Acronis True Image Home 2011 is a “greatly improved” yet mostly useless software package that is designed to perform drive imaging and file backups. And, to add insult to injury, the Acronis support team further contributes to the negative-value of this grossly inferior product. Just imagine the disaster, should you need to use this program for its intended purpose: disaster recovery.
A couple of months ago, we made the classic, and very stupid, mistake of Customer Complacency… For several years now, we’ve been highly satisfied with an old version of Acronis True Image (ver. 9.xxx). When we needed the program to work in a Windows 7 environment, we bought the latest version — True Image Home 2011 – without even thinking about comparing products. Boy, what a mistake!
To begin with, the product has a hopelessly confusing and ineffective user interface that really gets in the way. This problem doesn’t go away: it’s true the first day, the first week, a month later, and beyond. And then it fails. Buyers’ reviews on Amazon (take a look, this is not a sponsored link) reveals that the program gets less than 2.5/5.0 stars. Pretty terrible, considering that this very product, in earlier iterations, has been on the market for over five years. Now, considering that earlier versions were top quality, and highly reliable, one can only assume someone really screwed up royally Upstairs at Acronis!
Check out what this 20+ years IT veteran has to say about True Image Home 2011 in his Amazon feedback:
I gave the whole thing one last ditch effort by trying the Non Stop Backup feature. It sounded great … just like Apple’s Time Machine. There’s just a little difference … Apple’s program actually works.
Just like with the other types of backups I tried, it appeared to work once, and failed every time after that. It got to the point where I couldn’t even “edit backup properties” without generating an obscure error of “an error has occurred” or something equivalent.
The very worst part of all this is that I tried to open a support case to resolve the issues…
I have removed the Acronis software from my computer and will purchase a competitor’s product. I simply don’t have time to waste on flashy software that doesn’t work … ESPECIALLY when its function is “disaster recovery”. It has to work, and it has to work right… I personally would definitely not recommend this software.
Actually, we did the same. Tossed the damned thing (to hell with the $35.00 lost on the product). And, mind you, this one is not due to Apple’s performance relative to Windows 7: while the Mac OS is excellent, our experience with Windows 7 has been decent (especially once we got the Dell-installed buggy stuff out of the way, but that’s another story altogether). Here, the failure belongs to Acronis, and to Acronis alone: an inferior product not worth wasting a moment on.
Possibly the worst part is the Acronis “support” team: lots of talking, very little listening, and no help of any kind. On the other hand, when your product is woefully lacking, maybe talking about “customer service” is all that can be done.
If you don’t take our strong recommendation to stay away from Acronis True Image Home 2011, do yourself a big favor, rather than buying the product, go to the Acronis website and download a free trial version. Maybe we’re wrong and you’re gonna love it. (Doubt it…) But, at least, don’t waste your money, like we did.
Finally, lest you think we’re out to tarnish Acronis’s reputation, you’d be relieved to hear this is not the case: we also purchased Acronis Disk Director Home 11 – a drive management program. It is a good product which does what it is designed to do, and does it well. So, there – we have no anti-Acronis bias; in fact, until purchasing Acronis True Image Home 2011, we had the opposite bias (which was a mistake).
The only problem experienced with having both Acronis products installed on the same work station was that they seem to be incompatible with each other — we kid you not! — same manufacturer, same product generation, presumably designed to complement each other, yet not so compatible. They just didn’t like each other too much, resulting in some odd behavior, here and there, including the disappearance of their desktop shortcut icons – one killing off the other sort of thing. But, since we completely removed the Acronis True Image Home 2011, that last problem went away.
The lesson: Don’t be complacent. Even if you trust a manufacturer, put them to the test, again and again: read the reviews, google for more info, and take advantage of trial products before buying.
P.S. Acronis was given plenty of opportunities to respond to repeated complaints about this failed product and here, too, they failed: they came back with empty words, and no action. And they also refused to issue a refund for the product (the reason: it was purchased elsewhere). Buyer beware…
P.P.S. We now use the free version of EASEUS ToDo Backup 2.0 Home. It’s not perfect (this is not an endorsement), but this free version is far superior to the one we purchased from Acronis.
