Genie9 has released the latest edition of its flagship backup tool, Genie Timeline 2012. The program’s emphasis remains very much on ease of use, but there are some practical new features, too.

Genie Timeline’s new Metro-style Smart Selection screen makes it very easy to choose the type of files you’d like to back up for instance: Office files, emails, bookmarks, videos, pictures, whatever it might be.

Backup speeds are claimed to be twice as fast as they were with the previous release.

Genie Timeline 2012's Metro-style interface makes it easier than ever to configure your backup

A new internal deduplication algorithm reduces the size of your backup by avoiding storing multiple copies of the same file throughout the archive.

View your system in Explorer and a backup marker will indicate which folders are being backed up by Timeline 2012.

And additional restoration options make it easier to find and recover files from a backup.

All these additions are available in Genie Timeline Free 2012, and of course the commercial Home ($39.95), Professional ($59.95) and Server ($250) editions add even more: backup scheduling, disaster recovery, an enhanced compression engine, and the ability to limit the size of the backup, amongst other improvements.