Favorite Files

1. Alcohol 120%

Recent Posts

1. 
   Review - PerfectDisk Professional

   11.00 Build 162 RC1 (Feb 6, 2010)

   I hope this was an authorized posting of the PD11 beta.
   
   I've been testing it too, but unlike people who have no idea how to test software, I've found several bugs, one of which is pretty bad (but only for some users).
   
   The duplicate finder is ... "OK" but it would be nice to know whether it's doing a full binary compare, or is using some crappy algorithm like CRC32. (I won't trust it for real use until I know the answer.) Using a hash algorithm--any hash algorithm--would make no sense since to calculate the hash, you need to read the whole file anyway, so you may as well do a binary comparison.
   
   This version does analyze and defragment faster than prior versions, which is a nice improvement, but hardly enough to justify a full version increment. The ability to select/customize SMARTPlacement algorithms (in Pro and above) is another nice addition.
   
   Five stars not for a perfect product (it's far from it), but for a defragger that improves performance more than any other, and which helps prevent future fragmentation better as well, and for a company that offers very good support.

2. 
   Review - Malware Defender

   2.5.0 (Feb 5, 2010)

   I took a chance on this application again, now that a couple new versions have been released.
   
   Mistake.
   
   This time, I left all protection components enabled. I was looking the application over, becoming very impressed with the interface and all the features. Until I made the mistake of trying to view user hooks, that is. When I did that, a "Scanning for hooks..." dialog appeared, and before long, it made my system essentially freeze. Not the preferable kind of freeze where it's simply totally frozen and you know you have to hit the reset button, so you just go right ahead and do so. No, this was the kind of near-freeze where the mouse cursor will move at an agonizingly slow pace, and you can see consistent disk activity. Yet you cannot really do anything with the system. So, you wait and wait, trying to avoid doing a hard reset.
   
   The waiting was pointless, since the system never came back. I removed Malicious Descender and will NEVER install it again.

3. 
   Review - TagScanner

   5.1.555 (Feb 4, 2010)

   Mp3tag is better.

4. 
   Review - Alcohol 120%

   2.0.0.1331 (Feb 4, 2010)

   "Special limited half price Lifetime Upgrades offer". Hilarious. Here's one for you:
   
   Q: When is a "limited time offer" not really a "limited time offer"?
   
   A: When it's being offered by a software vendor.
   
   Currently the price for a lifetime upgrade license for Alcohol 120% is $57 USD. I bought it for a few bucks LESS than that last year!
   
   @4122: I got that newsletter, too, but I didn't fall for it. Don't you see what they did? Double the price, and then pretend there's a half-off special in place. So the actual price stays the same, except they get to advertise a "limited-time special" for as long as they want to, and be extremely flexible with the price by altering that discount as they see fit and as time goes on.

5. 
   Review - Easy CD-DA Extractor

   12.0.6 (Jan 28, 2010)

   We had a disagreement over AnyDVD, catchpole. Get over it.

6. Comment - Microsoft's 'Black Screen of Death' denial solves the blame not the problem

   12.0.6 (Dec 2, 2009 - 8:35 AM)

   So... It wasn't MS's fault, but because some idiots claimed it was, they now have to go above and beyond to fix the problem? If that's the case then MS should do that for EVERY problem caused by Windows-based malware. Obvious nonsense.
   
   MS offers free security software (Microsoft Security Essentials) which can stop and/or remove this malware. Seems to me that MS has already done enough to fix this problem. Or should they take out a full-page ad in the New York Times as well? Superbowl commercial?
   
   Lame, lame article.