst and other files issue has received absolutely no response by Acronis, even if the response is that the posters are all wrong.

 

I am with SeekForever on this

ATI does what I want but I don't want much. Just a means of manually backing up drives and recovering reliably when needed. Of course I had to rely on a 3rd party environment to make that happen (VistaPE and Mustang) but ATI does the core work.

If you are not happy with the customer service and can't make it work reliably look for something else. There does not appear to a magic backup programme that never gives anyone any problems going by the support forums from other brands of programme.

As TI has got more complex it seems to have produced more problems.

I wonder how the more commercial versions fare?

 

@seekforever & Tatou
I accept your opinion.
For myself I have no issue with Ti. I'm using Ti11 and it works for me in all cases well.

But i feel annoying because Acronis release a software which is not reliable (Ti2009).
- first they release a version which cannot cope with external devices.
- shortly the build 9646 was released... it works better
- no backup locations and no substitution for it
- editing a created task is buggy (not only from Ti11. From ti2009 itself too)
- obviously losing files concerning Outlook
- cannot create a chain of full-backups with incrementals (and no alternative)
- consolidation backups what nobody needs
- earliest support to an opened issue after 2 weeks (if you have fortune)

I'm a software developer myself. And I would become fired from my employer if I develop a software like Ti2009.

Ok, I can have the standpoint that all this doesn't bother me because I have no issue though. But then I am not I.
I feel the pain of other users who have the right to get a professional software.
And when I hear that Acronis said they are not aware of any major issue concerning Ti2009/9646 then I get ... (no comment).

happy new year

To my previous post:
What I suggested cannot get reality. I know that.

 

Thanks Mr Morse

One of the side effects of the problems with ATI is that you find out there are a lot of good people who want to help other people having problems and are happy to share their knowledge and time and experiences over a long period.

It is disappointing that ATI keep using the community of users as beta testers.

I dumped Norton Antivirus and Zone Alarm after years of renewing and upgrading but finally the problems with new releases got too much.

I hope Acronis get their act together. I thought they had a few years ago. As seekforever says they just seem incapable of using the knowledge and goodwill that is in the forum to build a better product. On the other hand for all we know Acronis is maybe three people working out of a bus coding in their spare time.