There was a lot of talk and publicity when Time Machine for OS X was announced. Although initial versions of the Time Machine were plagued by several problems, they were sorted out over a period of time. Vista also has an automatic backup system, thought it did not get a lot of press for obvious reasons (Vista was a big failure – unfortunately nobody can say exactly why :)). Whatever the reason, Vista with the SP2 is a decent operating system – both in looks and functionality. The Time Machine on OS X offers a backup solution which not only backs up you entire file system but also allows you to recover individual files and the full system from the same backup. Unlike this, in Vista, you need to create two backups – one for the files so that you can recover older versions of them, and one for the entire file system so that you can recover everything in the unfortunate event of a HDD crash.
Needless to say the Time Machine backup is easier because you have a single backup for everything. That said, with only a couple of more clicks you get the same functionality in Windows (although Vista will use up the backup disk faster because of the duplicity). The full system backup cannot be automated in Vista and has to be done manually. This is largely a difference in the design principles. With a simpler approach to backing up the whole file system (instead of combining it with the backup of individual files), Vista ensured (or rather hoped to enure :)) that the features are implemented robustly the first time around.
