Phonebackup are offering a free trial until the end of August of their service which allows you to synch your contacts from your phone to their secure servers via GPRS.
The reason this caught my eye was that I had twice left my mobile behind me last week and the cost of a new phone paled in comparison to recovering all the contacts. Fortunately I recovered the phone on both occasions. Looking at their offer of 17.99 per annum it isn’t bad but then a little voice started nagging me that really I should be using the synchronisation software included with my phone to keep my contacts in Exchange, Pocket PC and phone all synched.
So basically I would be paying 17.99 per annum for a laziness factor. On the other hand if you aren’t technically minded and the thought of figuring out synchronisation software, and they can be painful, fills you with dread then maybe this is a valuable service for you.
And for the lazy amongst us perhaps 17.99 isn’t a lot compared to the loss of our contacts when we loose a phone and realise we haven’t synched our phone in several months.
For the corporate world and even SMEs would 17.99 multiplied by the number of phones you have be an acceptable trade off against either having a dedicated techie to keep phones synched or worse having to support your users? I think it would.
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I'm thinking in particular of companies where the resident IT guru learnt as he/she went and probably has his/her hands full with their normal daily duties.
But for someone like me it's strictly a laziness versus cost. But if I sat down and worked out how long it takes to synchronise data and gave it a EURO value then the 17.99 probably still makes sense.
Err, I think I'm talking myself into this :)
Check out www.zyb.com. Its a similar service but for free. They have a really cool sharing feature. I share my phone book and calendars with my wife, friends, colleagues etc.
The reason I wouldn't mind paying euro1.50 per month vs. having a free service like zyb is that I am Irish and in Ireland and I wouldn't trust some danish company to handle my data.
Phonebackup.ie is Irish and therefore I feel I can trust them more, also I know they work on my mobile network, and that any update on their site or the phone list etc...will be relevant to Ireland etc...all this makes me prefer phonebackup than zyb, altough zyb has a very pretty GUI.
Joe
Do you feel its value for money and worthwhile?
John