Am I missing something? Why doesn't Microsoft see to making Activesync pull a full backup of our devices?

It's not as necessary now that we have persistant data storage. Backup was available in AS 3.8 but not in 4.x.

I think a better answer is Microsoft was afraid of another DOJ lawsuit. AS Backup competed with Sprite. Maybe Sprite paid them some money under the table?

All kidding aside, I think this was a most stupid decision by MS. Persistent storage doesn't mean you don't need backups!

Who here has NOT done a hard reset and wished they had a backup laying around of a "known good" state they could restore to?

I backup using SBH to an .exe file stored on my storage card. Problem with that is that I've had an SD card die before so I no longer trust that any more than I would the onboard RAM. So after doing the backup, I copy it up to my PC. I do a backup every so often, and when something is messed up, I don't lose too much if I decide to hard reset.

no backup is really stupid. Even if you never have to use your backup it is always nice to know that it is there if you need it. To have a program that had a backup and then remove the option on a newer version is like walking backwards

I second the notion! It's really a bad idea to have removed backup/restore functions from ActiveSynch. I ran into an issue earlier that would have been resolved easily with a full, or better yet optionally selective, restore from backup in ActiveSynch. Thumbs down to Microsquash for leaving the feature out of the latest version!

What does the sync backup do?
Under sync-show main screen-menu-sync settings-"Full Device Backup/Restore" click on settings.
It says " You are not currently subscribed to " Device backup". "Contact your administrator for details"
What is this?