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General Software Discussion / Re: Software license upgrade experiences: pricing, support & the stuff that matters
« on: January 09, 2006, 01:27 AM »
At the moment I am cheesed off with Diskeeper Corp. over their handling of the upgrade to v.10 of their Diskeeper defragmentation software. I received an e-mail advising me that an upgrade was available at the beginning of December, read over the listed improvements, have been very pleased with the three versions I have purhcased so far, and downloaded the trial of the new version. I bought it later that week, being very impressed with the increased speed of both analysis and defragmentation of drives, the much improved GUI and with the improved performance of the "smart schedule" defragmentation (and the associated options). However, one of the main reasons I was so quick to buy the upgrade is a new feature called iFAAST:
"Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology (I-FAAST) improves file access and creation by up to 80% (average 10%-20%). Using specially-engineered benchmarks Diskeeper learns disk performance characteristics, and then transparently monitors volumes over time for file access frequency applying proprietary techniques to prevent Diskeeper from being "fooled" by files that have been recently accessed. During special I-FAAST defragmentation jobs, Diskeeper organizes the most commonly used files and applications to increase file access performance. Like other intelligent technologies featured in Diskeeper 10, I-FAAST can automatically adapt to changing usage patterns—so there's no need to reconfigure if the system is transferred to another user. "
Fast forward two weeks and I'm suddenly being offered the opportunity to upgrade from v.10 of Diskeeper Professional to a new version of Diskeeper Professional: Diskeeper Professional Premium, which includes iFAAST (while I am now told my version does not). The price of this "special" upgrade from v.10 Pro to v.10 Pro Premium is the same as the full price of the latest version of Diskeeper Pro, and I've already paid 60% of that to get to v.10. Two things REALLY P*SS me off about this. First, absolutely NOWHERE in any of the advertising e-mails for the upgrade that I received prior to upgrading nor during the purchase process was it indicated that iFAAST was available only in special ("premium") versions of the software. Second, and really much more aggravatingly, my e-mails to general support and to sales about this have been completely ignored by Diskeeper Corp.. I even responded to one of their sales reps who wrote after my initial upgrade to enquire as to my experience with v.10 thus far! One of the points I made was that the upgrade to v.10 Professional alone was about what the cross upgrade to PerfectDisk 7 costs, which includes similar technology to iFAAST, and that requiring me to spend DOUBLE that again to get the same functionality from Diskeeper was excessive. Anyway, faced with their continued silence, I am now in the PerfectDisk camp. I purchased the cross-upgrade and am generally very pleased with v.7. I miss the robusicity of Diskeeper's scheduling and its overall configurability but my computer's performance doesn't seem to be suffering from the switch and even *seems* to be staying less fragmented for longer...
Anyway, that's my rant. I'm considering my next move. I'd just demand a refund from Diskeeper but I've two other machines and have installed the license from my notebook on one of them, replacing Win2k's native defragmenter. Besides, it's not like Diskeeper Professional 10 isn't a great product on its own... I'm just wondering if I should keep after them for a response but am not sure I can be bothered. Pretty disgusted by the cynicism of the company though: they flood my mailbox with spam about their other products and have even contacted me for my opinions about/experiences with Diskeeper 10 but refuse to answer three e-mails asking for clarification of their upgrade policy to Professional Premium (e.g. was the upgrade offer I received based on my ownership of Diskeeper Professional 9 or 10?), even in the face of losing a user/customer.
OK time for my meds and bed. If anyone's read this far, thanks for bearing with me and sorry for the long winded post.
"Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology (I-FAAST) improves file access and creation by up to 80% (average 10%-20%). Using specially-engineered benchmarks Diskeeper learns disk performance characteristics, and then transparently monitors volumes over time for file access frequency applying proprietary techniques to prevent Diskeeper from being "fooled" by files that have been recently accessed. During special I-FAAST defragmentation jobs, Diskeeper organizes the most commonly used files and applications to increase file access performance. Like other intelligent technologies featured in Diskeeper 10, I-FAAST can automatically adapt to changing usage patterns—so there's no need to reconfigure if the system is transferred to another user. "
Fast forward two weeks and I'm suddenly being offered the opportunity to upgrade from v.10 of Diskeeper Professional to a new version of Diskeeper Professional: Diskeeper Professional Premium, which includes iFAAST (while I am now told my version does not). The price of this "special" upgrade from v.10 Pro to v.10 Pro Premium is the same as the full price of the latest version of Diskeeper Pro, and I've already paid 60% of that to get to v.10. Two things REALLY P*SS me off about this. First, absolutely NOWHERE in any of the advertising e-mails for the upgrade that I received prior to upgrading nor during the purchase process was it indicated that iFAAST was available only in special ("premium") versions of the software. Second, and really much more aggravatingly, my e-mails to general support and to sales about this have been completely ignored by Diskeeper Corp.. I even responded to one of their sales reps who wrote after my initial upgrade to enquire as to my experience with v.10 thus far! One of the points I made was that the upgrade to v.10 Professional alone was about what the cross upgrade to PerfectDisk 7 costs, which includes similar technology to iFAAST, and that requiring me to spend DOUBLE that again to get the same functionality from Diskeeper was excessive. Anyway, faced with their continued silence, I am now in the PerfectDisk camp. I purchased the cross-upgrade and am generally very pleased with v.7. I miss the robusicity of Diskeeper's scheduling and its overall configurability but my computer's performance doesn't seem to be suffering from the switch and even *seems* to be staying less fragmented for longer...
Anyway, that's my rant. I'm considering my next move. I'd just demand a refund from Diskeeper but I've two other machines and have installed the license from my notebook on one of them, replacing Win2k's native defragmenter. Besides, it's not like Diskeeper Professional 10 isn't a great product on its own... I'm just wondering if I should keep after them for a response but am not sure I can be bothered. Pretty disgusted by the cynicism of the company though: they flood my mailbox with spam about their other products and have even contacted me for my opinions about/experiences with Diskeeper 10 but refuse to answer three e-mails asking for clarification of their upgrade policy to Professional Premium (e.g. was the upgrade offer I received based on my ownership of Diskeeper Professional 9 or 10?), even in the face of losing a user/customer.
OK time for my meds and bed. If anyone's read this far, thanks for bearing with me and sorry for the long winded post.
) quickly and naturally. To contrast this, I've tried using ObjectDock's flyout menus feature to do the same thing and while it LOOKS interesting it's pretty annoying!
It allows you to switch between folders easily enough, but as far as I can tell does not feature the expandable menus that you describe.
, how does PCMag's StartupCop Pro 2 (