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RoboForm 7 Desktop on BdJ today, 2011-10-04

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rjbull:
Those who use and like Roboform, please indicate how you feel it is a timesaver or security saver to you compared to either home-made (lightly coded) password security or other alternatives like Keepass.-Steven Avery (October 04, 2011, 06:48 PM)
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Like many others on DC I start from KeePass, so that I have my passwords in a secure, compact, portable utility.  Indeed, if you only wanted LoginIDs, it's all you need.  RoboForm's benefits to me are how slick it is, particularly at filling forms, and its extra features.

You can fill in forms with KeePass (and many clipboard enhancers) but you have to set up each form manually.  I find so many forms have different layouts that it would be tedious to set up each one separately, especially as I don't visit any one of them very often.  RoboForm has a magic ability to figure out how to match data with the fields in the form, whatever the form layout.  There are still occasions where it can be defeated, but in those cases it usually fails to enter something, rather than put in the wrong data.

RoboForm has SafeNotes as well as Passcards (LoginIDs), which is useful if you want secure free-form notes.  Available elsewhere, but convenient.

RoboForm will sync with my Palm Tungsten T3, as well as various smartphones.  I find Palm sync very useful, and it includes SafeNotes as well as Passcards.  That's one of the bigger reasons I went for the new update.

Roboform is clearly inexpensive with Bits [...] but passwords have to be synched with all your puters [...] And with multi-puter upgrade concerns, is any of this worth it ? -Steven Avery (October 04, 2011, 06:48 PM)
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Passcards and SafeNotes are individual files.  I used to sync from one computer to another via USB.  More sophisticated solutions include Siber Systems' subscription-based cloud service RoboForm Everywhere and the portable RoboForm2Go for USB Drives.  For the latter, you need a license for each USB drive you operate from.

On the licensing, I would say that Roboform misled people with "Free Upgrades"-Steven Avery (October 04, 2011, 06:48 PM)
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I started the thread Upgrading RoboForm from v6 to v7: worthwhile?, where this issue was thrashed around.  At some point Josh PM'd me with much the message above.  Although Siber Systems could and should have been clearer, I was then prepared to accept the current licensing terms.

Don't forget that you are still - I think - allowed to use RoboForm with ten Passcards for free.

Major security alternatives ?
[...]
b) Keepass et al.
-Steven Avery (October 04, 2011, 06:48 PM)
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There's a sniffy comment in the Bits du Jour thread about LastPass' site getting hacked, and I've even seen such a comment in the British media.  However, that will presumably not concern users of their desktop version.  There are other options that I haven't tried, e.g.


* Sticky Password
* PassCrypt
* Password Profiler 3: Automate Log-Ons and Fill Forms Faster, a cheap PC Magazine utility by the author of PassCrypt
* Password Depot
"Our New Product .. FormRobot :) .. no more RoboForm" This was combined with the fact that earlier versions were abandoned and quickly busted to browser changes and extensions. -Steven Avery (October 04, 2011, 06:48 PM)
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I don't have such long experience as Josh or others, but I think that's not the case.  Siber Systems have to adapt their product as browsers etc. change, but I don't think they've had a consistent and deliberate policy of wilful obsolescence.

Steven Avery:
Hi Folks,

"Siber Systems have to adapt their product as browsers etc. change, but I don't think they've had a consistent and deliberate policy of wilful obsolescence."

However, if you do not update version 6 at all the moment that version 7 comes out, not even to match a new browser release, in the browser environment today, that is a fairly quick de facto bust.  The request of some of the users was not to enhance the products with new features, but to keep the old release functional to browsers releases, at least for a good season.  The deliberate and consistent policy of Silber appears to be to make no attempt to do that whatsoever.  When the browser and extensions busts the usage, its broke, and it ain't gonna be fixed.  (This is based mostly on reading the Bits thread.) For a product that often needs multi-puter licensing (unless you go the cloud or USB route) that is coercive by neglect.  

Granted, no developer really wants to work on the old version, and it is hard to tell if a browser change might take one hour or 50 hours to fix in an older version (we are basically talking about the one previous major release and conceivably it might have different code, or dup code, in Anywhere and Desktop and USB), and there might be some cases where you would say .. "too much hassle, sorry, we looked but this is a brand new browser, or this is a radical overhaul" .. but the knock on Silber was that they simply did not try.  That neglect does in fact give the impression of deliberate and consistent.

By contrast, there are many products that do necessary updates of earlier releases to keep them functional and operating, even if 99% of effort is on the new and current and planned.

========================

Thanks for the forms help explanation above. We can accept that RoboForm has that far more functional than anybody. For me, that might justify a small utility purchase, if there was not the upgrade and multi-user concerns. Filling out the occasional addy form is simply not a major issue, it usually occurs if I am buying something, once in a while.

Shalom,
Steven

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