As we work our way through Qwowi’s 2008 Tech Gift Guide we’re going to be talking about a few different products that can help you either protect, or backup and restore your data.  One such product, the PictureKeeper from Simplified IT Products is (as the company name suggests), designed to be an unbelievably easy to way to backup what is no doubt among your most precious of digital bits; your photos.

By all appearances, the PictureKeeper is nothing more than your average USB flash drive.  Available in both 4GB and 8GB sizes, the PictureKeeper works, at least initially, like any other USB device; insomuch as you pop it into any available USB slot and your Windows-based PC will detect it.  After that, things get a bit more interesting.

Installation & Initial Configuration

There isn’t any!  How’s that for simple.  The most amazing thing about the PictureKeeper is that the underlying software that powers it is 100% contained on the device itself.  There aren’t any CDs, it won’t prompt you to install any software.  Instead, it prompts you to backup your images.  With the push of one (and only one button) PictureKeeper can copy all of your images from your PC on to itself.

Advanced Configuration

On my Windows Vista desktop the PictureKeeper looks for images in a few common locations (My Documents, Desktop, and the Sample Pictures Folder .  Since many of us keep images in other locations, the PictureKeeper has a couple of additional “Advanced Options”.

I put “Advanced Options” in quotes because even advanced configuration is painfully simple.  To add additional search paths for your images, all you need to do is select File > Advanced from the options menu and use the select folder tool to add additional directories to PictureKeeper’s database.  In the time it’s taken me to describe the process, I could have added a handful of additional search locations.

Now all this time I’ve been talking about the PictureKeeper as if it only backs up pictures.  It’s simple alright, but it’s not so simple as to limit its own functionality.  How does PictureKeeper know an image is an image?  Does it use some sort of complicated algorithms to search for string of binary data?  Nuh uh. It knows an image is an image because images have extensions like .jpg or .jpeg.  Of course images also have extensions like .gif, .png, or even .tif.  No worries, PictureKeeper can handle those too.

Using the same Advanced Configuration option screen used to add additional folders to PictureKeeper’s directory search list, you can add additional file extensions, like those I mentioned above, or… and this is the really cool part, you can add extensions for any other file type you want to backup.  Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Adobe pdf, it doesn’t matter.  As much as PictureKeeper is designed and marketed as a simple method for backing up your images, it’s equally adept at backing up any other type of file you’ve got on your hard drive.

For all intents and purposes, the PictureKeeper is actually a USB DataKeeper.  And it’s worth mentioning again – no matter how much data you want to backup, it’s all done with a simple touch of a button (more specifically, a click of your mouse).

Using the PictureKeeper

The full backup procedure works like this.  Insert the PictureKeeper into any open USB slot.  Press the Start Backup button.  Go get a cup of coffee, or keep working on your PC, either is just fine.  The PictureKeeper works in the background while making copies of whatever it is you want backed up; pictures and all.

The PictureKeeper has a built in database which allows it to keep track of what it’s already backed up.   The database-thing is kind of a big deal.  It means PictureKeeper won’t have to waste time backing up files it already has.  Don’t worry though; it’s smart enough to know when a file changes, so what you have on your PC will always be what you have on your PictureKeeper.

To help you remember to backup your stuff, Simplified IT products offers to send you an email on a monthly basis reminding you to run your backup.  Of course, if you don’t want an email, they won’t send you one.  It’s kind of like Burger King; you can have it your way.

Since the PictureKeeper is a USB flash drive, it’s extremely portable, so it’s easy to take your pictures (or other data with you), and since there’s no software to install, it’s easy to put your data on any other computer.  Share files with your friends, move the data to another of your own computers, or easily restore it back to where it came from – it’s all perfectly painless with the PictureKeeper.

Minor Gripes

Because PictureKeeper’s capacity is limited by the capacity of the USB drive itself it will never be as robust as a hard drive based backup system.  The trade off is that it’s infinitely more portable.  The size also limits its value for those users with extensive photo libraries.  For most users, however; 8GB, if not 4GB will be plenty sufficient.

One other area where there’s room for improvement is in the area of automation.  While getting a monthly email is a nice option, the ability to easily schedule monthly, or even weekly backups would be a nice addition to the PictureKeeper feature set.  But again, simplicity is the key here, so I’m not going to fault Simplified IT (at least not too much) for keeping things incredibly low maintenance.

Finally, PictureKeeper doesn’t offer any sort of encryption, which is fine for most photos (honeymoon shots excluded), but unless you protect your documents individually, there won’t be anything to keep others from looking at your stuff should you ever lose your PictureKeeper.  In truth, a device designed to work as simply as PictureKeeper has no business offering encryption anyway, so consider this entire paragraph less of a criticism and more of a “just so you know…”.

Final Thoughts

In over 10 years in the IT industry I’ve never seen such an uncomplicated backup device.  Yes, it’s not as feature rich as other solutions on the market, and yes – it’s true it doesn’t offer the capacity to be a complete desktop backup system, but again, the design and intent of the PictureKeeper is to backup your pictures, and do it as simply as possible.  In that regard it’s a complete and total success.

I could spend another 500 words trying to explain how simple the PictureKeepr is to use, but perhaps the best way to explain it is this:  Simplified IT products has made the PictureKeeper so incredibly simple to use that my mother could use – and that’s no simple accomplishment.

The PictureKeeper is available from www.picturekeeper.com.  The 4GB model, which holds approximately 4,000 pictures will run you $39.99, while the price of the 8GB model (8,000 pictures) is $59.99