Acronis International has released a beta version of True Image Lite 2013, a stripped-down version of its True Image backup tool.
The new release ditches disk, partition, email and file backup types, for instance (there’s non-stop backup and online backup only). There are no full or differential backups (just incremental). No scheduling, no backups to CDs, DVDs or Blu-ray, no option to create a bootable recovery disc, and of course none of the extensive settings you’ll find in the full True Image package.
By way of compensation, though, cutting out all these features means True Image Lite 2013 does become very easy to use.
To create a backup, for example, you just have to click “Nonstop” backup, choose the folders you’d like to protect, a destination, and that’s it. Your files will automatically be protected as often as every five minutes, while you get on with other things.
That’s the idea, anyway. As a beta, though, the program will contain bugs, and so not always behave as expected (we found it crashed a couple of times for no apparent reason, for instance). And so you probably won’t want to use it as your sole backup tool.
If you’re an Acronis fan, though, it may be interesting to take the beta for a spin, just to see where the company are going next.
And if you submit enough quality issue reports and feedback then there is the chance of a reward. Apparently the top 10 beta testers will receive a free licence of True Image Lite 2013, while the top 5 will get a free 1-year subscription for 250GB cloud storage.
If you’re interested, Acronis True Image Lite 2013 has minimal system requirements, and should run comfortably on any PC running Windows XP, 7 or 8 (we’d bet it runs happily on Vista, too, but Acronis haven’t apparently tested that as of yet).
Photo Credit: Jakub Pavlinec/Shutterstock