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

[rjbull]

RoboForm Pro v7 Desktop is on offer at Bits du Jour today, 2011-10-04, with 9 hrs 51 min left at time of writing.  It's $14.95 rather than the regular $29.95 (and $9.95 for a second copy).  That's $5 less than the upgrade price from v6 to v7 for existing v6 users.

In the discussion, numerous posts mention the "phantom lifetime license" that's already been heavily chewed over on DC and elsewhere.

In one of the posts, Siber Systems say that RoboForm2Go will be on Bits du Jour on 13th October.

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

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.  Is it in putting in the name and address, or in allowing complex passwords that you do not know but Roboform does, or what.  

Roboform is clearly inexpensive with Bits on your main puter, but passwords have to be synched with all your puters (many of us have e.g. 2 at home and 1 at work and then we may be at a friends house or library) making the Desktop Roboform idea a bit problematic if it only licenses one puter.  And with multi-puter upgrade concerns, is any of this worth it ?

Inquiring minds.

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

Major security alternatives ?
a) home-grown ideas .. e.g. similar passwords kept under a code system (shh.. probably makes the pros buckle)
b) Keepass et al.

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

On the licensing, I would say that Roboform misled people with "Free Upgrades" when they meant a silently added "within versions" or "from 5 to 6" but probably not nefariously and we all know that many decent companies have run into similar problems. "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. Oops.

So I would not personally dealbreak on all that ethically, but understand the concern of folks who may have gotten heavily vested on that basis, not expecting that they were being forced on an upgrade merry-go-round, likely on multi-puters, where the $ adds up.  It is a combination of gotchas.

a) optimistic wording back when then
b) quick abandonment of earlier versions
c) genre that quickly stales and breaks, making earlier versions useless
d) password programs by nature needing multi-puter (or cloud) licensing

Each one individually is understandable, multiplied together, Houston can have a problem.
Now that I have spelled it out (for myself as well) .. I think I have to pass.

Steven

[Josh]

I purchased my first RF license back with v5. I have been a user since.

Let me get this out of the way first. I was irate about the change in licensing terms. I owned 5 desktop licenses, 1 palm and 1 2go. I contacted the VP of marketing, Mr. Bill Carey, after he posted on a website I followed. He came to a resolution with me which I felt was adequate. I will not divulge the details of this exchange but say that I do, and have understood even before our interaction, the change in policy.

All of that aside, I cannot find a tool that can compare to RF. Many will suggest lastpass as an alternative but I have never been able to make it function as flawlessly as RF. Yes, it offers quite a few more methods for securing initial access to your passwords, but it does so in a very awkward manner. The GUI and configuration pages are very poorly designed which led to a lot of confusion. I've never understood the reason for two separate pages for configuration and often found myself looking in the wrong place for a configuration option.

With roboform, I had the option of migrating to the everywhere option or upgrading my desktop licenses. Either would have worked for me. The desktop license would have been nice as it allows me to keep my data offline but at this point, I trust roboform to store my passcards. Their issues with lifetime licenses had no effect on my trusting their security practices. They are two different and unrelated areas, in my opinion.

Roboform offers far more polish that I expect out my applications. Free does not always equate to better in my books. Roboform has been able to keep me working with very minimal of interruption. They patch bugs fairly fast and are responsive on support. They used to have a support issue which led to long lead times on answers to questions about a year or so ago but this has since been resolved.

Overall, I recommend roboform wholeheartedly. The everywhere option really is a good deal considering their old licensing scheme. I would not recommend going with the desktop license unless you have a need for offline storage or simply do not trust the online storage option. I personally feel that if you have a strong enough password, you are covered.

[Carol Haynes]

Just use LastPass (free) or use the online RoboForm service (not free - you need to pay a subscription IIRC). You can also buy RoboForm2Go which runs from a USB stick on any computer.

LastPass works in just about any browser with plugins/addons/extensions for personal computers and access via a webpage on computers you can't install bits on. You can also purachse a version to use on a thumb stick.

[Carol Haynes]

All of that aside, I cannot find a tool that can compare to RF. Many will suggest lastpass as an alternative but I have never been able to make it function as flawlessly as RF.

-Josh (October 04, 2011, 07:09 PM)

The only issues I have had with LastPass are Flash based websites (which I could never get RF to work on either) and data exported from RF and imported into LP. I suspect RF doesn't have as strict control on URLS as LP. Data saved in LP seems to work fine for me. In fact you can log in to most websites from LP with a single keypress from you LP Vault Page.

[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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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