Retrospect 1.3 Dantz Development 1400 Shattuck Avenue, Suite 1 Berkeley, CA 94709 415/849-0293 415/849-0372 (tech support) Rating: 9 Penguins out of a possible 10 Summary: -- Retrospect is possibly the most powerful backup and archiving program available for the Mac

One word on Retrospect 1.3 - powerful. My impression of Retrospect after using it for a while is that it can handle anything you throw at it terms of backup conditions

Retrospect is a hard program to pin down when it comes to usage. On the one hand, it has a myriad of features designed to make your life easier in the long run, but which can be a tad confusing right off the bat

True archiving keeps all the various versions of a file accessible at all times so that you can always go back and retrieve the file you want in the state that it was in on Wednesday, even if you've archived twice more since then

You should be starting to get an idea of Retrospect's power by now. The next few items make up the core of Retrospect's power. The most powerful feature Retrospect has, in my opinion, is the ability to create custom Selectors

There are a bunch of features that I haven't mentioned yet that many people will find extremely helpful. I don't much use them, but that doesn't imply that they aren't good

One of the wonderful things about networks is that they allow a lot of people to create a lot of information and share it with everyone else. One of the bad things about networks is that with so much information on the network, it often becomes almost impossible to back it all up in a coherent fashion

The manual that comes with Retrospect is quite well done, and offers in-depth discussions of all of the features provided. The manual works through each main process (backup, archive, restore, and retrieve) so that you can be up and running with basic usage quickly

Retrospect is not perfect, although Dantz did a good job of making the program extremely stable. One weak spot is the Retro.Prep file that Retrospect creates in your System Folder to keep track of scripts and selections and the like

As far as the company goes, most of the news is highly positive. I and all other registered users received version 1.3 free without asking for it before System 7 was released