• WHAT: An easy way to back up all of contacts on your cell phone
• WHY: Phones are easy to lose and most people don't sync their address books to their computers
• COST: About fifty bucks

Amongst the resolutions for the new year calling for weight loss, exercise, paying more attention to one's spouse or significant other and various sundry suggestions there's probably one about improving your computer's backup strategy.  What?  It's not?  You don't HAVE a backup strategy?  Surely you gest, dear reader.  Get with the program... for about $5/month you can backup all of your files - music, photos, documents, etc., - to a site called Mozy.com without even having to think about it. 

There - I've solved a big problem for you in a minute for the cost of a large latte.  But the fact of life in today's world is that your computer is only one repository for the information that gather, collect and store.  Your cell phone - be it a smart phone or a plain vanilla freebie you got for signing a two-year contract -probably has more names and phone numbers stored on it than you keep on your PC.  And it's a lot smaller.  And it gets put down on restaurant tables, in the console of rental cars and a hundred other places where you can lose it.  So how do you protect all of the information on this - and any future - phone that you might have?  It's easy, and in the big scheme of things, pretty cheap.  

I've posted articles before about syncing your information with various online services such as ZYB or GooSync.  These are good, and useful, if they meet your requirements.  However, they have limitations and the premium portions of the services cost money, too (the basic services are free).  And, if you're fortunate enough to be an iPhone user, the problem is solved for you by Apple's elegant syncing process between the phone and iTunes.  If it's on the phone it's on the computer.  Lose the phone and you get another, plug it into the dock and re-sync... it's done in a flash.

But the people who will use an over-the-air service such as those mentioned above, or who have an iPhone, are in the vast, endangered minority.   The rest of us need an alternative that can capture all the contact info that's on the phone, restore it to a new phone (even if it's a different manufacturer or model) and do it quickly and inexpensively.  For the masses who meet that description there are few solutions, but one that I've been testing recently works like a well-oiled charm. 

Backup-Pal is about the size of chocolate chip cookie (the small, thick kind - not the big flat kind) with a 6" cable extending from its top.  There are only a couple of buttons on the device and they're pretty self-explanatory.  The Backup-Pal comes packaged with different tips for the manufacturer of the phone you're using and a small instruction booklet.  I tried completely forgoing the instructions but got stuck at one point and needed to refer to them... in about a minute I had resolved the issue and the backup started immediately afterwards. 

There's really not a lot to write about here and that's a good thing... when you want to backup your phone you simply plug the cable into your phone (it's pretty obvious where it goes but you can refer to the instruction booklet for that, too) and press the large orange button right on the top that says "Backup."  A status light starts flashing (the codes for the various flashes are thoughtfully placed on the underside of the device so that you don't need to keep the instructions handy after the first setup) and the next thing you know you've got a green light indicating that all of your contacts have been saved.  

When the time comes to completely restore all of the contacts the process works that same with only one small difference - you press the "Restore" button (much smaller but labeled equally clearly) and the device moves the data from its memory to your phone.  I tried it by backing up my Motorola RAZR V3xx and then restoring the phone to a completely factory-fresh condition.  I hit the "Restore" button and in a few minutes the names and phone numbers - even entries with multiple numbers - were completely restored.  

For $50 this is cheap insurance and will help anyone with a cell phone sleep easier.  Just stop and think about what would be going through your mind - right now, this instant - if you realized that your phone was still in the seat-back pocket, the console of that undistinguishable rental car or on the sink of the rest room in the restaurant where you ate lunch before getting on the plane.  Ouch.  

There are a couple of things about this device that could stand some improvement, in my opinion.  For instance, why doesn't the device save all the photos, settings, calendar entries, etc., instead of only the address book entries?  When I hit "Restore" to put the data back to my RAZR I thought that EVERYTHING was going to be restored - it wasn't.  That should be clear in the instructions or, better yet, make the device actually do all that.  Also, why does a little gizmo like this need three AAA batteries?  Isn't that a little overkill?  

But those are quibbles in the big scheme of things.  The relief I felt when restoring all of my names and numbers to my RAZR with the push of a button would have made it worth the $50 had I lost my original phone.  It's a handy device to have in your bag of tricks - you can use it to transfer contact info from one phone to the other as easily as backing up a phone - and performs its assigned tasks well and quickly.  When it comes to insurance, you can't ask for more than that.