First Impressions of .Mac's Backup and Virex by Bernie Zenis


As a long time fan of Macintosh computers I have come to value Apple and Apple-recommended products. Apple's move from the free iTools to the for fee .Mac brought a lot of emotions as well as a few new welcome features. I was particularly looking forward to Backup and Virex. Having used them for a few weeks now, I can say that I am not impressed and sometimes disappointed.

Backup (1.0) is a good first try but doesn't hit the mark. One the plus side, I find myself backing up more often now. I like that I don't have to backup a whole folder, that I can selected the only the contents that I want to backup. The Log is useful when you have problems.

Backup also has some problems. When I was first trying to use it, I found that a backup stops if there are problems with a single file. I had a few files selected that Backup kept choking on. So, I would start a backup, wait (and sometimes wait) until it failed, identify the problem file, deselect the problem file, and start the backup again. I had to do the whole routine for each problem file. It would have been much easier if Backup would not stop just because of one problem file. It would have meant minutes of work instead of hours.

While Backup does give you a different set of items to backup for iDisk, CD-R, and DVD-R destinations, it does not allow you to save and restore sets. If you want to keep different sets of items to backup to, for example, CD-Rs, tough luck. (Since this article is for ResExcellence readers, maybe there is a way by fiddling with Backup's preference file(s).)

Backup also periodically freezes, requiring a Force Quit. To (hopefully) avoid this, I would suggest to do one backup/restore with Backup, then quit the application. If you need to perform another backup/restore, launch it again.

Having said all that about Backup 1.0, maybe 1.2 addresses some of the issues. I wouldn't know as Apple has, so far, not kept its promise to make "Backup 1.2 available for Mac OS X 10.1.5."


On to Virex. Or maybe you should skip it. Don't get me wrong, some virus protection is better to none. Virex's user interface might be appropriate for version 1.0; but, it is definitely NOT what you would expect from version 7.1.

You can pick "All Local Volumes" or one and only one item to scan at a time. You can also drag files (not folders!) onto the Virex icon. I have not found a way to scan more than one folder or disk at a time. It would be much better if you could select files, folders, and disks the way you can in Backup.

The output section of the main window appears to be pure text which can be a pain in the asterisk if you have "Show detailed results information" selected. So, if there is a problem with a file during a scan, you have to scroll by hand looking for it.; and the output can get huge, so you have to be very patient or very lucky. My suggestion is to copy the output and paste it in to your favorite text editor, then do a "Find" to look for problem files. Or, turn "Show detailed results information" off.

Virex also seems slow. I would rather err on the side of caution, so I set the preferences to do extra scanning ("Scan inside compressed and archived files" and also to "Perform an advanced scan of applications and macros for previously unknown viruses". If these add a LOT more time, then it should be stated as taking "a lot" more time. Even a little testing with all preferences turned off, Virex still seems slower than it should. Maybe it is because of the sheer number of viruses out there for which Virex has to check. Whatever the reason, I am much less likely to use Virex to routinely scan my computer if it is going to take up so much time unless I can schedule it...

Which brings us to the scheduling options. Or, I should say, the scheduling option: You can automatically scan your Home directory when you login. That is all, unless you want to open a Termianl and use the command line. If your Home directory has a lot of files, which is true for many people, you'll probably want to skip the automatic scan at login. Again, you would expect much more from version 7.1.

I performed a test scan of my Home directory. All preferences were off. Two files were reported as "could not be opened - permission denied". The summary reported that 58 files were not scanned. Um... Why? Which 58? Can I assumed that the 2 mentioned earlier were 2 of the 58? Also, the summary reported that there was 1 non-critical error. OK... What was the error? Am I asking too much from this product?

I wanted to write some sort of review for Backup and Virex that would help people in their evaluation of .Mac. I hope this was not too comprehensive as to make it unusable to the average person, not that the average ResExcellence reader is average. :-)

Thanks for reading,
Bernie Zenis