8 Expensive Irreplaceable Tools II

Backup with Symantec's Norton Ghost

Lingering on the backup and restore subject we find Symantec's Norton Ghost also makes for a good solution. Unfortunately, the price is a no-no as $78 is quite a long stretch. But it is a fine product that combines ease of use with whippy backup procedures and low system resource impact.

Just like Acronis, it sports differential, incremental and full backup operations that can be scheduled in time. It can also create a system drive backup image to restore your computer from, should disaster strike. But Norton Ghost can do slightly more than all this as its skills include turning a backup file into a virtual disk format such as VMware's VMDK type or copying entire hard drives with files, programs and settings to another disk.

Symantec's Ghost works in the same manner as Acronis and system drive is restored from a rescue disc you have to boot from. The disc lets you perform almost all operations that the online application does so it is an extremely handy tool if the computer fails to load Windows.

The one feature exclusive in Norton Ghost is ThreatCon response, an option that starts backup operations automatically when a user-specific malware threat level is reached or exceeded.




Slick file manager: Total Commander

Total Commander is up next in the list. It is one of the best file managers and it deserves the $34 on the price tag. The comfortable double-paned, tabbed interface is perfect for quick and easy copy/move tasks as well as for having a look at two locations at the same time.

The entire interface can be customized seven ways till Sunday, from colors, button bar, pane view to pane location and information columns. Its double personality suits the needs of both novices and more experienced users offering advanced tools such as file splitting, multi-rename tool, directory comparison and synchronization, DOS access, network drive mapping or FTP connection, and at the same time provides the newbies with a comfortable look at multiple directories at once without advanced instruments impeding the view in any way.

To make it even more flexible, the developer permits you to customize the button bar and add shortcuts to programs you need to start quickly. And on top of all this there is the quick search function and configuration options that let you personalize the application to work the way you need it to.



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Acronis True Image Home, EF Commander, WinRAR, The Bat!, Kaspersky Anti-Virus, PerfectDisk.