Hi Jason
I'v been looking for a better-cheaper backup system for a while. So when I came across your article I was excited to read you had come across a great service. I have tried a number of online backup services in the last 6 months or so. I'm currently using
www.ibackup.com (US$10/mth for 5Gb) in conjunction with 2brightsparks.com's excellent syncback se. I also use Flickr Pro for backing up my photos. I love online backup cos its so painless.
I've also tried
www.box.net and
www.streamload.com but found them both a bit buggy at this stage.
I downloaded and tried out the Carbonite service. The biggest shortcoming I found was the fact that it doesn't backup network-mapped or USB-based drives. This is unfortunately a show-stopper for me. Also found their backup client to be too dumbed-down. At a minimum it needs features like scheduling capability. Also I would have preferred to be able to select the files/folders I wanted backed up from within the application rather than by "flagging" them in Windows Explorer.
I think they are offering excellent value for money & agree that it could be a good solution for many people.
My current hope lies with
www.jungledisk.com which offers a windows shell front-end onto Amazon's S3 service. There's a few limitations/bugs at the moment - the biggest of which is lack of support for file paths over 256 characters but due to be fixed in the next release. Also due for release is in in-built backup/syncing capability. If Carbonite doesn't work for you I recommend (to power-users in particular) checking it out as it evolves.
Mitch Olson