From Google’s Gmail and GoogleDocs to Microsoft’s Windows Live and Adobe’s Acrobat.com, more and more personal computing is taking place in “the cloud.” PC users are increasingly growing accustomed to mobile computing from their smartphones and tablets – and cloud computing is an essential element in this growing mobile adaptation. From  online data sharing, email, social networking, and file creation (and editing), cloud computing is a very good fit for the on-the-go, work-from-anywhere crowd.

With the convergence of several trends, including fast CPUs able to run background processes without getting bogged down, to breakneck broadband Internet connections, and powerful end-to-end encryption (to assure that nobody but you can view your backups or restore them), backing up data to the cloud is an idea whose time has come. All of these features are widely available today, and you have several choices in cloud-based backup. We’re going to break down all the elements of cloud-based backup - from how it works, and what the leading players in the home market offer, to helping you determine whether cloud-based backup should be on your “must-have” list of online services.