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I'm not one of the lucky people who owns a Windows Phone handset, so I'm calling on those of you who do to help me out and your fellow Betanews readers. Today, Microsoft started rolling out Windows Phone 7.5 to most people using a WP smartphone. If that's you, "Mango" is coming soon, as an over-the-air update, if you don't already have it.

If you've got it, please share your first impressions about the software in comments. Or, better, contact me about writing a review. We love reader submissions. Last week, reader Joseph LoRe wrote a first-impressions review of the Epic 4G Touch, Sprint's variant of the Samsung Galaxy S II. Please email me if you're interested in reviewing Windows Phone 7.5: joe at betanews dot com.

Meanwhile, I must heap some well-deserved praise on Microsoft, for doing to Windows Phone what it did with Zune: Put existing customers first, rather than compelling them to get something new. It's very unlike Apple, which pushes customers to the next thing (often with nothing more than clever marketing or introduction of a few new capabilities not backwards compatible with existing hardware).

With Zune, Microsoft released new software that made existing hardware better, essentially rewarding existing customers for their loyalty. Today's update comes out ahead of the first wave of WP 7.5 smartphones going on sale, a big perk for existing customers. Watch to see how differently Apple manages next week's iPhone 5 unveiling.

This is about where some hardcore Apple fan starts writing in comments about how Microsoft's business is different -- it only sells software, whereas Apple primarily profits from the hardware. Bandersnatch! Microsoft sold Zune hardware -- and whoa did it need to sell more against iPod -- and still put the customer first with its software updates. As for Windows Phone handsets, Microsoft needs to see more sales of those, too. How else can it keep WP licensees, when Android is free and doing way, way better? Android's US smartphone OS share is 41.8 percent, compared to Windows Phone's 5.7 percent, according to comScore.

Microsoft shouldn't wait around for new phones to get to market to give loyal customers a taste of the future.

There's another reason to release now and not wait around for new handsets: Marketing. People pining over their seemingly new phones will infect friends and coworkers with their enthusiasm. Those buyers don't need to wait around for new hardware to get the new software.

Well, hell, I thought of one more thing. Next week, the Apple Fanclub of bloggers and journalists will fill the InterWebs with buzz, buzz, buzz (God, get my chainsaw!) about iPhone 5 and iOS 5. Windows Phone 7.5 is better coming out on this side of Apple's October 4th announcement than the other. Hence, there's a bunch of Mango reviews from gadget sites today. If you'd like to be a Betanews star with your WP 7.5 review, don't wait until next week. It will be lost in the iPhone 5 cyclone -- eh, iCyclone 5.

Brilliantly Played

Microsoft's approach to Windows Phone has been remarkably sensible and painstakingly strategic. The company has been playing a shrewd chess game against competitors, sacrificing pieces early on to gain winning position. It's a board strategy that requires patience and stamina -- resisting the temptation to capture pieces now when the long play of exhausting opponents and catching them cocky and unprepared is way of winning the game. From the Windows Phone distribution deal with Nokia to fundamentally different approach to using and marketing the devices, Microsoft is changing the rules of engagement.

The whole "glance and go" approach is sheer brilliance, and I'm convinced will pay off when married to Nokia hardware and its marketing approach. I'm still not buying IDC's Windows Phone forecast for 2015, but do see huge marketing and phone philosophy resonance between Microsoft and Nokia: The phone is a tool for living your life, not for consuming it.

Today's update, going out to all, is part of that phone-as-a-tool approach. Microsoft started the update process at 1 p.m. PDT. The numerical designation for this one is 7720. Some people will get the update fairly quickly, while others will have to wait as much as four weeks. Microsoft's Eric Hautala asks: "Who’s first?" And answers: "This is a simultaneous, coordinated, global update that cuts across carriers, phone models, and countries. This time, almost everybody is going first"

Why is Microsoft staggering the roll out? Hautala explains:

Delivering Windows Phone 7.5 simultaneously to so many phone models and carriers requires the right engineering balance. Speed is a priority -- but so is quality. We’re not just delivering our new operating system but also new software supplied by individual handset makers. This 'firmware' is necessary so your phone -- and apps -- work with all the features of Windows Phone 7.5. But it essentially means that we’re supplying not just one update, but many different ones, given the variety of Windows Phones and carriers out there to choose from.

The process also means, sadly for some existing Windows Phone owners, that they'll wait longer because there's still more work to do. AT&T subscribers are most likely affected. Microsoft has started the update process for WP smartphones on US carriers Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. But on AT&T, "delivery has begun for the HTC Surround, LG Quantum, and Samsung Focus v. 1.3", according to Microsoft. "The HTC HD7S is currently 'Scheduling', while the Samsung Focus v. 1.4 is 'Testing' and the Dell Venue Pro is in 'Planning'". HD7S users will wait longer, Focus users longer still and it's anyone's guess if Venue Pro users will ever get the update. Microsoft works with the phone OEMs, not controls them. Sorry if you're among these unfortunate AT&T WP users. The update process also has started for "all other operators" and for "open market" phones, Microsoft says.

You Don't Have to Wait

But, c`mon, you're a gadget geek. You don't want to wait hours, days, or (gasp) weeks for a bite into Mango. Well, well, WPCentral has you covered. Today the site posted instructions on how you can use Zune software to get WP 7.5 now. Paul Acevedo shares what is surely a common sentiment among WP users about the four-weeks to update everyone: "That’s practically a month. I don’t know about you, but my go-go lifestyle doesn’t allow for that kind of waiting".

Acevedo offers a 10-step process for forcing the update. Sorry, I won't cut and paste them here. He deserves your pageviews; I won't take them away. Obviously I can't test it, but WPCentral commenters confirm the shortcut works. (See, that's another way Microsoft rewards loyal Windows Phone users. What? You think Microsoft couldn't force the update to only be OTA? Those who tinker receive their bounty.)

WPCentral comments show loads of excitement for WP 7.5:

oasis1489: "I just may head out for a mango smoothie in celebration...especially since this update seems like its taking years to install. i guess 500 new features take their sweet time making their magical journey onto my HTC Trophy...Mango is now officially working on my HTC Trophy! And MAN it feels slick! Even the animations when scrolling through the alphabetical app list look awesome! Good luck everyone!"

jchapman01: "This worked great!! First time I checked for an update Zune told me it had the latest version. Then I checked again and immediately hit my WiFi switch and KABLAM!! UPDATE AVAILABLE! Thanks WPCENTRAL! USING HTC SURROUND on AT&T".

Not everyone is having such luck installing Mango, but surely persistence pays.

Okay, now that you've read this far, please follow WPCentral's instructions, install Windows Phone 7.5 and come back and post comments here or contact me about writing that review.

Paragon Software’s Backup & Recovery has always been one of the most feature-packed backup tools around, and the latest release, Backup & Recovery 11 Home, does its best to carry on this proud tradition.

At a first glance down the “new features” list, though, the strategy doesn’t appear to be entirely successful. The program is more about evolution, than revolution: there’s no game-changer here, it’s really just building on what’s come before.

But still, the new build does have some useful additions, and of course it’s building on a very solid base, so whether you’re familiar with the program, or are a Paragon newbie, it definitely deserves a closer look.

Feature-Packed

As with the previous edition, the program opens with its Express interface, an easy-to-use, front-end menu that helps you get started at speed. Which in most cases will mean launching the Smart Backup Wizard, and having this walk you through the process of creating your first backup.

There’s a good choice of backup types: you can save your media files, documents, emails (Outlook, Windows Mail and Outlook Express only), individual partitions, complete hard drives, or the files and folders you specify, just in a click or two. There’s support for a wide range of backup destinations. Your backup files can be saved to local or network drives; a chosen partition, even if it’s not mounted or supported by your operating system; or burned to CD, DVD or Blu-ray discs. And, new this time around, Backup & Recovery 11 Home can also back up and restore to or from an FTP or sFTP server.

You get an extensive and customizable list of include and exclude filters to ensure your backup contains only the files you need. A new Encryption option allows you to password-protect your archives. And your completed backup job can be run immediately, or scheduled for launch when you log on, every day, week, month or more, courtesy of the scheduler.

Factor in the improved hardware support -- the ability to work with drives bigger than 2.2TB, SSDs, AFDs, USB 3.0 drives, and drives that don’t use 512-byte sectors -- and the program is off to a very good start.

But there was one relative disappointment, in the program’s performance over a wired network (though local and USB drive backup times were fine). We backed up a small test system (107GB of data) to a NAS device, using a specialist imaging backup tool, and the process took 35 minutes. But when we tried backing up the same system with Backup & Recovery 11 Home, it took around 49 minutes, or 40-percent longer.

There are some compensations here. Our imaging program was fast, but heavy on resources; Backup & Recovery 11 Home was a little slower, but much more lightweight, so it’s no problem to carry on using your PC while it runs in the background. And if this doesn’t apply to you because you’re running unattended backups, then you probably won’t care how long a job takes to run anyway.

Still, if you’ve a lot of data to back up then this may become an issue. Make sure you test how the program performs on your system before you buy.

Advanced Interface

The Express interface is fine when you’re getting started, but only displays a few of Backup & Recovery 11′s functions. So to get a complete picture of what the program can do you must switch to the Advanced Interface. This is much more complex, but also looks very similar to other Paragon products, so if you’ve ever used one of these you’ll quickly feel at home.

This interface includes straightforward wizards to run differential partition and incremental file backups, for instance. These can save time by backing up only new or changed data, a great way to cut your backup times.

There are also simple tools to copy partitions or entire disks, including an option to migrate your system to a larger hard drive (Backup & Recovery 11 will resize any partitions appropriately to make best use of the space). And these don’t have to be image copies; the (new to this version) ability to use Exclude filters means that you can avoid copying particular file types – *.bak, *.tmp, *,old or whatever. It’s all very straightforward

Elsewhere, you’ll find a few basic partitioning tools: you can create, format, hide and unhide them, assign drive letters, and so on.

There is a handy Undelete Partitions wizard, too, and a raft of low-level functions. You’re able to view and edit drives at the sector level; update a hard drive’s MBR; change your primary slots; and, new this time is a wizard to easily convert a standard MBR-formatted drive to GPT without losing any data.

Perhaps most intriguing, though, are the recovery options, as Backup & Recovery 11 Home has far more to offer here than most of the competition.

Disaster Recovery

If your PC stops booting for whatever reason then of course you won’t be able to launch Backup & Recovery 11 Home to restore a previous backup. And so the program allows you to create a bootable recovery environment to get everything working again.

At its simplest you can just use the standard image provided with the program, a Linux environment which quickly boots you into a cut-down version of Backup & Recovery. Bonus extras here include the Boot Corrector, which can fix many common Windows boot problems, and so may help you avoid the need to restore any backup at all. But if it fails then you can use the program to restore anything from an individual file to an entire drive backup.

Another option, new this time, is the Windows PE 3.0 boot disk. This includes essentially the 32-bit version of Backup & Recovery Home, so there’s less learning involved: it looks and behaves exactly like the program you’re used to. There’s also an extra option to add (32-bit) third-party drivers on the fly, useful if your hardware isn’t supported by default. And the Windows PE disc is also better at connecting to your network, which will also be important if your backups are saved to some network drive or device.

And the other addition to Backup & Recovery 11 is support for Paragon Adaptive Restore 3.0, which means you should be able to more reliably restore your system backup onto entirely new hardware, as the program injects the necessary drivers for you. This may be useful for some people, but in our experience Windows itself does a good job of coping in these situations, and additional tools are usually unnecessary.

Overall, then, while there’s no single stand-out new feature, Paragon Backup & Recovery 11 Home does have more than enough enhancements to justify your attention: the extended hardware support, backup to FTP/ SFTP servers, encryption, exclude filters when copying a hard drive, and Windows PE 3.0 boot disc are all worth having.

And when you add these to the solid, reliable and highly configurable foundations of the previous version then you’ve got yourself one very powerful backup tool. If you’re looking for a solid, reliable, versatile and highly configurable way to protect your valuable data, then give Paragon Backup & Recovery 11 Home a try -- it could be just what you need.

The software runs on Windows 2000 SP4, XP, Vista, 7 -- all 32 and 64-bit editions -- all lists for $39.95.