Apple Time Machine for the PC - CrashPlan

Summary: an awesome piece of software waiting to be discovered.

For a long time my backup solution for my computer at home has been to usual CD, DVD (for large set of files) and yahoo mail/gmail for documents. But as my personal media grows (photos, music) it is getting harder to keep the backups updated. Just when I began to feel frustrated Steve Jobs, ever the magician, presented 'Time Machine'. My jaw dropped, I began to salivate but my excitement was short lived. Time Machine works only in on Macs. It has everything I need:

minimal intervention backup system

versioning

support for local external hard drive (online backup not required)

I have since been looking for similar software for Windows. I found some candidates and even tried some of them. Seems like online backup is hot with venture capitalists, there are quite a few start-ups in this space.
Mozy: has mixed reviews on the Internet. It doesn't have support for a local external hard drive or for version control. I believe deleted files are kept only for a short period on their servers. I ended up not trying it.

Jungle disc: this is an online backup solution based on Amazon's S3 service. I don't think they have a free option at all, so I didn't write the software either.

Windows backup software sucks big time. I tried ‘synctoy’ on XP and the built-in software for Vista (can't remember the name). They are both bad in many ways, seemed to be half hearted efforts.

Recently someone at work had good things to say about CrashPlan. I was very happy when I got to the site and found out more about it. It has everything that I was looking for, and more:

external hard drive backup support

version control

never deletes files from backups

runs automatically

Bonus features:

all files are encrypted

backup to friend

support for online backup

the basic software is FREE (there's a monthly fee only if you use online backups)

I have been using it for about a month, although I have not yet had to restore any file so I can't provide any feedback on that part but given how well it is running and how pleasant the experience has been I expect that file restoration will work fine (it may be a good idea for me to try before I put so much faith on it).

I can't believe that this company and the software are not more popular. It is like Time Machine but without the attitude and arrogance of Apple. I have recommended some of my friends but I am afraid backing up files is not so important for them, which is surprising given that I expect most of them have had some loss of data at some point.