By Livia Bergovoy…

The packaging says “ridiculously simple” and it’s exactly what it is NOT!

First try: After going through much of the installation (green DVD) and keying in the long cumbersome access key, got the message that my system needs a large enough gigabyte storage device (about 100) to backup to. So we put aside this review project in order to obtain the large enough external HD. We did wonder — what if the backup effort was only for a select few files which required no more than a 2 gig USB Flash “thumb” drive? Let’s leave that as a rhetorical question.

Next: Obtained a USB HD 600+ gigabyte hard drive and attempted to install the Save Me Netsmart Ridiculously Simple Backup Software — for up to 6 computers (pink DVD). Cancelled the installation since the backup device needs to be on a network for this software installation to complete. Fair enough.

Next: (Attempted to) install (green DVD) again at the end of which a message appeared saying this software can’t be used because the Netsmart software first needs to be uninstalled. We won’t even get into the frustration derived from the message explaining that by right clicking in the system tray frog icon, and selecting Help, we would be taken to the online help. Let us not resort to sarcasm and simply say: What actually happened was an arcane looking help file appeared… and searching for install or uninstall produced no results.

Next: Unistalled. Rebooted. Installed the green DVD Save Me and got a nice, friendly (and hopeful) message about having plenty of room on the external hard drive. The backup software proceeded to install and then nothing happened. There was a green frog Icon on the desktop. Clicking on it did nothing this reviewer-for-consumer electronics could determine.There seemed to be no software to run. There was a start.exe file on the external hard drive and when that was double-clicked – nothing. Back to the drawing board…

Finally… We uninstalled the “Save Me” ridiculously named backup software.

Restarted the PC; MS Win7 recognized that there is an external hardrive and offered to back up our hardrive to it! We accepted. Microsft is still backing up the hard drive hours later. Not unexpected.

So the software which claims it can “Save Me” is ridiculously confusing. Worse — our confidence in the Rebit backup system to restore our hard drive is itself anxiety provoking.