Author: John Herrman

It’d be easy to get knotted up in jargon describing v.Clone, so let’s stick with the concept for now: It’s a syncable, complete image of your PC, which you can boot run from basically any other PC. And it’s free.

To anyone who’s used mainstream backup software, this probably sounds too good to be true. In a way, yes, it is. But the tradeoff is minimal, and the payoff is more than worth it. Here’s the deal:

v.Clone EMC owns Iomega, which makes portable hard drives. EMC also owns VMWare, which makes virtualization software around. v.Clone is essentially a portable installation of VMWare, meaning that you can plug your v.Clone-loaded Iomega portable HDD into most any Windows computer, run the app, and boot into your saved virtual machine. The secret, though, lies in what you’re booting into—namely, a perfect copy of your main PC.

In other words, v.Clone lets you make a full copy of your primary PC—including apps, media, settings, etc—to a VMWare image, run said copy from other Windows-based computers, and upon reconnection with the primary PC, sync any changes you made while running the virtual machine back to your main PC. Likewise, any changes you’ve made on your host PC can be synced to your virtual machine, so your v.Clone image is more or less a virtualized, up-to-date clone of your main PC. We haven’t been able to try it out yet, but Iomega assures us that the whole system isn’t as ass-slow as it sounds like it could be, because the syncing process is incremental—if you only change a few things on your virtualized image, syncing it with your host PC won’t take more than a few minutes.

There are a couple of catches here: the software may be called v.Clone, but it’s not creating a traditional, raw image clone. If your main PC faceplants and destroys itself, your v.Clone image will let you salvage your data, but it won’t let do a full restore, like Norton Ghost or Time Machine. And despite the fact that portable HDDs are all exactly the same, this software will only work with Iomega drives. But still, kinda genius! (If you happen to this particular brand of totally commodified product!)

v.Clone is available for owners of Iomega USB portable hard drives, including the full eGo and Prestige lines. [Iomega]

This Canon PowerShot G1, released in 2000 and listed at Best Buy for $800 in 2001, has held up well. Sure, 3.34 megapixels isn’t much, but spec for spec, this codger can almost hang with the kids.

Seriously, you could just post this spec sheet next to a Canon in a retail store now, and most people wouldn’t bat an eye. They sure as hell wouldn’t buy it, but they probably wouldn’t say anything, either: In ten years, what have we gained? More megapixels, higher-quality video, some more ports, better low-light performance, smaller memory cards, better battery life, and a little compactness. Canon’s cheapest P&S, the 10-megapixel Powershot A480, handily outspecs the $800 G1 for just $110 (though it doesn’t have video). Today, if you hand Canon $800, they’ll hand you back a DSLR that shoots HD video:

What’s amazing, though, is that if you did spend $800 on this camera back in 2000, you could still use it today. It’d be beaten to hell, the zoom motor would sound like it had gained sentience and learned to experience real, mammalian pain, and the 16MB CF card would have been replaced with something a little roomier, but damnit, it would work—and your Facebook friends wouldn’t know the difference. You can’t say that about many gadgets from 10 years ago, so here’s to you, Powershot: You were great, or your category moves slow. Whichever makes you feel better.

10 years ago, you could buy the HP Jornada 548 with a color screen, which let you listen to MP3s, surf the web, check your email, and keep a calendar. It had a touchscreen. It ran Windows. It was awesome.

Today, you can buy a smartphone with a color screen, which lets you listen to MP3s, surf the web, check your email and keep a calendar. It has a touchscreen. It runs Windows. It does everything—everything—better than its ancestor did, in a much sexier hardware package. Plus it makes calls! It will cost you less than the $450 Jornada 548, though you’ll probably have to sign a two-year cellphone contract. Amazingly, though, its software looks and feels almost exactly the same as its ten-year-old brother.

I don’t just want to beat up on Microsoft here, because disregarding aesthetics and UX, Windows Mobile has evolved a lot since it was just a twinkle in Windows CE’s eye. But not as much as the competitors around it, and not fast enough to stay relevant. So instead of looking back, let’s look forward: Microsoft, Windows Mobile 7, whatever it is, is your chance to win us back. The mobile space moves faster than it did back at the turn of the millenium, back when you had some of the best mobile software on the market, but it also has a shorter memory. Show us what you’ve got; we’re eager to see it.