Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased this software to have a robust ability to restore my hard drive completely (not just user data) in the case of a drive failure. This is what the "image backup" functionality is for, to allow you to re-create a fully-operational version of your system very quickly in the event of a drive failure. (As opposed to just a data backup, which still requires you to reinstall the operating system, programs, and all your user settings again from scratch.) So, here's my take: 1) First, any of the positive reviews that have not actually tried to use their backups to restore should really not be given much weight. If you can backup fine, but can't restore, what's the point? 2) I am running Windows Vista with a 1 TB drive, and this program worked fine in creating the image backup. 3) When my drive started throwing off errors, and I replaced it with a new one, I went to my Acronis boot CD to restore from my backup image (on an external drive.) Part way through the restore wizard, the restore program just froze, for no apparent reason. And I have been completely unable to restore my system from my backup. Here is the experience I had with the technical support: - You should know that by default, technical support is only available via email with a 48 hr response time. While this seems reasonable for only paying $40 for a software product, a 48-hour response time makes the product fairly meaningless in the event of a failure, as I can easily restore the operating system and programs from scrtach in less time than this (and just use the free built-in windows backup for a data restore). - I went ahead and paid an extra $30 for a single-incident "premium support", which is real-time phone support. However, after 3 separate phone calls, each on hold for 20-30 minutes and NEVER getting a live person (I had to leave a messages), I finally received some email communications which contained solutions that made no impact to my issue. - The Tech Support emails provided new "CD images" that they wanted me to use instead of my standard boot CD. (I'm not sure, but I doubt most folks have an extra PC and CD burner sitting around to be abe to do this, when their main PC is dead.) - Then I received an email asking me to reformat a flash drive, plug it into my dead computer, and write a batch script that would execute numerous lines of Linux command line codes. Ok, I'm a pretty technical guy, but I'm not familiar with Linux. And if the solution to a restore problem requires "normal everyday users" who are buying this product for easy home backup/restore to program in Linux, I would suggest this product is not the right fit for most folks.