CNET Editors' review
Genie Timeline Free is designed to back up the stuff you want it to save and make it easy to retrieve it. It archives desktop files and folders, My Documents, e-mail, bookmarks, videos, music, pictures, Office files, and financial files. It's intended to be a set-and-forget solution for safeguarding your system. However, the freeware disables the critical Disaster Recovery feature that lets you recover your system after a disk failure or formatting. BlackBerry and iPhone/iPad/iPod also require a paid upgrade.
During its installation process, Genie Timeline asked for our full name and e-mail address, stating plainly that it was required for installation, regardless of our Internet address. That raised flags. Nevertheless, we proceeded with the first step, selecting a drive for our backup archive. This should be a drive other than your C drive, either a separate drive on your disk or, much better, a separate hard drive (best of all is an external hard drive). We selected our dedicated backup drive and moved on to the Select Data page. Here we could choose what we wanted Genie to back up. While the program claims we could select individual files and folders to back up, it only let us include or exclude the default categories. Genie also placed a No-Backup Zone folder on our desktop for items we didn't want to back up. The program calculated our backup size and parameters, and we clicked Finish. Clicking the program's system tray icon let us monitor the backup's progress. We could also open the program's main view, the Dashboard, as well as pause our backup and perform other tasks from the system tray. The free backups aren't encrypted or compressed, which makes data recovery easy but requires a lot of disk space.
You should never scrimp on backups. If you're looking for a free backup tool that can recover disks and partitions from catastrophe, we recommend looking elsewhere. But if you try Genie Timeline Free and like its ease of use, you have the paid upgrade option, which is comparable to other premium backups. Whatever tool you choose, complete and regular backups are absolutely essential.
Publisher's Description
From Genie9:
Genie Timeline Free edition is the first complete backup software able to protect your entire computers data. It can backup a wide variety of data types such as system files, e-mails, documents, music, pictures, e-Books, videos & practically anything on your machine. With a 3-step setup wizard, Genie Timeline is ready to work on its own without an administrators intervention. It seamlessly backs up your data in the background working as a parallel universe with computing history, where deleted & backed up files can be retrieved easily by a click of a button.
What's new in this version: Version 2.1.13.345 enhances file purging, and Timeline Cloud installation compatibility.
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All versions:
3.4 starsout of 37 votes
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Current version:
2.0 starsout of 8 votes
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My rating:
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Results 1-8 of 8
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"Backed up just fine. Doesn't retrieve."
Version: Genie Timeline Free 2.1.13.345
Pros
Easy to install. Slick interface.
Cons
Couldn't retrieve any files I tried to retrieve from its backup.
Summary
Avoid if it's important to you to be able to retrieve files you've backed up.
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"Unresponsive support - like talking to a brick wall"
Version: Genie Timeline Free 2.1.13.345
Pros
Good product. Nice easy to use features. Great dashboard.
Cons
Double charged me and noone has taken responsibility but simply either shifted me from one support email address to another.
Also could never do disaster recovery upload as it took forever.Summary
Would not recommend if you are looking for a company that responds to your questions
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"No Multiple Backup jobs or sets!"
Version: Genie Timeline Free 2.1.13.345
Pros
Automatic continuous backup with automatic detection of source/backup destinations.
Cons
The biggest downside is that it is not able to create multiple backup sets or jobs. You are simply stuck with ONE job. If you try to create new backup job, the previous one automatically gets deleted.
The other huge downside is that it NOT intuitive or easy to find out how many files/GB worth of data is being backed up. If you look at Crashplan, it is simply the best out there which gives you clean, neat intuitive look at what is being backed up and how many files/GB worth of data is backed up at any given time. -
"Flakey software"
Version: Genie Timeline Free 2.1.13.345
Pros
when (and if) you get it working it does make backups
Cons
Crashes, won't install. Hogs disk speace
Summary
I have tried and tried with this product. It is not robust. I have had long communications with support and am tired of restarting services to make it work.
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"Genie caused BIG performance degradation"
Version: Genie Timeline Free 2.1.13.345
Pros
Smooth installation, had all the functionality I wanted.
Cons
Could not live with it. Performance impact was TERRIBLE. It nearly dragged my system to a sandstill. I got really worried about my PC, but everything returned to normal once I got rid of the Genie product. Whew. Glad I tried before buying!
Summary
I would still like a product that does what Genie Timeline does, but the performance cost was WAY too severe to put up with. I realize not everyone will have such a bad experience, but you should at least try the free product before you spend any money.
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"Disaster recovery didn't work on Vista"
Version: Genie Timeline Free 2.1.13.345
Pros
Nice concept and nice interface.
Cons
Both the bootable thumb drive and bootable CD options booted fine, but the disaster recovery screen didn't appear, so there was no way to get to the recovery. This was a free trial and the company only provides tech support to paid customers!
Summary
Might work for you, but I could not get disaster recovery to work on my Windows Vista64 laptop.
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"Simple to use and works great!"
Version: Genie Timeline Free 2.1.13.345
Pros
Easy setup for novice users not so great for customizing for an advanced user. I especially like the Timeline you can check through to find files.
Cons
Excluding specific folders wasnt included in the setup for a novice user. Advanced users wont have too much trouble with this.
Summary
I bought a NAS drive to connect to my router. Our laptops connect wirelessly and backup every hour automatically.
It did not slow down our systems, but we have new laptops. It will affect your wireless network speed, not so much if your hard wired. Wireless gaming and downloads do diminish while backups are running, but that's only hourly and you can "Pause" it while doing other things.
I wish you could be more specific on folder backups desired, but free is free so you get what you pay for . =P
As a free product, it works great and protects your memories and documents. Very handy for a file you deleted a while back but suddenly need again. Similar to Time Machine backups on Macs but better.
Updated on Aug 19, 2011 -
"Works but slows down operations."
Version: Genie Timeline Free 2.1.13.345
Pros
Easy to set up.
Cons
Slows down PC to a crawl particularly at boot up. Operations very intensive so much so you really can't do anything while it is running. Big problem particularly at boot up.
Summary
When you boot up you're computer presumably it is to get to work or play on what you'd like to do. Be prepared to wait and wait while Timeline "populates" what files need to be backed up and then backs up. Unacceptable. Finally uninstalled after going mad for a year.
Results 1-8 of 8
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