Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast podcast here, hosted at podfeet.com. This week I’d like to take a look at an app called ForeverSave from tool-forcesw.com.
Let’s start with a problem to be solved first. You run backups, you’ve got offsite backups, you take great care of your equipment, but what happens if you simply forget to save a document while you’re working on it. let’s say you don’t have ADD like most of us and you can actually concentrate for a long period of time while you work and you forget to save? You could have a hard disk crash, a power spike or simply forget to save and a family member walks up and quits the application. ForeverSave is designed to allow you to auto save at regular time intervals without even having to think about it.
ForeverSave also saves when you switch applications – which is yet another easy way to lose your work – you switch and then forget all about the open document (because you truly DO have ADD like the rest of us) and you shut the computer down without thinking or let the battery go dead.
So let’s get started with ForeverSave. Download the disk image to get a happy surprise – it comes with both Leopard and Snow Leopard installers on the disk image. After running the installer it tells you that it uses Universal Access, which is a preference pane that controls the tools that assist the visually impaired, hearing impaired, and those that require assistance with the keyboard, mouse and trackpad. If you’ve already enabled access for assistive devices, ForeverSave just moves on to the next step. I had mine on, I’m pretty sure some of the text expansion programs use this little trick too.
The folks at ForeverSave took a lot of care in making the experience of configuring their tool as simple as possible. One of the features of ForeverSave is the ability to do an in-app restore from one of your backups. During the initial setup of the software you have the option to enable that, so during the setup you can actually watch a video imbedded in the setup to understand why you might want to assign a hotkey to this function.
Next ForeverSave asks you to start adding applications. The one app I’m most worried about losing things in is Feeder, so I chose to add that first. Imagine a week without my shownotes – that would be about an 8 minute show! Ok, 38 minutes because Chit Chat Across the Pond isn’t scripted…Anyway, ForeverSave lets you push the plus button to start adding applications.
they show you a list of applications, but it’s not all of your apps, and at first it confused me on why it chose that particular subset of 17 applications. and then it dawned on me – it was showing me my currently running apps! I do have a bad habit of keeping apps running (and tons of windows in each one, but 17? I’m nuts, I really gotta cut back! Anyway, you can choose an app from that list or you can navigate to your Applications folder. The ForeverSave developers added some gorgeous graphical enhancements to even the setup program – when you ask to see your applications folder the window slowly and gracefully flips over to the other side. It’s really fun!
Let’s step through the options you’re given as you go through the setup for an application. One of your first options is to let ForeverSave save when you switch to another application, then you can mess with how often it should save, with a default of one minute.
Next up ForeverSave asks you if you want to enable versioning management. This capability allows you to manage how many versions it keeps and how long to keep the backups. I chose to save 5 versions (I can’t imagine I would wreck it THAT badly that I’d need more than 5) and to erase the backups when they’re a month old. I started thinking about this versioning idea – this could be a disaster if I tried it on something like Garageband while I’m recording the live show. You see the file is around 450MB when it’s done – can you imagine how quickly my drive would fill up if I let it save 20 versions? The good news is that the live chat room does a great job of yelling SAVE every time I stop to catch my breath, especially Karrell and Kevin lately.
The next option seems a little odd but they’ve thought everything else out so well I’m sure there will be a reason for this – they let you exclude files that happen to live in specifically defined folders. hmmm…wonder where that will come in handy.
The next step is to choose whether you want to save and back up, just save (same thing as command-s all the time) or backup only. The difference between save and back up is that save is writing over the old version while backup is creating multiple versions of the file. Next decide what to do when you’ve got a file open that you haven’t named yet, and you’re then rewarded with a giant green check of completion.
I ran Feeder for a while after setting it up and then I clicked on ForeverSave in the menubar and chose view backups (I’d chosen backup and save). I was sad because it was empty! i wrote to Tobias over at Tool Force and he explained that the backup function won’t work with applications that keep their files in a database like Feeder (he’s a fan too!) The great news is that the autosave function works perfectly! I’m just toodling along writing in Feeder and I can see the File button in the toolbar highlight every minute and I know ForeverSave has saved my latest entries. Tobias got back to me really quickly which I appreciated!
I took his advice and set up a more normal application, Bean for word processing. I typed a bit, waited a minute to see it save, typed some more, waited for a save. Then I clicked ForeverSave in the menu bar and I got a lovely window with backup files from the last few minutes! Again with the gorgeous graphics – the windows pop out at you in this cool way, kinda hard to describe but really fun. Last week I reviewed an app where they spent all their time on cool looking but forgot to build a great product first. ForeverSave is the opposite, they built great functionality and then spent some time making it animated in a very pleasing way.
Anyway back to the actual restore process – you click on your document in the left sidebar (In case you have more than one document open) and then you’ll see the list of bakcups with a date and time stamp. you can click on one and hit quick look and it zooms out at you in that pretty quick look kind of way and lets you see if that’s the version you were looking for. You can delete versions, open them, replace them, or restore them, all from this one window.
If I were listening to this review I’d expect the final words to be “and ForeverSave is only $29.95 – what are your precious documents worth to you?” But after writing all these wonderful things and being completely sold on this app – I discovered that ForeverSave is only NINE ninety five! I know I sound like a used car salesman here but I’m floored that an application that does such a critical function, has an elegant interface and works flawlessly is only $9.95. Ok, you’re not sold yet? You can download a free 30 day trial, or you can even download the free Lite version of ForeverSave. They have a diagram explaining what you get in the full version over the Lite version – basically Lite only does the autosave function. The full version does the backups, version management, quick look, advanced settings and more.
I’m very impressed by ForeverSave (if you couldn’t tell) and I give it a 100% approval rating (which as you know is VERY rare for me), and the price is incredible. It does say “for a limited time only” on that $9.95 price by the way. go check it out at tool-forcesw.com
Tags: foreversave, Mac, shareware, Software, Tool-Force
