The prevalence of online backup services, and the low cost of such excellent products as Carbonite (web ID: 134833), which charges a mere $72 for a year's worth of unlimited backup, means that developers of traditional backup software have to work hard to justify the purchase price.

That's what Nero has attempted to do with its BackItUp & Burn product, which promises not only to deliver backup software (both local and online) but also disk imaging, synchronisation and deleted file-recovery tools, plus Nero Express - an authoring tool for CDs and DVDs.

It sounds enticing and it's easy to use. Fire it up, select the Autobackup option, choose the local option and it will scan your computer for pictures, videos, documents and other important files, suggest likely candidate drives as targets then instigate an incremental backup regime for you. You need do nothing else, although you can change the schedule if you want.

Naturally, you can specify individual folders and files in the normal way as well, and there are plenty of advanced features here. Scheduling options include being able to back up only when your system has been idling for a certain period, and they can be triggered when a specific device has been plugged in too.

You can swap between incremental, differential and?update backup types, depending on the amount of space you have to hand, have it send email notifications when jobs are complete, back up to network drives or FTP, and control CPU priority. There's a?drive-imaging tool too.

The online backup option is less tempting. You get 1GB of free space for three months, thereafter it's around $150 per year for just 25GB of space. It's also up against stiff opposition. The Swiss Army knife of backup tools - Acronis True Image 2009 (see A?List, p34) - is our favourite.

But BackItUp & Burn is cheaper, which makes it a decent alternative. Its online backup proposition is far too expensive, but elsewhere its balance of ease-of-use to advanced options means it's worth the money.