Despite a name that conjures up comedic visions, Bonkey the Backup Monkey is a serious backup program with tremendous potential. Not that it isn't good now; The program is easy to use, puts all the relevant options at your fingertips and backs up to multiple locations--including ftp or sftp locations, across the network, local folders and even SQL databases and Amazon's S3 online backup service. Files are either zipped into an archive or copied as is so you can browse them using Windows Explorer.

I enjoyed most aspects of the program's interface. However, it's not 100% intuitive. Perhaps I was being dense, but it took a quick sojourn to the help file to find out that I had to drag folders from the Locations pane to the Backup Group to include them in a backup. Once you know, it's simple as pie--but a tooltip or two, or perhaps less arcane labels, would've completely flattened an already short learning curve. I love the fact that the program uses a service to back up in the background, but doesn't place yet another useless applet in the system tray. To configure the program, you simply run it from the Start Menu.

All my test backups: immediate, scheduled, full, incremental, and sync went off just fine. I didn't check out S3 since I don't currently have an account. Beyond the minor ease-of-use gripe, I found Bonkey and its interface a breath of fresh air. The author has made the program open source, hoping someone will merge the Windows, Linux, and Mz OS X code trees and continue development. I hope someone one does that too, as well as expands the feature set to include support for optical media and imaging. That would be one heck of a serious program--with one heck of a funny name.

Note: This link takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

--Jon L. Jacobi