Good news for Windows Mobile 5 power users: Sprite Backup 5.0 is finally out!

http://spritesoftware.com/online_store.php

Despite the popular belief, you are not absolutely safe if you use Windows Mobile 5 (WM5) devices. Much as WM5 indeed protects you from battery depletion-related spontaneous hard resets, it can't protect you from misbehaving and/or incompatible programs. Programs like these can very easily crash or mess up the entire system, necessitating a hard reset to clean up an - at times - completely useless/unreliable system. You may end up having to hard reset your WM5 Pocket PC's. Therefore, you do need a backup solution even under WM5, particularly if you are a power user often installing and removing (new) applications. Unfortunately, Microsoft made a mistake while designing WM5 and ActiveSync. While even the latest ActiveSync version offers a usable, full backup solution for pre-WM5 devices, it doesn't do the same for WM5 Pocket PC's. This design decision is based on the lack of battery depletion-related hard resets but doesn't take into account the problems caused by problematic, misbehaving applications. This fact, and the completely different WindowsCE database model which previous backup apps weren't able to backup/restore, have resulted in a situation where there weren't any usable and really reliable WM5 backup solutions for more than half a year. Fortunately, now, the situation has changed. Sprite Backup has always been the best backup application for the Pocket PC; no wonder the infamous (in WM2003/WM2003SE iPAQ models) iPAQ Backup is also based on Sprite Backup (without some really advanced features like network backup). Sprite Software has just released the final version of their WM5-only backup solution, Sprite Backup 5.0. This is the first non-beta (final) backup solution that does what it's supposed to, unlike the Sunnysoft Backup Manager 3.7, the, up to now, only, as WM5-compliant advertised (but, in practice, not 100% compatible) backup application. That is, this application is indeed revolutionary. In this review, I elaborate on its pros (including the feature list) and cons; then, I give you some benchmark results and some tips; finally, I provide you with some additional links to check out. Pros

• it does work (also produced 100% results in my thorough, system-level, local tests on my Pocket PC and Pocket PC Phone Edition WM5 devices).
• it has a lot nice options/additional features in addition to the standard, on-the-Pocket-PC backup/restore. For example, it has a desktop PC client – just like that of ActiveSync with pre-WM5 devices, but at a much more advanced level. The same stands for remote backups and restores, which are unique features of Sprite Backup. Please check out the Sprite webpage for the complete list and description of the new and improved features (Sprite Setup Wizard , Full Backup/Restore of Microsoft Exchange Mail and Messages, Performance Improvements, Security Enhancements, Ease of restore, Improved ActiveSync Partnership handling, Basic Mode Backup/Restore Page, Backup to PC & Network, Password Protection, Scheduled Backup Operation, Auto-backup to the PC on first ActiveSync dock of the day, Annotated Backup files, Backup History Report Viewer, Manage previous backup files, Compression).

Cons

• lack of trial version (this is a big problem!)
• many users complain about the lack of executable backup file creation (a backup file that is executable - that is, you can just click it after a hard reset from the built-in File Explorer and it will restore your previous system without further interaction). This is indeed a problem, but not that big as most people would think: You can always enable the auto-copying of the executable Sprite restorer application at Options/Backup Options/General Backup Options/Leave a copy... in Advanced mode, before making a backup: click for screenshot That is, if you enable this feature, you will only need to fire up the built-in File Explorer after a hard reset, go to \Program Files\Sprite Backup on the storage card and execute Sprite Backup.exe in there. Note that once in my tests, the executable file on the card wouldn't start. After another hard reset, the program started without any problems. I haven't been able to reproduce the problem any more - it just went away. That is, if you run into this problem, just hard reset your Pocket PC and try restoring again. This model (the lack of self-decompression and and just providing a 2 Mbyte-large executable environment on the memory card) even has a slight advantage over the "let's create an EXE file of all backups" approach: if you store several backup files on your storage card(s), the lack of the additional memory footprint of the self-executable module in each and every backup file can result in some storage memory saving (and also somewhat reduced transfer times if you transfer them to/from somewhere else), which can be important in cases.
• There're no new Sprite Backup versions for pre-WM5 OS users; that is, Microsoft Exchange Mail and Messages can still not be fully backed up/restored using Sprite Backup on pre-WM5 operating systems. The new Sprite Backup version can't be installed on pre-WM5 devices and, therefore, its Exchange backup/restore capabilities can't be used on them. Incidentally, this fact, in addition to the Opera beta bugs in pre-WM5 operating systems, may make the Sprite Backup and Opera the killer WM5 applications (apps that alone make a lot of people go for WM5 who, otherwise, wouldn't consider the switch) if the situation remains the same in the future.

Some tricks/tips

1. Upon installation, a previous Sprite Backup version (it it's present) must be manually removed from Settings/System/Remove Programs. The Sprite installer does automatically offer removing older versions, but this process fails. Therefore, you must remove the previous version by hand, which, if done from Settings/System/Remove Programs, will work flawlessly.
2. Pocket PC Phone Edition users, attention. If you use a ROM (for example, non-official ones like the unofficial "Button" version 1.5.4.2) that also makes the Extended ROM available as a separate drive (as, say, \Extended_ROM2), Sprite Backup will try to save the backup file there by default and it will only tell you this after a soft reset. This won't cause any problem, just a slight annoyance on slow-to-boot-in devices. This is because you will only be faced this problem after the Pocket PC is reset and boots in for the backup to start. This means additional 2-3 wasted minutes with most Pocket PC PE devices with boot times of around 50-60 seconds. In these cases, you will need to manually direct Sprite to store its contents on the memory card, as can be seen in this screenshot.

Benchmark results (Tested version: version 5.0.1, build 1332; Press Release.) Backing up/restoring a backup file on a Dell Axim x51v (ROM version A06); a 114Mbyte backup file Backup: 4:55 m:s Restore: 8:38 m:s The same on a HTC Wizard (ROM version: the above-mentioned "unofficial" 1.5.4.2), with a 12.9M backup file: Backup: 1:56 m:s Restore: 3:00 m:s As can be seen, these results are pretty close to the ones I've benchmarked in my previous tests with the beta version. That is, Sprite Backup remained remarkably fast - as fast as the built-in backup in Dell Axim x51v's and, on the HTC Wizard, considerably faster than the January (that is, not the latest available beta released on 2. February) beta version of Spb Backup. This, of course, doesn't necessarily mean the final version of Spb Backup will be slower on the HTC Wizard. To be continued... No application lives in void and life goes on. Much as Sprite Backup is currently the only backup/restore application to have full WM5 compliance, this situation won't last forever. As customers need comparative tests and one-on-one comparative benchmark results to base their educated decisions on, I will publish another, considerably larger article on how Sprite Backup fares against the upcoming competition. This is likely to happen really soon – hopefully in a week – according to the informal annoncement of Spb Software House. I will also have made a lot of additional tests (remote (network) backups, Exchange backup/restore tests, encryption crackability/hackability tests etc.) by then – stay tuned, you won't be disappointed, I'm sure :) Verdict Sprite Backup doesn't disappoint. If you need a backup solution now and don't want to wait for alternative, possibly cheaper but - based on the Spb Backup betas - also slightly less capable, but still 100% WM5-compatible backup applications, go get it now. Recommended links My previous comparative tests of the (then-beta) Sprite Backup, (beta) Spb Backup and Sunnysoft Backup manager. A Pocket PC Thoughts thread with a lot of pro and cons opinions. UPDATE (9-Feb-2006): long after I've published the above review, Sprite users started to report about Sprite Backup 5.0's incompatibility with Pocket PC's running Credant Guardian Shield and HP Protect. Please keep this in mind, particularly if you have WM5 HP iPAQ's running HP Protect. Please also see this and this threads.