Bax It! is a free Windows backup program that differs from most other similar programs in several important ways.
In fact Bax It! really belongs to a mostly non-existent category that I would call "laptop protection software" - it works just fine with 'normal' PCs too of course.
Bax It! has no knobs.
Bax It! has particular characteristics that set it apart from similar programs, as I said earlier, and one of these is the complete lack of bells and whistles that are referred to normally as features and options.
The philosophy behind Bax It! was to minimize 'fuss' because the program is meant for average laptop owners who have better things to do than spend time learning how to use a program when it IS perfectly possible for that program, in the case of backing up, to pre-think the options for 99.99999% of such cases. That's how Bax It! evolved in one distinct way.
That 'floors' some first time users, they think they must have done something wrong because with just a few clicks the program is actually doing the job. They usually expect a series of options or preferences and so on.
Looked at from the point of view of an oft expressed wish, to see lots of options, or to see them as advantageous, Bax It! is just about the lousiest program you could ever clap your eyes on - there are just about none once you've chosen to either backup or backup and clone and then the drive to backup up to. The only other things standing in the way of actually doing the backup is the possible encounter with my easter egg if you discover the right key at the right time!
But the average laptop user doesn't want them anyway, so whose backup program is better, the one for 'knob twiddlers' or the one with no knobs?
That is the first 'feature' I would point out as being important for the 'target user'
How to sum up that one? Simplicity? Ease of use? Quick to get going? Very few options? A fixed small set of standard universally preferred pre-set settings?
Low freezing point
The job of backup programs necessitates a lot of file manipulation and these days files can be large and very large, very large indeed and even extremely large, videos, big mp3s and so on, they're big very often and not merely "medium", "regular" or "large" but absolutely huge. The thing about this is that when working with files that are large the operating system, Windows, puts a bit of a hold on things with the result that things can appear to, or actually do, freeze by which is meant that you will see things being unresponsive for varying amounts of time.
Bax It! has been designed to work with files in a way which, again, will set it apart from many other backup programs which, my tests have shown, means that it rarely freezes for more than a few seconds at a time and not very often.
Bax It! users can run Task Manager and watch as Bax It! manages it's sub-programs in such a way that all the freezing is just to these sub programs. The fact that you will usually see that most of these sub-programs are frozen and "Not Responding" demonstrates exactly what I mean and for those who don't take a look at what is going on behind the scenes, who don't bother to run Task Manager, they will see that Bax It! is plodding along merrily without such hiccups.
An additional feature that may be noted here is that Bax It! launches up to five of these sub programs at a time. Experiments with this idea, and with no limit on the number launched, made me, as the programmer, realize that more than a few, eg five, is pointless and counter productive. Why? Windows deals with this situation, multiple file copying simultaneously, by dealing, almost literally, the same as a dealer of cards deals. Without going into this in any more detail, it can easily be seen that a few simultaneous file operations is efficient, more than a few is a bad idea.
Bax It! optimizes the Windows system in a simple and efficient way that maximizes speed and reduces half-done jobs.
No deleting rule
Bax It! doesn't delete any user files. Why not? Many or most backup programs boast a feature that notices the files that you have deleted in your source and deletes them in the existing backup. What's wrong with that common feature? Just image the situation where you erroneously delete a file or worse, a whole folder of files (I have done both several times over the years), and before you discover your mistake you do a backup. Do I need to spell it out any further? Clearly what looks like a good idea is actually a very bad idea and Bax It! won't delete any such files for that single very good reason.
Two questions might reasonably crop up in response to that but this is not the place to develop the idea further other than to say, yes I have an answer for both and so does Bax It!
Cloning option
Whilst Bax It! is a nice free program on it's own there is also the option to buy a cloning add-on and the two combined make laptop protection a complete doddle.
A How To (overcome the laptop nightmare disaster scenario and end up laughing)
For Bax It! users who want to go the whole hog a How To guide that explains all the steps a non-skilled, non-techy, average laptop owner needs to know in order to completely recover from a laptop disaster.
Summing up
To sum up, Bax It! is a very simple program with a lot of thought and intelligent design built into it that makes it quite distinct from many other similar programs, so much so that it may be in a class of it's own and if that is the case I would like that class to be called "laptop protection software".
30th May 2008
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