Why I bought SuperDuper!

[fhaber]

A product this good deserves a little praise.

Background: I'm an experienced techie Wintel user, and like half the human race, also have a IIci in the closet. I sometimes have to use Macs on the job, and needed a cheap way to get my OS X chops up to the mark, play with BSD/Darwin, etc. Sooo.... in December, I bought a refurb mid-05 iBook 12, with Tiger. Nice machine. Not fast, HD runs too hot, but I'm picky.

I'm also picky about software. I'll save my nits for later messages, because this is a rave review from someone who doesn't often give them out.

Short version: BRAVO!

Long version: Rarely have I seen a program that falls so easily under the fingers, yet can do so much. And thankfully, it doesn't try to be a Swiss Army Knife either. I'll guess now -- an active userbase helped to fine-tune the rough spots? If so, the synergy worked - the interface is easy, but good depth is there, and every option seems to work.

And this is a program that appears to work with what the official, blessed UI gives it! No sector-level trickery. I like that, for a daily backup program.

My reference points:

UNIX commandline copy - works, but tedious, like weaving your own hair shirt while you wear it.

PC-side imaging utils like GHOST: Invaluable, especially for corporates. But the DOS-like ones work best, and you're always at the mercy of the drive mfrs (changes in translation), the OS (unannounced partiton and format changes), and the OEMs (weird, proprietary extra 'restore' partitions). Any of the above can put an arrow in your tail and make a cloned drive unusable.

PC SOHO and home backup utils: Either they're an afterthought, crumbs from the table of an overfeatured corp. program (Adaptec/Roxio/Stomp, etc.) which has passed through several desultory changes of publisher, or they're just annoyingly impenetrable, with proprietary names for everything and Procrustean ways of working (Dantz). Sometimes both.

Again, thanks for a good piece of software

[dnanian]

Thanks very much for the great comments -- I'm glad you found us, and -- to sound a bit too Sally Field-y -- that you like us!

[fhaber]

>Sally Field-y

And at the risk of getting positively treacle-y....

I omitted a big reason for my purchase.

I fired off a random log clip with the menu facility, and MINUTES later, get a reply from the PUBLISHER. At that point, I was just a trial user.

Do you know how rare this kind of support is these days? I do. When I see it, I treasure it, and try to support the product in return.

I now return you to my usual cynical self.

-frank

[dnanian]

I will now brace myself for the onslaught of criticism.

Thanks, Frank!