Storage Appliance has a ClickFree technology built into the drive that, as soon as it’s connected by USB to your Windows 2000 or XP computer (Vista support will be ready at launch in Q1 2007), hunts down any image file (more than 60 different file types are supported) and automatically backs them up. No software to install, no setup process to go through. Nothing. It just finds them and saves them to the drive. Even if they’re in compressed folders.
Like any good backup device, it doesn’t do a complete overwrite everytime you connect it. It uses unidirectional incremental backups, only saving new files and those that have been modified on your computer. And if you want, the drive’s restore feature can be used to share your files on another PC, again without installing any software.
Sounds great, but what about those *cough*sensitive*cough* pictures that are sitting in your temp folder after ‘browsing’ a few ‘healthy’ websites the night before? I wouldn’t want those showing up on the drive.
Good question, Anthony. I’ll be sure to check that out when I test it.
I love the idea, but am not sure that it’d be useful for me. For the price, I’d rather get 3x the storage space and have more control over the backup. But I guess I am not the target audience. Perhaps for my wife, it’d be great — ESPECIALLY if I could do some basic configuration up front to fine tune what it backs up, etc.
Hopefully they at least gave thought to not getting Anthony and Josh’ pics from temp folders (but if they are real good…send them along;) )
My concern would be all other miscellaneous items that may be on the PC, especially if it is a shared PC where people may be putting their own pics on, or images for documents/webpages.
This sounds like it would work only for the very basic environment…but then my parents don’t even worry about that with webtv. And if you need something this basic will you really have a digital camera?? (No offense Jon, some have digital cameras shoved upon them…lol)
The ease of use is a good step forward, but I still think pros are going to get their own box that comes with media readers (you can buy them anywhere), stick in a hard drive of choice (larger one for sure) and go from there. The cost of this is cheaper then equivalent in SD Cards, although you can get 2gb for around 20$ now… my guess is in about a year from you you will be able to get 4 or 8gb sd cards for around 20$ which would render this product pretty useless – where do you store the backup to the backup after you erase your camera to take more pictures? Hmmmm…
Jon
NW Guy… you will have to write far more then that to offend me, so don’t worry about it… running my own businesses has given me very thick skin that just gets thicker with time ;-)
Jon
overpriced, techn o-weenie crap!
compare to the Hitch! which will handle more devices and file types. Street price is about half. I got mine on a OneDay/OneDeal type of site for 1/4 of the price of the clickfree. I can take files off of SD/digicam to a USB thumbdrive or other. Totally cool. works with multireader, so I can xfer from SD to CF. and the list goes on…
Go to the Storage Appliance site and see their new video. It really looks like K-TEL is back in business. How can they expect to be taken seriously when they have stuff like this on their site?
Shame on Polaroid for putting their name on this..a once proud company wallowing in the mud with hacks like this.
Checked it out at CES. It is actually pretty cool and works like it says up top. The guy working the booth showed me some of the options. It skips your system directories and the stuff you don’t want, so it isn’t a blind copy. Probably recommend it to a friend in the family who is always asking me to help them with their computer (driving me nuts).
people need to try things before they speak on it.
Dont you realize this is your ticket out of having to help your hi-tech challenged family members?
I got to see this thing demo’ed at CES and it is what they claim it to be, click free. pretty cool backup utility to be honest.
My parents will get one for x-mas for sure.
this is the perfect gift for my techno challenged buddies / family who keep hounding me for free advice – havent they heard that time is worth more than money. where can i get this device for gifting? i went to polaroid website but couldnt get it into the checkout cart.