Boston Power is at it again. The 4 year old company located in Westborough, Mass is scheduled to hold a press conference this Monday June 1st, 2009 in Auburn, MA where it proposes to build a factory to make lithium-ion batteries for laptops and electric cars.

We have been covering Boston Power since we met them at CntrStg during CES 2009 about their great Sonata battery that came to the market at with the Enviro batteries for the major consumer HP notebooks.

Going green is their their vision is durable and  longer lasting batteries that maintain their capacity. In line with their green vision they don’t want to waist any of the federal grant money on a new building, but will plan to convert and old Filene’s Basement warehouse into a 600 employee factory.

The move to add the automobile industry for their battery technology is major step for Boston Power. The battery developed for the automobile industry will be called Swing.

References:

1. Boston-Power
2. Xconomy Boston: Boston-Power Asks Feds for $100 Million to Build Better Batteries for Electric Vehicles; Filenes Basement Warehouse Could be Reborn as 600-Employee Factory
3. Cnet:  Boston Power plans battery plant for cars, laptops

In this review I’ll point out my thoughts about the Clickfree Portable Backup drive.

Imagine your PC and Harddrive would crash right here, right now. What kind of data would be lost. Valuable pictures,  Video’s,  Important Word Documents? Or even worse like financial data.
The magic word would be backup. But isn’t it always the same thing with backups. You do it once and then the next time you forget. How many people backup their data? I don’t have actual figures, but I can image that most people don’t backup their data on a regular basis. I even can imagine the majority of the people don’t backup at all.

The big question is why people don’t backup their data. Is it because they don’t know how to do it (right). Is it because of the faith they have in their computer not crashing. Or is it because making proper backups takes a lot of time, needs the right (often hard to use) software and needs to be done at a regular basis.

Clickfree comes with a nice backup system for everyone. They have a great philosophy. On every decision they make they ask themselves the question: “Would my mother be able to do this”.

How does the clickfree portable drive work

Making backups with Clickfree is really simple. You only have to plugin the Backup Drive and accept the End user licence agreement once.

When this is done Clickfree’s backup software starts directly. The first screen is a 24 second count-down timer, which gives you the possibility to edit settings (which will be explained in the next chapter). If you choose to not edit settings the backup will start after 24 seconds or directly if you click the “Start” button.

The clickfree start screen.

The backup scans your complete computer for over 400 file extensions. So all your .jpg, .doc, .docx, .xsl, .xslx and other popular file extensions are backupped automatically. The first time you use the clickfree all the files with these extensions are backupped automatically. Every other time there will be made an incremental backup. If there’s a new file on your computer or the file is changed only these files will be backupped again. This of course speeds up the backup time. When the backup is done the user interface shows a summary of the backupped data.

Backup in progress

Backup Completed

For beginners and more advanced users.

The power of the Clickfree is that it is a versatile solution, not only for the beginning, but also for the advanced user. The default settings will backup more than enough for the normal user who makes word documents, pictures and has some music and videos on their PC.

But also for the advanced user Clickfree came up with a solution to backup more specific filetypes. As a developer I use a lot of .cs files (C# code files) and by default this is not a filetype which will be backupped by clickfree. A other possibilty in the settings is to backup specific folders. In that case all the files and folders within this folder are backupped, no matter what their file extension is.

When you plug in the clickfree in your system, as I pointed out above a windows is shown with a 24 second count down timer. This is the time where you have the possibility to edit the settings. Lets go through some screenshots of the settings.

Manage Settings and PCs

In the “Manage Settings and PCs” screen you can rename or remove PC’s from the Clickfree system. Further you have the option to Change Backup Settings. The Backup settings shows a wizard where you can select which files or folders you would like to add to the backup or exclude from backup. In this screen you can also add file types that you would like to include in the backup.

The tab “Tools” gives you the possibility to give the Clickfree a Master Reset, which basically means that all the data on the Clickfree portable drive are removed.

The button update will let you download the latest updates for your Clickfree. If I can make a suggestion to the clickfree-team, I would like to ask them to inform users more about the software updates. As a developer and power user I am interested in what has been changed when I receive a software update.

Updating the Clickfree

The Clickfree has the possibility to edit language settings. But on my tests the language was always restored to Dutch for somehow. Maybe because my Windows XP version is in Dutch. Maybe this is something the Clickfree team could look at as well.

The next tab is “Reminder” and gives you the possibility to Install a small reminder application on your PC that will remind you to make a backup. This tool is installed in just one single click which makes it really great. The tool has a few features like helping you to perform a backup right away, it reminds you when you have to make your backups, and informs you if you haven’t made a backup for a while and it lets you create a backup scedule.

Install the reminder tool to automate you backups.

Restore data

Making backups is useless when you’re unable to restore the backupped data correctly. This is something where Clickfree has an other power. Restoring files is really easy with the Clickfree.

The Restore screen

The restore screen shows a few options to restore your data which is backupped on the Clickfree. You could use the Restore Summary, to quickly restore different file types. You can also browse, or search for files to restore them.

There is a special module to restore photo’s. This module directly lets you view the photos which are backupped on the clickfree. So you can select which photo’s or other images you would like to restore.

Restoring photo’s

When restoring files the Clickfree software asks where the restored files should be restored. You can choose to restore the data on it’s original location or to restore the files to a specific folder.

Restore to original location

Restore to a specific folder

A succesfull restore of the data

Putting clickfree to the test: Windows XP & Windows 7RC1

So what do you do when you want to test something like a backup solution? Putting it to the true test would be to make a backup with this solution of our data and completely wipe your system.

So what I did: Make a backup with the Clickfree solution and wiped my netbook. To be quite specific: Before the restore there was some valuable data on my netbook, nothing shocking to loose but this was the only backup I made. I used the more advanced settings and placed all the valuable data on the desktop in one specific folder.

I went from Windows XP home edition to Windows 7 RC1.

The whole story unfortunately has a anti-climax. Windows 7 doesn’t Recognize the clickfree USB device, which obviously isn’t a problem since it’s a Release Candidate and it’s unfair of me to test this on a non-final windows version. I’m absolutely positive that Clickfree will add Windows 7 support when Windows 7 will be released.

Because Windows 7 didn’t work, I connected the Clickfree portable backup drive to my home laptop. And tried to restore my data on my home laptop. This worked without any problems and I transferred my important data from my home laptop to my Windows7

Conclusion

Clickfree is just awesome solution for lazy people like me who don’t like to make backups. Not only the backup process is very good, also the most important part (restoring) is made very easy in the clickfree software. There are more than enough options for advanced users, and the most important files are backupped for non-technical users who want to make a backup.

I cannot imagine there are computer users out there, who are unable to make a backup with Clickfree. If you can put a USB-stick in a USB port, than you are able to make a backup with the clickfree. An average PC user is able to restore their own data, but for the completely non technical users I can imagine that restoring their data can be somewhat difficult. Don’t get me wrong, restoring is easy, but my mother could not do it. On the other hand she can ask me to do the restore of the backup she created.

Boston Power and HP are Celebrating Earth Day together. As a strong believer in making the earth a greener place I think it will be good again to let you know about the great new battery HP has available that can last three years. These batteries are the Boston-Power Enviro series notebook batteries. Besides lasting longer on a single charge and in a lifetime, it also takes less energy to recharge it and it will not loose it’s value in battery power over time with many recharges.

Boston-Power is a great company that is behind this battery and as a special, the price has been reduced from $149.99 to $119.99 to promote a greener work environment.

This deal will bring the price down of this great green replacement battery to the price of a standard replacement battery, however it is going to last you three times as long. Check out their compatibility chart and see if you can make a commitment to make your notebook greener.

Boston Power made their presence during CntrStg at CES with a great presentation about their future in longer lasting batteries.

Just last week they announced that they are adding $55 Million in Growth Capital.

The Funding Will Fuel Lithium-Ion Battery Developer’s Global Expansion of Manufacturing, Sales, Marketing and Ramp. The Investment Follows News That HP Will Be First to Deliver Boston-Power’s Sonata Battery in Early 2009.

Please vist the Boston Power website for the full press release.