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Zentimo/USB Safely Remove - Are they needed anymore?

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Shades:
I'm with Carol on this one. Hardly useful on Windows 7, but on Windows XP it does help. At least it does on my XP PC which entered its 7th year of practically continuous usage (which is quite a feat as it uses nVidea chipset).

A lot of times Windows won't allow me to shutdown/eject the device for whatever (unclear) reason, but after installing the latest Zentimo Give-away-of-the-day version, I do not have that problem anymore at all. In addition, ejecting appears to be a tad faster.

xtabber:
I find personally find Zentimo very useful. but less for safe removal than for managing multiple removable devices. 

I typically have several external drives connected to my desktop systems, which can vary depending on what I am working on.  Hovering the mouse pointer over the Zentimo tray icon gives me an instant overview of what is attached,  what drive letters are assigned, and a quick button to open each in Windows Explorer (or another file browser).  Zentimo also allows you to store settings for removable drives on the device itself, so that the device will appear the same on any system running Zentimo.

Just connecting my Android phone in USB drive mode grabs 3 drive letters, Sansa music players with micro-SD storage take 2, and I have plenty of external hard disks for offline storage and/or backups that get moved around between systems.

Darwin:
I find Zentimo convenient under Windows 7 to return drives that I eject and then remember that I need to transfer a file (or something) AND to permanently assign drive letters to thumbdrives (used to use USBDLM for this). HOWEVER, I really don't miss it on my work computer and can confirm Carol's report that Windows 7 handles USB ejection just fine.

Overall, I would rate Zentimo as convenient but not essential. Actually, you've got me thinking that maybe I should uninstall it... except I am too lazy to configure USBDLM again!

Innuendo:
Hmm...Shades, xtabber, and Darwin all present usage scenarios that I find myself in...thumb drives that grab a different drive letter any time you connect them to the system are particularly a pet peeve of mine.

Giveawayoftheday is no longer my friend. Once upon a time, they would give away a free piece of software & it was yours to keep. Forever. It couldn't be upgraded, but hey...it was free! Life was good. Then The Darkness came. Giveawayoftheday became GiveawayofTHATday. They still gave you a free piece of software that was not able to be upgraded, but it was wrapped in a proprietary installer that only allowed you to install that piece of software on the day it was given away. Wait 24 hours & it was no soup for you.

Totally unusable for anyone who reinstalls their OS. Ever.

However, it's still not $27 worth of functionality for a USBSR lifetime license so I got to digging. Google didn't turn up anything worthwhile regarding a price break except expired deals. Being a chronic packrat, though, prompted me to check my old emails to see if I had any leverage there. Hmm....found an old expired freebie 1-year license for USBSR from 2008 (No! I don't need help with my "problem"!  :P)...and figured what would be the harm? I plugged it into the Zentimo web site and what do you know? It qualified for upgrade pricing! Must be because it was an actual license and not a "you're free to use this certain version number ONLY" kind of deal.

Now down to $29.95 for a lifetime license for the 'superior' of the two versions for just a couple bucks more. I was feeling better about my ability to get a better offer with no cash outlay, but Zentimo and USBSR aren't worth $27-30 to me...maybe half that. I've done enough internet transactions, though, that I had one last potentially powerful trick up my sleeve: <dramatic pause> currency conversion.

Crystal Rich's online checkout provides a wealth of different currencies which can be used for payment. I'll save you all the trial & error that I had to go through by saying that paying in Rubles is the way to transactional happiness. Every other choice gives one a 50% discount off of $59.90 to leave one with a net price of $29.95. Choosing Rubles gives one a 50% discount off of $33.10 to leave one with a net price of $16.55, which just happens to be charged in US dollars to your credit card (I don't know why) saving you the expense of foreign transaction fees as well.

$16.55 was close enough to half of $30 so I bit giving me a lifetime license to Zentimo for a total out of pocket cost of $16.55. That's a fair price for the usage I'll have for it.

Interesting tidbit of information I discovered: Existing USBSR customers can upgrade on the web site to a lifetime Zentimo license no matter the length or status of their USBSR license. Existing Zentimo customers, however, don't seem to have a mechanism to upgrade to a lifetime license anywhere.

Innuendo:
Oh, regarding USBDLM, I checked it out. It's pretty powerful for a free option, but once I started reading all those .ini file settings I started getting QEMM386 flashbacks!  :D

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