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MailBrowserBackup Backs up Browser and Email Profiles [Downloads]

Posted on March 30, 2009
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Windows only: If you use multiple web browsers and email clients, MailBrowserBackup allows you to backup your profiles for each in one swoop.

Currently MailBrowserBackup supports Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and SRWare Iron in the browser arena, and Mozilla Thunderbird in the email arena. According to the author’s release schedule the next release will increase support to include Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer. Backing up Firefox and Chrome took only a few seconds on my system and the results were stored neatly in the directory I specified. Restoring was just as quick. The application is portable, but does require Microsoft .NET 2.0+ or above. MailBrowserBackup is open-source, Windows only.





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DVDSmith Movie Backup Copies Whole Discs or Just the Main Movie [Downloads]

Posted on February 11, 2009
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Windows only: DVDSmith Movie Backup is terrible for our headline style, since it does exactly what its name implies. It’s great, though, for anyone who simply wants to watch a DVD without the disc.

There are just five buttons to click on DVDSmith’s single window, and most times you’ll only need one. You can choose between “Full Disc,” which gets you menus, extras, and the full DVD-watching experience, or click “Main Movie” to grab the longest video and audio tracks. What you end up with on a “Full Disc” backup is a familiar VIDEO_TS folder, wherever you told the app to put it, and a bunch of .vob files, which can be played in most advanced media players like VLC. “Main Movie” does much the same, but with fewer .vob files turned out. DVDSmith is proud to announce on their site that their tool breaks through all the the major copyright protection schemes.

If you’re looking for a bit more control over your DVD backups, check out the free, cross-platform Handbrake, our own DVD Rip, or any of our Hive Five best DVD ripping tools. If you’re looking for a DVD backup tool an 8-year-old could grasp, though, DVDSmith Movie Backup is worth a click or two.






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bitRipper is a Dead Simple Solution for DVD Ripping [Downloads]

Posted on February 5, 2009
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Windows only: If all you want is computer-playable video off your DVDs, bitRipper is the most simple, click-one-button-and-you’re-rolling solution we’ve seen. You can change your rip’s audio and video parameters, but you don’t have to.

Note: Many apologies for the duplicate post, but hopefully we provided you with a bit more detail this time ’round.

The screenshot above might be the only thing you ever see from bitRipper, if you're not the type to fiddle with video codecs, aspect ratios, normalizing, and bitrates. After installing bitRipper and starting it, you can change the output file name if you want, but loading a disc and hitting "Start" starts the ripping process and puts an .avi file in your My Documents->My DVD Backups folder. Even our own one-click DVD Rip requires a tiny bit more configuration on the front end, though it’s equally capable and simple in a general sense.

If you were the type to fiddle, well, here’s what you can get to with the Settings button:

And here’s the list of video and audio codecs you can rip any DVD track to (UPDATE: Turns out the list is dependent on what codecs you have installed, usually put there by other ripping programs. This is the basic list on a relatively untouched Windows 7 system):

There's little else to say, except that it seems to work—I'm currently backing up a DVD from the default settings, and it claims it will finish at 8:30 a.m. (EST) or so, having started at 7:50 a.m. Speed demons can debate whether that's my drive or a standard run time, but everyone else can appreciate bitRipper's no-nonsense utility. It's free to download for Windows systems only.






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Get Acronis True Image 10 Free [Deals]

Posted on February 2, 2009
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Acronis is giving away copies of Acronis True Image 10 Personal Edition because it’s got a new version out. That means you (or backup-needing friends) get whole disk image backups from a friendly interface.

The give-away of Acronis’ cloning software, normally $50 per license, is intended to inspire users to get familiar with Acronis’ backup systems, and possibly upgrade to Acronis True Image Home 2009. For most folks planning to re-install Windows, or just create one-file backups of entire drives, True Image 10 Personal will probably fit the bill. Its interface and step-by-steps don’t seem to give you as many options and geeky switches as DriveImage XML, which we featured in our guide to hot-imaging a hard drive. But True Image does offer backup archive validation, a recovery disk creator, a startup interrupter that can re-apply a backup image, and other tools for those shaking their fists at the Windows gods.

To grab your copy, hit the registration link below, fill out a minimum of the First Name, Last Name, email, and other magazines read sections (along with the privacy policy checkbox), and be patient and click back if you get a timeout. You’ll get a registration email, then be asked to log in and download, and have to enter a serial number after installing. The giveaway was launched for users of Personal Computer World, a UK tech magazine, so grab it sooner rather than later if you don’t want to chance losing the offer after this month’s PCW leaves the overseas shelves.






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