I've bought Acronis for several clients & friends and think it's probably the best out there. On my home computers I use something that hasn't been available for 4 or 5 years, but still works great - PowerQuest's Drive Image 7 - saved my system from catastrophe several times.

Acronis True Image Home at $50 (often discounted) is fine for most users. Acronis True Image Echo Workstation at $80 has a $20 add-in that is incredible - Universal Restore. I've used this twice to replace old early Pentium WinXP computers with brand new machines. Normally you couldn't restore an old image onto new hardware, but the Universal Restore slipstreams all the drivers into the image and comes out working perfectly on the new system. Both times this was done because there was critical software on the old system for which we had no media to reinstall.

BTW, when planning for backup drives, add enough for 1 extra image, e.g., to make 4 image backups of a 100 Gb drive, get at least a 500 Gb drive. This is because the newest image is made before the oldest is rolled off.