ABF Outlook Express Backup
Version 1.0
by Steve Gold

FOR

When Microsoft burst on to the Internet software scene rather late in the day in the early to mid-1990s, the surfers of the day were mainly using Spry Mosaic or Netscape Navigator to surf the web and process their email. Eight years down the line, of course, and Microsoft’s giveaway strategy with Internet Explorer and Outlook Express has meant that a sizeable number of Internet users have adopted Microsoft applications as a new standard.

In the corporate arena, Microsoft Outlook remains popular amongst users, but small office, home office (SOHO) users, as well as many small- to medium-sized businesses, tend to use Outlook Express, mainly because the application is free of charge. Yet, despite the fact that it is freeware, Outlook Express is quite a complex package, allowing users to customize many of their settings, as well as create quite large address books. And, while many small businesses have systems software that regularly take backups of their database files, only the basic files are usually saved by such applications. Even online backup services like Netstore (www.netstore.com) and beITsecure (www.beitsecure.com) have to be specially configured to back up the email database (DBX) files.

But, what about the many other files and folders generated by Outlook Express? Few backup applications automatically deal with the address book, general settings, email and news accounts, message rules, blocked senders lists and signatures. Even assuming a backup application could easily be configured to back up these various features and settings, it’s highly debatable whether many PC users are sufficiently well aware of how Outlook Express works to be able to set up a backup package accordingly. Even old UNIX/DOS junkies like this writer were - until recently - mostly ignorant of the many settings and allied files that Outlook Express (OE) creates on the PC hard disk.

This is where ABF Outlook Express Backup enters the frame as a possible solution. At just under $30 for a single user, with volume discounts available, the software does what it claims - it backs up a users’ OE database, allowing a restore to be carried out at a later stage. The software also allows users to back up their OE data files, either on a piece-by-piece basis, or in their entirety, and restore those files to a second PC or notebook, as required. This could be very useful for office workers wanting to take their work home with them - you could back up your OE database entirely and email a copy of the resultant file to yourself at home, for example. Once at home, you simply run ABF Outlook Express Backup and restore the file to resurrect your office OE environment, in its entirety, on your home PC.

Well, that’s the theory. The reality is that this package is still in version 1.x.x, and is quite basic in what it does. Yes, it backs ups the OE environment, either on a selective or complete system basis, but it requires the user to initiate the saving cycle - you can’t set the software to back up in the background, for example, at the end of every business day. You also can’t auto-email a copy of the database to yourself at home, nor can you ‘synchronize’ two PCs with OE installed, as you can so easily with corporate email applications such as Lotus Notes and others. Perhaps I’m being a little unfair here, as ABF Outlook Express Backup is quite a basic backup application, whilst Notes is a highly complex data replication environment costing several hundred pounds for even the smallest company. But the bottom line is that, while this application does what it claims to do, and does it well, it carries out its duties on a simplistic level.

Okay, now the good news. ABF software is sufficiently confident in its software to allow users to download a 30-day trial version of the package from its web site. The trial version is fully-featured, which means that users can get to grips with ABF Outlook Express Backup before deciding whether to register the package - an excellent way of testing an application. To help such users, and, no doubt, to keep costs down, ABF only provides an online manual for the software. Normally I’m against online manuals on their own - it really helps if users have a printed manual to refer to, particularly if their PC is playing up. Having said this, the software is quite intuitive to install and use - if you know your way around OE, then you’ll find the installation and usage of this application to be quite easy. You’ll also find that most of the online manual has been duplicated in the software’s native help files.

So how does ABF Outlook Express Backup store users’ files and settings? Detailed examination of the single resultant backup file suggests that it uses a proprietary compression system similar to PKZip to store the relevant OE file names and associated data. The compression system seems to be around 20 percent more efficient than PKZip, presumably because it has been optimized for text data in messages, rather than all types of data. This is a plus point if you intend to use the package to email your complete OE database across the Internet as, even with unmetered Internet access, multi-megabyte databases still take time to download across a dialup modem link.

One other good point about the package is that you get to choose which settings files from OE you save in the backup image. If, for example, you relay your email to a second machine on a regular basis, you may only copy your email files every time, rather than save the whole enchilada. Conversely, you may only want to replicate your email settings and not your mailbox files to the second machine - the software allows you to do this, quickly and easily. This could be useful for a company IT support environment where users’ machines need to be pre-configured with the company email settings. Overall, we think that this software will be very useful for SOHO and small business PC users, as well as users who want to carry out some of their office work while at home. It would have been nice to see some automated features, such as timed backups, within the software, but maybe ABF will develop such facilities in later editions.
 

ABF Outlook Express Backup
Version 1

Worldwide
Supplier: ABF software Inc.
Price: $29.95 (single user license)
Contact: +380 44 491 7570
info@abfsoftware.com
www.abfsoftware.com