iDrive now has free contacts backup from smart phones

Image via WikipediaI just ran into this service while going through what is almost a regularly scheduled, weekly paranoia attack over my backups. I had just checked pricing on maybe upgrading my online backups service, or my social accounts online backups service, when I noticed that iDrive now has contacts backup for free for Blackberry, iPhone and Android.

I am already using Google Sync, but it wouldn't hurt to have a plan "b" in case Google takes a shit, so I decided to give it a try. The application has nothing to configure beyond signing up for the free account and letting it run the backups. As far as I can tell from the exhaustive four minutes I spent testing this, you can only backup manually, there is no way to let it run in the background. With Google Sync you just let it run and that's it.

Also, it mangled my contacts, the fields in the contacts I checked in my Blackberry don't match the contacts as seen in their website. I modified a contact, saved it and ran the iDrive app and it picked up the update.

And mangled it too.

I guess that since it is free, I shouldn't complain about it, and I am thinking that for the casual user, say somebody with a dozen or so important numbers to track, this could be a good use. For a business user that has a horrible amount of contacts in his Blackberry, this is a no-no. I got 600 or so in mine, and this doesn't really work for me, free or else.

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