Disaster is only one step away on any given PC. A power cut that happens while you're installing the latest Windows service pack, causing operating system malfunctions. A random hard drive failure. A spilt cup of coffee in the innards of your PC (don't laugh, we've seen this happen... and quite a smoky incident it was too).

It's always prudent to backup everything important on your machine regularly, but in reality laziness often gets in the way. Which is where solutions like AutoSave Essentials step in and take up the slack.

This Avanquest offering is a one-stop backup shop run via a simple and user friendly front end. The program can automatically and continuously backup your machine in real-time, or at scheduled intervals if you prefer.

It comes with backup plans that replicate the most important files on your hard drive (documents, pictures, video and music), plus your Internet settings (both IE and Firefox bookmarks and history are supported). It's also possible to specify your own custom plans that clone specific directories or file extensions.

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The backed up data can be stored over a local network, on a remote FTP server or on a removable hard drive. Multiple copies of your files can be maintained, so you can revert to previous versions if necessary, and AutoSave Essentials also has a disc burning facility built in, giving the user the option of archiving data to a DVD.

All of these functions are one or two clicks away from the main menu, although that feat wasn't too difficult to achieve as there simply aren't many options to deal with. About the only extra touch the programmers have provided, aside from the core backup features, is a laptop power saving option. When turned on this ensures that backups are only made when the laptop is plugged into the mains, to prevent draining battery power above normal levels.

Restoring data is a swift and simple process. You can restore back to the destination folder with a single click, or just pick up a backed up folder from within the program and drag and drop it to anywhere on your hard disk. It only takes a few seconds to restore something like your IE favourites, as you'd expect, and bigger files reappear pretty quickly too. For example, a 250MB directory of holiday snaps took a shade over thirty seconds.

And there's not a lot else to say about AutoSave Essentials, except that we didn't encounter any problems or bugs when using it. It's a fairly basic piece of backup software, but it does what it says on the box and it does it efficiently.

As the name suggests, AutoSave Essentials automatically saves all your essentials with no fuss or bother. It's user friendly and works just fine, although it's perhaps a touch pricier than we'd ideally like.