noels -
As a long time Windows user (15+ years), I fully agree with your comments about SuperDuper. I never had anything this good when I had a PC. That's history now. I have moved everything over to my new 24" iMac. For those few programs that I must have that only run on Windows I use Fusion under OSX. Works perfectly. When I do a SuperDuper bootable backup I can take the external hard drive with the bootable back over to my wife's Mac-mini and boot from it. Everything, even my Fusion/Windows, shows up on my wife's machine. This is really good stuff.
Now . . . I am surprised that you cut TimeMachine off completely. It serves a useful purpose. Sooner or later you will need to recover some earlier version of a file or some deleted file. TimeMachine performs miracles in that case. It has saved me twice. You might try going to MacRumors and inquiring if someone there can suggest a solution for your slow backup with TimeMachine. The times you quote are unreasonable.
I now have SuperDuper and TimeMachine running and plan to keep this arrangement. In fact, I am alternatively backing up to two different external drives with SuperDuper. For the first time in my computing experience I feel secure.
