Some applications have endured for a long time with good reason. That's certainly the case with Norton Ghost 14, which presents a case for being the most complete utility that Symantec sells to consumers.

The idea behind the software has remained constant, in that it takes a ghost image of your PC to help you fall back on should the worst happen to your computer. But it's also evolved with the times, and has a feature set that's the envy of its rivals.

The software - and this is never something we're particularly keen on - demanded a restart before it would get going for us, but once we'd reluctantly agreed, it picked up the installation routine as soon as we rebooted back into Windows on our test machine.

Sadly, we were then told that we didn't have sufficient privileges to run the software - this was an XP installation we were using - but we soon sorted the problem and got down to business. Ironically, when we tried the installation on Vista we hit no such problem, and that's the operating system with a reputation for being more fussy where permissions are concerned.

Get the latest Dell Coupons and other computer coupons at CheapStingyBargains.com.

Once over that hurdle, Norton Ghost then lets you choose between the easy setup option and the more advanced route. Both, as you'd expect, get you to the same goal, just offering you varying degrees of control over the process.

We followed the easy setup (the advanced choice, as you might expect, gives you access to the options that the easier setup generally keeps behind closed doors), which immediately noted that we had no restore point on our system, nor a USB disc on which to back up such a restore point. You can't fault the program's communication here; short of blaring a siren in our face, it couldn't have been less subtle in getting its point across.

We then met a window that allowed us to choose whether to backup our full system or just our documents to removable media. We opted to save our data to a NAS drive we had running on our network, and Ghost was keen for us to schedule a regular backup of it. We chose to backup our documents and, by default, Ghost added in the desktop folder, music, Internet Explorer favourites and a few other goodies to the mix. It then asked if we wanted to make our first backup there and then, and the program sprang into action. Everything, as you would expect, can be customised.

Backups, as those who regularly perform them will know, aren't the quickest of jobs to complete, but the footprint of Norton Ghost 14 was such that when we undertook one, the PC in question was still perfectly useable (even if the job took several hours). Still, if your system does start struggling, then Ghost has a performance slider you can toggle that will free up system resources for other tasks, at the expense of a bit of speed for Ghost itself.

The whole process of backing up and, crucially, restoring a system is simple, fuss-free and suitably reassuring. This is a specialist tool for a specific job and it takes no risks in making sure said job is done right.

In this latest version there are some new features, including the welcome addition of being able to transmit a backup via FTP to a pre-determined remote location, and NAS drive support is similarly supported. For machines that - bizarrely - are still bereft of anti-virus software, Ghost can also be set to perform a backup when it detects a threat to the PC in question. We still suspect that some anti-virus software might be the best plan there, though.

We had little problem with Ghost 14, although we have noted from one or two online forums that some people have hit the buffers with it, citing error messages and suchlike. We couldn't, however, recreate any of the problems mentioned, though we'd have liked to see a good estimate for time remaining while it's at work.

Yet the main job of the software is to protect your data, and in our experience it did just that. It's also a polished, easy-to-use tool, and one that could genuinely save your bacon in times of data crisis.

A solid way to keep your data safe. With the exception of one or two little grumbles, it's an easy-to-use and effective piece of software that does a potentially crucial job with little fuss .