Wish I had read around in this forum before buying Acronis...

Hell of a first post, that.
How about giving some details of what's going wrong for you, Mike? If Acronis support doesn't jump in as quickly as you'd like, maybe another user has encountered the same issue and can help.

I also read the forums after upgrading to TI 2010 and wondered if I had done the right thing. But I kept my head, made my Recovery Media, and made my images from that until I was sure what I wanted to do. That, after all, was part of my reason for upgrading. I had tried Macrium Reflect, which is free, but lacks the ability (last I checked, anyway) to make an image from its Recovery Media. This is important to me cos I always make my first few images that way, and have never had a problem restoring them.
Copying to DVD is a good idea for preserving the image, but not so good for restoring, its true, but AFAIK that's the same for any imaging program, unless there's one that operates very differently from those I've seen so far. I copy my major images to DVD, but if I had to restore from one (if the HDD the original .tibs are on died, that is) I would probably copy the image from DVD onto a new HDD and then restore.

As for customer support, whatever lag there was previously, I have to say I've had very prompt responses since I've been posting about TI 2010. YMMV, of course.
I'm not saying Acronis is perfect, just giving credit where it's due.

You might want to give Macrium a try, Mike. I tried it in the time I was running Win 7 RC before TI 2010 was out/compatible. I had some problems with it writing to external drives, as well as some disconcerting errors in the Windows event logs, so I went back to Acronis, warts and all. I managed to get my problems almost all solved. Of course, as I said before, YMMV...also my Acronis needs are simple. I don't run continuous backup, for example. If I can make images, verify them, mount/unmount them, and restore from them reliably, I'm good to go.

Anyway, since you have bought Acronis, you can do one of two things:
1) if you're sure you're going to remain that unhappy with it, get a refund and move on, or:
2) post your issue and see.

If you do jump ship to Macrium, be advised that you can't post in their forums if you are using the free version.

@ Andromeda492 very well said

Andromeda492 wrote:

I copy my major images to DVD, but if I had to restore from one (if the HDD the original .tibs are on died, that is) I would probably copy the image from DVD onto a new HDD and then restore.

Thats definitely the best way to do it!

Lots of good advice there!

If you are aware of the bugs and are able to work around them until they are fixed, ATI is reliable.

@ Andromeda492 and James H

Firstly, big Thx to both of you for your helpful and thoughtful responses, which were also ( IMO ) very prompt. Thank You!
I am still dissatisfied with my product choice, and will "jump ship" as Andromeda would put it. However in future I will be storing in natural format. It may cost more and be time-consuming with all those grandfather-father-son backups, but at least it meets my computer-illiteracy needs.
I knew during the writing of my first posting that I made mistakes which are, as it appears now, irreversible. These errors, resulting in the loss of some very nostalgically valuable data, could have been avoided, had the distributors simply indicated the complications inherent in this form of imaging, and particularly the negative aspects of large file size recovery on multipart storage media. The issues I above addressed were known to the distributors, yet they chose to avoid informing lusers such as myself to the deficiencies/dangers, prefering to project the image of an idyllic "one-click" solution. Even after one has purchased their product.
Once again - absurd.
So, alas I will stick to my guns on this one... Once again however, I wish to repeat my thanks for your participation, for not taking my posting personally and not simply bashing.

cheers, mike