The Good
* Straightforward and very easy to use.
* Allows users to setup automatic snapshots, or conduct manual snapshots.
* Can store snapshots locally or to an external hard drive.
* Users can specify how many snapshots to keep (from 1-5).
* Can backup whole hard drive, or select partitions.
* Users have the ability to use Recovery CD/DVD or the embedded boot recovery environment to restore snapshots without logging into Windows.
* Users can do full restores, or selective restores.

The Bad
* Automatic snapshots can only backup the whole hard drive; user is unable to exclude/include-only specific partitions.
* Snapshots can't be stored on a network share.
* No support for bootable/recovery USB/flash drives.
* Very large download size.

Free Alternatives
Comodo Time Machine

For final verdict, recommendations, and full review please click here.

>>>Crap, I made a small mistake. Bootable/recovery USB/flash drives are possible =O. My apologies.

@ Ashraf
There actually IS the ability to boot the included recovery stuff from USB drives: take the recovery CD and extract these 2 files "vmlinuzp" and "initrd.gz" (this is the only needd booting stuff for the Linux based recovery system)

Now have your drive prepared with e.g. Grub4DOS and ad these lines to it´s boot configuration file, "menu.lst":

title Paragon System Backup (Recovery-CD)
kernel /boot/SB2010/vmlinuzp splash=silent vga=0x314 medialable=PARAGON
initrd /boot/SB2010/initrd.gz

BTW:
* the key for SB2010_setup.msi keeps being valid.

and, as I wrote earlier:
* if you wish to, you can extract the recovery-CD without really installing the product :
- do the activating
- SB2010_setup.msi now will exist
- use any extractor (e.g. Uniextract) to extract the file Data1.cab from SB2010_setup.msi
- find _225FE154009BA0B847E5180DBC935847 (or_1E50FA5B13454704AC0B7770B59095F7 - both are the same!)
and extract this file as well
- rename it to – lets say – Recovery.iso.

All done! - Now you can burn the image or use it on your bootable pen-drive – if prepared (e.g.) with Grub4Dos, together with all your other bootable special/recovery stuff…

#1, Ashraf, while your website is down, I can only refer to your comments here. Comparing Paragon System Backup 2010 and Comodo Time Machine is worse than comparing apples and oranges. They're very different products, with very different purposes, protection, functionality, and requirements. Paragon truly backs up, it's not designed or intended for continuous protection. Time Machine is like a very stripped-down version of GoBack, it provides near-continuous protection but doesn't back up, and it has all of the restrictions of GoBack. If you want both backup and near-continuous protection, there's Rebit SaveMe and SaveMe Express (both are currently on sale), Acronis True Image Home 2010 (also has an offer) with Acronis Nonstop Backup, and StorageCraft ShadowProtect. Rebit is automatic, few (if any) options, requires external drive, and protects user data much more than the OS. Acronis requires occasional manual intervention, and is highly configurable. ShadowProtect is capable of largely automatic operation, not as configurable as Acronis or quite as frequent (minimum 15 minute intervals vs. 5 minutes for Acronis), but is by far the most robust, reliable (can take cold snapshots), capable, restore-versatile solution, and the only one which supports all configurations, including RAID. I'm not going to say more about each option as there's plenty of documentation available on each vendor's website.

Regarding the comments the other day about showing the desktop background, doesn't anyone know anything about Windows? You can show the desktop via hotkey, right-clicking the Taskbar, or (on Vista) by clicking a button on the Taskbar. You can also right-click the desktop and turn off the desktop icons (not the same as Show Desktop). I always leave desktop icons turned off, Windows has horrible desktop refresh performance under the best of circumstances. You can display the Desktop Toolbar on the Taskbar (right-click), and if you put folders/subfolders on the desktop (while icons are displayed) you can sort the icons into them and the Desktop Toolbar will show cascading menus.

If your installer can't open the registration website for some reason then use this direct link:

http://www.paragon-software.com/registration/sb.html

You must enter a real email address because the product key and serial number will be sent to the email only and will not be available on the website.

Thanks dear Give Away of the Day and Paragon for this awesome pearl.