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System Requirements
- Platform: Windows Vista / 7 / XP, Mac OS X
- Media: CD-ROM
- Item Quantity: 1
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Product Features
- Unlimited backup
- Automatic real time backups
- Weekly report of your backups by e-mail
- Easy access to all your files via your personalised webpage
- New - Share files with your friends and family
Product details
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Product Description
Manufacturer's Description
| What happens to your files if your computer breaks down, gets lost, or stolen? Nothing, if you have F-Secure Online Backup installed on your computer. It automatically backs up your photos, music, email and other important files with no limitation on space. You can access your stuff easily from anywhere via your personalized webpage. Sharing your files with your friends and family is also easy - with just one click. |
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- Unlimited backup - No limit to the amount of data you can backup. The files are securely stored and transferred securely to online data centers. Because F-Secure Online Backup stores your data online, you also safeguard your files against possible PC failure and property damage. Making backup DVDs or using external hard drives do not offer this added benefit.
- Automatic real time backups - Every time you are connected to the Internet, Online Backup will be quietly backing up all of your documents.
- Weekly report of your backups by e-mail - Option to see exactly what is being backed up each day via e-mail.
- Easy access to all your files via your personalised webpage - Choose what you want to backup or restore from your private portal. The intuitive web portal enables safe and easy access to you backed-up pictures, documents and other digital content over the Internet. You can also view your digital photo's or play your music or videos with the built in media player.
- NEW. Share files with your friends and family - You can easily share any content you have backed up with only a couple of clicks, even directly from your desktop.
| Make sure you never lose important files again Online Backup is an easy to use and fully automated backup and restore solution. All your important files are stored securely online, with no limit on the amount of data. The intuitive web portal enables safe and easy access to your backed-up pictures, documents and other digital content over the Internet. You can easily test drive the solution with a version that enfordes a size limit for your content. We all take regular backups of our important files, right? Wrong. Everyone knows that taking regular backups is important but few of us have the time or the expertise required to set up a working system to take care of this important aspect of data security. Let us do it for you - automatically F-Secure Online Backup relieves you from having to remember to take frequent backups of your pictures, music and other important documents. It works automatically in the background, whenever you are connected to the internet, backing up all of your important data safely online. You can easily restore your files, either automatically or by selecting the files you need. |
Note: All products can also be downloaded from the web so do not need a CD Drive. Instructions for this are included. No CD drive, No Problem. Simply follow the instructions in the quick guide.
Box Contents:
- CD-ROM
- Installation guide
Product Description
F-Secure Online Backup 1 Year 1 User
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
F-Secure Online Backup 2011 is the kind of backup system you might want to implement if you have limited computing experience, or if you have a non-IT literate friend or relative who you want to ensure has their most important files backed up. The classic example is the digital photo collection. How many people are destined to lose a decade's worth of family photos when their laptop hard drive finally gives out?
I'll say right now that if you want to take control over exactly what is backed up and have the choice of a variety of options, this isn't the solution for you. There are other solutions out there catering to the power user, but F-Secure is aimed more at the basic end of the spectrum.
It comes with 'unlimited' backup storage for one single PC for one year. After that time, you'll need to extend your subscription. If you have multiple PCs, you'll need multiple subscriptions running in parallel. What does 'unlimited backup' mean? According to the FAQ document it means - 'The F-Secure Online Backup program allows you to back up all personal files on your hard disk securely, regardless of the total number of files'. Also note that 'No single files can be larger than 2GB'.
Installation is very simple on Windows. Once the software is installed, you are prompted what options to choose - whether to back up automatically or decide what to backup yourself. In the interests of saving time and bandwidth, it may be worth opting to limit the scope of the backup. By default, the following is backed up across all physical hard drives in your PC (note that no external hard drives whether mapped network shares or attached USB drives may be selected):
Office Documents -
Microsoft Office Docs: Word, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Project, Access, Fax at work, Money, Visio
OpenOffice Documents: OpenOffice and OpenOffice 2 applications
Desktop Publishing Docs: InDesign, QuarkXpress, PageMaker, FrameMaker
Apple iWork Docs: Pages, Keynote, Numbers,
CAD Drawings: dxf, .dwg, .mac, .pla, .pln, .pz3, .pzz files.
Other Docs: .pdf, .txt.
Pictures and Videos -
Image Files: jpg, .jpeg, .tif, .tiff, .crw, .cr2, .raw, .nef, .dng, .orf, .pef, .ptx, .raf, .gif
Creative App Docs: .ai, .eps, .cpt, .cdr, .cdx, .fla, .png, .psd, .psb, .psp, .eps, .dxf, .fhd, .fh9, .graffle, .wec. .xar.
Video Files: .wmv, .mov, .3gp
Music Files -
Common Audio Files: .mp3, .m4a, .m4p, .wma, .aac, .mp4 * N.B. audio files are not automatically backed up *
E-mails (this is a nice feature - it'll backup emails at an individual mail level while Outlook is open) -
Windows: Default e-mail application (Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows e-mail, Thunderbird).
Mac: Thunderbird and Mac OS X Mail.
My Important Files -
My Documents: Files in your My Documents folder (default selection). Only the supported file types are included in the backup.
Desktop: Files in your Desktop folder (default selection). Only the supported file types are included in the backup.
Favourites: Files in the Favorites folder of Internet Explorer (default selection). Only the supported file types are included in the backup.
You can assume that your backups are pretty secure - files are encrypted using 3DES encryption, and uploaded to F-Secure using 128-bit SSL encryption, which is as secure as most of the competitor online backup systems. However, you may not specify the encryption key yourself.
The first issue I encountered was, when trying to specify exactly which Outlook folders to backup. I wanted to exclude my SPAM folder from the backup. However, repeated attempts to navigate to and deselect this in the interface resulted in the interface freezing, requiring me to terminate it. After several attempts and a couple of reboots, I was able to uncheck this box.
Selecting files and folders in the interface is not hugely challenging - while the dialogue window is fixed width, it is possible to scroll back & forth, so you are able to get to the end of the line as required. However, fixed width dialogue boxes are an unnecessary inconvenience and can be irritating. Partial selections and full selections of directory contents are possible, and partial selections are flagged with a grey box; full selections with a green tick. This is perfectly usable.
In addition to the folder selection dialogue, you can also right-click on files and folders in Windows Explorer and select 'Backup Now'. Indeed, this may be the preferred way to select objects for backup, especially for people not wanting to use the dedicated dialogue.
Every file you select a file or folder for backup, it gets a large orange dot appear over its icon in Windows Explorer. At it's fully backed up, the dot changes to Green. This is not a unique feature to F-Secure, but it is a really comforting indication that your files are backed up.
It's worth noting that files are backed up in the following order (from smallest to largest) and you cannot modify this setting:
1. E-mails.
2. Contacts.
3. My important files (if you have selected files in this category).
4. Other files.
If you accidentally delete a file from the local drive, you have (by default, this can be extended to 45 days) 30 days to restore it from your online backup. After that, the online copy will also be deleted automatically.
Should you be unlucky enough to have a hard drive failure, you need to first re-install and re-license the software on your new drive, then you can restore the files to their original locations, or another alternate location. It is unclear whether you have the same 30 (45) day window to do this before your online backup will be erased.
Bandwidth for file upload may be throttled to ensure that you don't make other web applications (e.g. browsing or Skype) perform badly. The default limit of 60 KB/s seems to work pretty well for a typical high speed broadband connection, but if you find this too much, you can drop it to as low as 10KB/s. On the other hand, you can set it as unlimited. The best approach would be to throttle it while you or anyone else sharing your broadband connection are out of the house, and then to throttle it again when you come back. Once the initial backup has completed - this will take many hours or even days at 1-2GB per day - only changes are replicated.
The second, and rather more major issue I encountered was - when navigating any of the folders protected by the backup selection (fortunately very few in my case) Windows Explorer would often just stop responding, forcing me to terminate the Windows Explorer process completely. I have sufficient technical knowledge to be able to do this - many others may be forced to reboot to rectify the situation. This happened even with my AntiVirus tool disabled, as I thought at first that there may be a security conflict. Only when I disabled the F-Secure backup service did Windows Explorer come back to normal operation. This was not an intermittent issue - I could reproduce it at will. For this reason alone, I cannot recommend this product. There is an amount of work which needs to be done to make it more stable. I'm running Windows XP SP3, which at the time of writing still constitutes the majority of PC desktops, so you'd think it would run well on such a well tested operating system.
So in summary :-
The Good:
- Unlimited backup capacity (in common with most competitors)
- Nice integration with Windows Explorer (in common with most competitors)
- Decent level of file security
- The ability to backup to the level of individual emails
- 'Fit and forget' setup makes this a good solution to implement for a non-technical friend or relative
- The ability to restore to the original or an alternative location
- Unobtrusive background operation
- Low CPU utilisation (average 2% CPU)
The Bad:
- Causing Windows Explorer to hang ***MAJOR ISSUE***
- Backup selection interface can be unresponsive for long periods and even stop working completely at times
- Maximum file size limit is 2GB (this is less than some competitors)
- It is not possible to backup from network shares or external USB drives or memory sticks
- Interface could be improved with resizable dialogue windows
- The file selection interface could be greatly improved
- High memory consumption (average 100MB)
So overall, when compared to other online backup solutions like Carbonite and Mozy, this is not the leader of the pack in terms of functionality. However, my main reservation is its apparent lack of stability, and in particular its tendency to lock up Windows Explorer as well as its own email navigation dialogue becoming unresponsive. This needs some serious attention. Until these issues are dealt with, I cannot recommend this product.
Approach with caution.
I'll say right now that if you want to take control over exactly what is backed up and have the choice of a variety of options, this isn't the solution for you. There are other solutions out there catering to the power user, but F-Secure is aimed more at the basic end of the spectrum.
It comes with 'unlimited' backup storage for one single PC for one year. After that time, you'll need to extend your subscription. If you have multiple PCs, you'll need multiple subscriptions running in parallel. What does 'unlimited backup' mean? According to the FAQ document it means - 'The F-Secure Online Backup program allows you to back up all personal files on your hard disk securely, regardless of the total number of files'. Also note that 'No single files can be larger than 2GB'.
Installation is very simple on Windows. Once the software is installed, you are prompted what options to choose - whether to back up automatically or decide what to backup yourself. In the interests of saving time and bandwidth, it may be worth opting to limit the scope of the backup. By default, the following is backed up across all physical hard drives in your PC (note that no external hard drives whether mapped network shares or attached USB drives may be selected):
Office Documents -
Microsoft Office Docs: Word, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Project, Access, Fax at work, Money, Visio
OpenOffice Documents: OpenOffice and OpenOffice 2 applications
Desktop Publishing Docs: InDesign, QuarkXpress, PageMaker, FrameMaker
Apple iWork Docs: Pages, Keynote, Numbers,
CAD Drawings: dxf, .dwg, .mac, .pla, .pln, .pz3, .pzz files.
Other Docs: .pdf, .txt.
Pictures and Videos -
Image Files: jpg, .jpeg, .tif, .tiff, .crw, .cr2, .raw, .nef, .dng, .orf, .pef, .ptx, .raf, .gif
Creative App Docs: .ai, .eps, .cpt, .cdr, .cdx, .fla, .png, .psd, .psb, .psp, .eps, .dxf, .fhd, .fh9, .graffle, .wec. .xar.
Video Files: .wmv, .mov, .3gp
Music Files -
Common Audio Files: .mp3, .m4a, .m4p, .wma, .aac, .mp4 * N.B. audio files are not automatically backed up *
E-mails (this is a nice feature - it'll backup emails at an individual mail level while Outlook is open) -
Windows: Default e-mail application (Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows e-mail, Thunderbird).
Mac: Thunderbird and Mac OS X Mail.
My Important Files -
My Documents: Files in your My Documents folder (default selection). Only the supported file types are included in the backup.
Desktop: Files in your Desktop folder (default selection). Only the supported file types are included in the backup.
Favourites: Files in the Favorites folder of Internet Explorer (default selection). Only the supported file types are included in the backup.
You can assume that your backups are pretty secure - files are encrypted using 3DES encryption, and uploaded to F-Secure using 128-bit SSL encryption, which is as secure as most of the competitor online backup systems. However, you may not specify the encryption key yourself.
The first issue I encountered was, when trying to specify exactly which Outlook folders to backup. I wanted to exclude my SPAM folder from the backup. However, repeated attempts to navigate to and deselect this in the interface resulted in the interface freezing, requiring me to terminate it. After several attempts and a couple of reboots, I was able to uncheck this box.
Selecting files and folders in the interface is not hugely challenging - while the dialogue window is fixed width, it is possible to scroll back & forth, so you are able to get to the end of the line as required. However, fixed width dialogue boxes are an unnecessary inconvenience and can be irritating. Partial selections and full selections of directory contents are possible, and partial selections are flagged with a grey box; full selections with a green tick. This is perfectly usable.
In addition to the folder selection dialogue, you can also right-click on files and folders in Windows Explorer and select 'Backup Now'. Indeed, this may be the preferred way to select objects for backup, especially for people not wanting to use the dedicated dialogue.
Every file you select a file or folder for backup, it gets a large orange dot appear over its icon in Windows Explorer. At it's fully backed up, the dot changes to Green. This is not a unique feature to F-Secure, but it is a really comforting indication that your files are backed up.
It's worth noting that files are backed up in the following order (from smallest to largest) and you cannot modify this setting:
1. E-mails.
2. Contacts.
3. My important files (if you have selected files in this category).
4. Other files.
If you accidentally delete a file from the local drive, you have (by default, this can be extended to 45 days) 30 days to restore it from your online backup. After that, the online copy will also be deleted automatically.
Should you be unlucky enough to have a hard drive failure, you need to first re-install and re-license the software on your new drive, then you can restore the files to their original locations, or another alternate location. It is unclear whether you have the same 30 (45) day window to do this before your online backup will be erased.
Bandwidth for file upload may be throttled to ensure that you don't make other web applications (e.g. browsing or Skype) perform badly. The default limit of 60 KB/s seems to work pretty well for a typical high speed broadband connection, but if you find this too much, you can drop it to as low as 10KB/s. On the other hand, you can set it as unlimited. The best approach would be to throttle it while you or anyone else sharing your broadband connection are out of the house, and then to throttle it again when you come back. Once the initial backup has completed - this will take many hours or even days at 1-2GB per day - only changes are replicated.
The second, and rather more major issue I encountered was - when navigating any of the folders protected by the backup selection (fortunately very few in my case) Windows Explorer would often just stop responding, forcing me to terminate the Windows Explorer process completely. I have sufficient technical knowledge to be able to do this - many others may be forced to reboot to rectify the situation. This happened even with my AntiVirus tool disabled, as I thought at first that there may be a security conflict. Only when I disabled the F-Secure backup service did Windows Explorer come back to normal operation. This was not an intermittent issue - I could reproduce it at will. For this reason alone, I cannot recommend this product. There is an amount of work which needs to be done to make it more stable. I'm running Windows XP SP3, which at the time of writing still constitutes the majority of PC desktops, so you'd think it would run well on such a well tested operating system.
So in summary :-
The Good:
- Unlimited backup capacity (in common with most competitors)
- Nice integration with Windows Explorer (in common with most competitors)
- Decent level of file security
- The ability to backup to the level of individual emails
- 'Fit and forget' setup makes this a good solution to implement for a non-technical friend or relative
- The ability to restore to the original or an alternative location
- Unobtrusive background operation
- Low CPU utilisation (average 2% CPU)
The Bad:
- Causing Windows Explorer to hang ***MAJOR ISSUE***
- Backup selection interface can be unresponsive for long periods and even stop working completely at times
- Maximum file size limit is 2GB (this is less than some competitors)
- It is not possible to backup from network shares or external USB drives or memory sticks
- Interface could be improved with resizable dialogue windows
- The file selection interface could be greatly improved
- High memory consumption (average 100MB)
So overall, when compared to other online backup solutions like Carbonite and Mozy, this is not the leader of the pack in terms of functionality. However, my main reservation is its apparent lack of stability, and in particular its tendency to lock up Windows Explorer as well as its own email navigation dialogue becoming unresponsive. This needs some serious attention. Until these issues are dealt with, I cannot recommend this product.
Approach with caution.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
I've used an older version of F-Secure as well as this and I am afraid both are rather dull. You install your software, set a few things up and it works. You've got to leave it a long time to back up everything you might want, but once that's done it only copies over the incremental changes so is not quite so slow nor demanding. I've hardly heard a peep out of it since I first installed it some time ago, it does exactly what it claims to do on the box and I'm a very happy customer. I've not tried a full restore yet and I imagine, being online, it would take some little time to complete but I've no reason to expect any problems with it.
I use it alongside another backup process, as there is always the slight concern F secure will not be available should the worst happen so I'd not use it as my only backup solution but as a key part of a backup plan it's brilliant.
I use it alongside another backup process, as there is always the slight concern F secure will not be available should the worst happen so I'd not use it as my only backup solution but as a key part of a backup plan it's brilliant.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
The blurb around F-Secure's Online Backup makes a lot of the importance of backing up one's files (true) and the fact that most users do not have the technical nous to set-up a backup routine that works silently and regularly in the background (also true). I backup my music and photo files to an external hard drive on a frequent, albeit ad-hoc basis. However, I know that I should also have a backup away from home, should my computer equipment ever become damaged or stolen. I might not be running a multinational company, but my files are important to me and ever more so as time moves on.
I was intrigued by this product. I have never used an F-Secure product before, but being a Finnish company, I figured they would produce well designed software with a clean, intuitive interface. Not quite.
The application window is a fixed width and if you have long folder paths (e.g. D:\My Documents\My Videos\2009\January\Childrens Birthday Party\) and/or long filenames, you will not be able to read the full path properly nor navigate easily. This makes selecting folders to backup frustrating and I was never fully sure that I had actually selected all the folders and files required for backup. The process of selecting which folders and file types you want backed up is convoluted and difficult; certainly not intuitive. There is a "right mouse click" fast-track option to select files and folders for backup which is preferable to the comprehensive, windows-based method - however, one is never fully certain that every file type has been selected using either option.
Given the product is aimed at people who are not the most technically minded, I would expect a better user interface.
The restoration process is probably a little easier to operate; "Restore Now" restores all files that are older than the ones stored online. Restoring a single file or folder is more complicated because the interface is so inelegant and navigating to it is needlessly hard.
Naturally, backing up large amounts of data over the web will require you to ensure that you have the bandwidth allowance to upload and download that data. Equally, because the data is "on the cloud", restoration speed is limited to network speed. Restoring hundreds of Gigabytes of data is going to be time-consuming and bandwidth and quota dependent. As a fallback of last resort, the online backup is a great option. However, one needs to understand the limitations of this approach. It's not going to be appropriate if you use 3G Mobile Broadband services, for instance.
Finally, given the interface and price of this product, I cannot bring myself to recommend it. The price (just under £40 at the time of writing) seems reasonable for unlimited backup, but remember that this is limited to one computer for one year. Alternatively, you could try one of the Cloud based services, such as Dropbox or Mozy Home. Mozy Home offers unlimited storage for about US$5/month or less if you pay for a year or more in advance.
Sorry Amazon and F-Secure. This product doesn't meet the needs of its target market.
I was intrigued by this product. I have never used an F-Secure product before, but being a Finnish company, I figured they would produce well designed software with a clean, intuitive interface. Not quite.
The application window is a fixed width and if you have long folder paths (e.g. D:\My Documents\My Videos\2009\January\Childrens Birthday Party\) and/or long filenames, you will not be able to read the full path properly nor navigate easily. This makes selecting folders to backup frustrating and I was never fully sure that I had actually selected all the folders and files required for backup. The process of selecting which folders and file types you want backed up is convoluted and difficult; certainly not intuitive. There is a "right mouse click" fast-track option to select files and folders for backup which is preferable to the comprehensive, windows-based method - however, one is never fully certain that every file type has been selected using either option.
Given the product is aimed at people who are not the most technically minded, I would expect a better user interface.
The restoration process is probably a little easier to operate; "Restore Now" restores all files that are older than the ones stored online. Restoring a single file or folder is more complicated because the interface is so inelegant and navigating to it is needlessly hard.
Naturally, backing up large amounts of data over the web will require you to ensure that you have the bandwidth allowance to upload and download that data. Equally, because the data is "on the cloud", restoration speed is limited to network speed. Restoring hundreds of Gigabytes of data is going to be time-consuming and bandwidth and quota dependent. As a fallback of last resort, the online backup is a great option. However, one needs to understand the limitations of this approach. It's not going to be appropriate if you use 3G Mobile Broadband services, for instance.
Finally, given the interface and price of this product, I cannot bring myself to recommend it. The price (just under £40 at the time of writing) seems reasonable for unlimited backup, but remember that this is limited to one computer for one year. Alternatively, you could try one of the Cloud based services, such as Dropbox or Mozy Home. Mozy Home offers unlimited storage for about US$5/month or less if you pay for a year or more in advance.
Sorry Amazon and F-Secure. This product doesn't meet the needs of its target market.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Others do it better!
Been using this for several months now, accessing both from Windows and MAC. It's OK for what it is, but I find the interface very 'clunky' - somewhat reminiscent of mid '90s... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Sandford
Its not desined for homebackuping at all
Since the software encrypts you files and then sends even small files take long long long time to send. So big files get sended fast but not small files. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Tenhunen Mikko Henrik
Dangerous and terrible customer support
I purchased this product, it seemed to work well enough at first (though it slowed the computer down) - I could see files being downloaded onto the internet and felt safe and... Read more
Published 12 months ago by poor product
Read Terms
I decided not to install the application, after reading the Terms of Use. It seems F-Secure wants the right to collect all sorts of information about your computer. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Useless Article
cool but there are other free options too
This works easily and its nice to know my files are supposedly safe somewhere else. However, its largel unnecessary because if you have a free hotmail account you get 25Gb of cloud... Read more
Published 15 months ago by bigflat
It's alright, but do you really need it?
Some people will hate me for this, some won't... but frankly I can't see much point of Online Backups unless you travel alot and need access to your files from various places. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Russtafarian
Good At What It Does
F-Secure Online Backup is a great service for those who want to archive files in an ultra-secure location. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Sam D
Functional but with liveable flaws, compare with other software first
To add to the other reviews rather than duplicate what has been said:
This piece of software is very basic and works, but has some pretty nasty traits along with it. Read more
This piece of software is very basic and works, but has some pretty nasty traits along with it. Read more
Published 18 months ago by D. J. Burton
Get your data back if your house burns down
If, like me, you're someone who has learned the hard way that taking backups of your data is something you really ought to have been doing, you probably have an external hard disk... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Peter
Not exactly 'unlimited.'
Most people have something valuable or irreplaceable on their PC (perhaps a lot more than they think - photos? Documents? Purchased and downloaded software? Read more
Published 18 months ago by J. Scott
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