[robweber]

It does backup your skin (assuming it is in your default addons folder) but you are correct that a restore probably does not get the skin to automatically be set as your default. this is because of issues with the guisettings.xml file - which stores the information for what skin to load. Please refer to the information below which I've cut/pasted from the FAQ:

Several settings aren't being restored, this includes views, weather, etc. How do I get these back?

GUISETTINGS.xml is a configuration file used heavily by XBMC for remembering GUI specific settings. Due to the fact that XBMC reads this file on startup, and writes from memory to this file on shutdown; it is not possible to restore this file while XBMC is running. You must manually move this file from your backup archives if you wish to restore it. User SouthMark has posted the following steps for restoring in the OpenELEC system where this is more difficult:

1. Run the restore of your backup
2. SSH using putty to the IP Address of your media centre username: root Password openelec
3. Type touch /var/lock/xbmc.disabled and then press enter
4. Type kill all -9 xbmc.bin and then press enter - Your media center machine should now go blank
5. Connect to your machine using WinSCP and copy the guisettings.xml file to the userdata folder (this is the guisettings.xml file from your backup)
6. go back to your putty window and type rm /var/lock/xbmc.disabled