We use Aomei Backupper a lot at work, and its one of the most reliable and easy to use backup programs.
Creating an image of a machine is very important – if for some reason (usually Windows updates…) it fails to boot, or the disk becomes corrupted, you need a ‘point in time’ to return to.
Aomei Backupper has an easy to use interface, and backs up easily to other computers on the network, USB devices or other partitions on the same computer.
You can backup system partitions (Win 7 uses two partitions to boot) disks or just files and folders. Both full, incremental and differential backups are supported, so taking an incremental image backup after a full image (say each week) is very quick.
Finally, the best feature is restoring to different hardware. Install Windows how you want it, back it up, and you can restore that image onto any computer. Simply install the necessary drivers after, but its great for the office – simple to create ‘gold’ images – a corporate image of a machine ready to go.
Comparing editions, there is no reason to get the professional against the free version… only ‘merge backups’ and ‘command line’ is extra.