There is a lot of debate out there right now about whether or not Windows Vista is really worth the upgrade from Windows XP. We certainly do have some opinions and will soon post a full review of Windows Vista aimed at the small business user. But, in the meantime, I did find one feature I really liked about it today.

I have in my arsenal of tools a matching pair of Lenovo R61 laptops that I use. I run Windows Vista Ultimate on the main machine and have been a big fan of Ubuntu Linux on the other (I was quite tempted to go purely Ubuntu, but I just have too much Windows software to give up and all my customers run Windows which also makes going 100% Linux difficult). Long story short, my sound card has gone out on one of the Lenovos, and it made me realize that I just can’t afford any downtime on my main business laptop. So, I have decided to make the matching laptops really match (sync up copies of Vista on both) so that if one goes down I can just pick up the other and go straight back to work.

In order to do this, I got a second copy of Vista for the other laptop and then did a full computer restore of the main one to the other. Turns out the built-in backup/restore feature in Vista works beautifully. I did a full system backup to an external hard drive then restored it completely and easily on the other laptop and they are now in total sync… applications, files, everything.

First off, use the backup/restore tool in Vista to a complete PC backup to an external hard drive. Then all you do is make sure the external drive with the full backup is attached to the computer you want to restore to, boot the computer with your Vista system disk, select “Repair Tools” rather than actually installing Vista, follow the prompts to do a complete PC restore, wait an hour or so, and DONE. Everything works beautifully.

So, while Windows has always had a built-in backup tool, the one in Vista works great. There is definitely no excuse for not keeping your data backed up at this point when the tool right in the operating system does such a good job. Never gamble on having critical data in one spot (on one hard drive), not a good idea.

Next step for me… seeing if I can use Sync Center, SyncToy or similar to keep the computers in sync all the time! I’ll let you know how it turns out.

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