Author Topic: New Raxco Product : Defragmenter - Optimizer ; $9.99 until 2007-05-13 (Read 13644 times)

MerleOne · « **on:** May 08, 2007, 12:18 PM »

I just received this a few mlinutes ago. Raxco publishes PerfectDisk, an excellent defragmenter.

"After years of leading the systems utility market with an award-winning defragmentation tool, Raxco has just completed the rest of the puzzle by creating the PerfectDisk Rx Suite. In addition to defragmentation and optimization, this industry first also includes a safe registry cleaner, a tool to remove duplicate files and reclaim free space, a tool that securely erases tracks to protect privacy, and a tweaking tool that will personalize your entire Windows experience. This unique combination of utilities makes the PerfectDisk Rx Suite the only vitamin your PC will ever need.

And because you're already a valued PerfectDisk customer, you can add the PerfectDisk Rx Suite for only $9.99. That's 66% off the single license special introductory price of $29.99 but you must purchase online by Sunday May 13th and use coupon code RXCLEANPC . http://www.raxco.com...s.cfm?ItemTitleID=75

How does the new PerfectDisk Rx Suite compare to PerfectDisk 8 Professional :
http://www.raxco.com...ons_whichisright.cfm

What exactly will the PerfectDisk Rx Suite do for you: http://www.raxco.com.../perfectdiskrxsuite/

Optimize Drive: This feature improves performance by defragmenting the drive using our award-winning PerfectDisk engine. Run it manually, in screensaver mode, schedule it with AutoPilot Scheduling, or use our exclusive new StealthPatrol technology to automatically defrag only when your system is idle. With StealthPatrol, just set it to "automatic" and never think about defragging again because it does the thinking for you. No other defragger offers this many options.

Clean Registry: This feature brings a new level of ease, simplicity, and safety to the tricky problem of registries cluttered with abandoned, incorrect, and broken entries. Different than other registry cleaners, this feature only deletes the keys it knows it can safely remove without harming Windows. These are the same keys that cause the majority of system slowdowns. The key phrase and difference here is "safely remove".

Reclaim Freespace: Do you know how many unwanted duplicate files are wasting space and slowing your system right now? You might be surprised. This feature not only finds and removes any redundant documents, mp3, photos and videos that are wasting space on your hard drive, but it also easily removes unwanted files that are just sitting in your recycle bin and temp file folder. It's like spring cleaning for your PC with 1 click of the mouse.

Erase All Traces: Did you know that your computer is tracking every move you make and is storing the evidence on your hard drive? Did you also know that clearing your history and emptying your cache doesn’t make them go away? Whether on purpose or by accident, every website, image and movie that you have ever viewed is there for anyone to see – that is until it’s been "completely" removed. This feature digs deep into your system and scrubs the index.dat file so any traces of where you’ve ever been is no longer there. Every time you use this feature, you can be assured that your privacy is intact and sanitized in compliance with US Department of Defense standards (DoD 5220.22-M) for safeguarding classified information. You never know who's using your computer when you're not around.

Tweak: This feature will customize and change hidden Windows settings so that your computer behaves according to your personal preferences. By using the Tweak feature, there's no need to risk editing the registry on your own - which is never a good thing. You can change the way Windows acts in the areas of performance, security and appearance just by clicking a few buttons.

Take the PerfectDisk Rx Suite out for a free test drive! You can download the 15-day free trial here: Make My PC Healthy

To take advantage of the special $9.99 offer, purchase the PerfectDisk Rx Suite Single License directly from the RX Download Store by Sunday (5/13) and make sure you apply code RXCLEANPC in your cart. This code can only be applied towards purchases of the PerfectDisk Rx Suite Single User License.

If you should have any questions for Raxco technical support, please contact them here. If there is anything I can do to assist you, please let me know and if you have a chance, I would love to hear what you think of the PerfectDisk Rx Suite. It's another big day for Raxco Software!

Best Regards,

Wendy Clontz
Raxco Software, Inc.
Toll Free (800) 546-9728
Direct: (301) 519-7806
[email protected]
Web: www.raxco.com

cthorpe · « **Reply #1 on:** May 08, 2007, 01:08 PM »

I don't know. I'm wary of the company now that they pulled the rug out from under their FirstDefence-ISR customers without warning or reason. They sent out an email today saying that the company "appreciates your business and investment in our company," then a few paragraphs later tells us that "Effective immediately, Raxco Software will no longer sell FirstDefense-ISR." They then go on to offer me a great deal on their new product. If the new product included the functionality of ISR along with the new functions, I'd be all over it. Alas, it doesn't.

https://www.donation...index.php?topic=7189

Curt · « **Reply #2 on:** May 09, 2007, 11:39 AM »

I have just tested this program for a couple of hours, and I would never trust it to clean up my reigistry! It may be safe to use, it may even be the best of the kind, but I wouldn't dare to use a program ~~that will not tell which files it is going to delete. All it is telling is what kind of files they are, but not which file~~:

[After-edit: Bummer, Curt! There is a little button, named View Log...

View Log... :

Curt · « **Reply #3 on:** May 09, 2007, 01:20 PM »

You cannot specifically allow/deny removal. You can, however, tell PDRx to not look in certain areas to clean registry keys.
-Raxco Support

To delete all or nothing is just not good enough.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #4 on:** May 10, 2007, 05:11 AM »

What a shame - if this is the future Raxco will lose its market share to DiskKeeper.

I think I will drop them an email saying that I have been a customer since version 6 but with 'crapware' I will no longer be a customer.

Anyone who includes a registry cleaner in that format is asking for trouble - and given the corporate nature of their clientelle they'll probably get lawsuits when the working masses get their grubby mits on this sort of ill-conceived tool!

I've given my 2p worth elsewhere but I will say it again - registry cleaners (even the 'best') are fraught with problems and cause many weird and insoluble problems on systems that can appear over months later. They should NEVER EVER be used in automatic mode by anone with a brain - and this makes them pretty useless because even on a clean install of Windows you will have dozens of registry 'errors' flagged because MS has a trick of putting in dummy file names intot he registry for potential addon options (especially with MS Office products) - delete them and the system can screw up in the most unlikely and apparently unrelated ways.

Follow-up ....

Just checked the Raxco website and they are still selling Perfect Disc as a separate product (the good news) so I am still happy. When that choice goes so will I!

The odd news is if you buy their all singing (destroying) suite you don't get boot time defragmentation in the PerfectDisc component - one of the main reasons (IMHO) to use a defragmenter other than the standard one shipped with Windows!!! Strange decision from Raxco.

Darwin · « **Reply #5 on:** May 10, 2007, 10:12 AM »

FWIW - I have been maintaining licences for both Diskeeper 2007 Pro Premier (on wife's notebook) and PerfectDisk 8 (on mine). I first bought Diskeeper and switched to PerfectDisk because at the time it was lighter on resources and seemed to do a better job. I must say that Raxco, IMO, is on the ropes since DK 2007 came out. It is seamless and invisible. With PerfectDisk, I keep having to check to make sure that my disk is defragmented (I have it set to do this automatically) - often I need to run a boot-time defrag. On my wife's machine, the disk is ALWAYS defragmented, there is no discernible hit on the system, and I rarely check to see if the disk is degragmented anymore. It's very impressive. Note: I'm not complaining about PD, really - it's an excellent defragmenter. However, if Defragmenter-Optimizer is the future of the company I'm concerned!

I was hoping that PerfectDisk 9 would come out and up the ante again; I wasn't expecting this Swiss Army Knife to be released instead

Anyway, I don't want to re-ignite a Diskeeper/PerfectDisk war here, but thought I'd give my impressions after using DK for three years and PD for 18 months.

Lashiec · « **Reply #6 on:** May 10, 2007, 11:49 AM »

AHEM! I suppose they've been fearing the new PowerTools, which would include a defragger for a mere $30... Not to mention that, for the first time in years, there are a few companies releasing freeware defraggers. I'm not sure about Raxco upgrade policy, but Diskeeper's is not the best, since they always demand you to pay for every upgrade, although they have been including somewhat stupid features in the latest versions, including ones that they claimed were not useful in a defragger, like the placement on the files over the disk for quick access. They're turning into Symantec!

mrainey · « **Reply #7 on:** May 10, 2007, 12:37 PM »

I'm a long-time fan of PowerTools, but have learned never to upgrade to a new version until two or three bug-fix releases have made their appearance.

Darwin · « **Reply #8 on:** May 10, 2007, 12:46 PM »

Both Raxco and Diskeeper offer year long maintenance contracts that are MUCH cheaper than their upgrade pricing. However, Raxco's maintenance fee for a year was about $9 vs. $30 for Diskeeper. The cost of buying the apps outright is cheaper going the Raxco route, too. What I like about PerfectDisk is that you get it all: there's no Std., Professional, and Professioal Premier versioning to worry about, and it's cheaper than Diskeeper. Diskeeper, in its current Professional Premier version (and I thought the previous one was very good too - about par with the current version of PD), in my limited testing/comparing of the two defraggers, is much more "set it and forget it" friendly than PD. Does that make it better? No, probably not. I think that at this stage both are so good that it's a pretty pointless debate. All I was trying to say above is that if Raxco is going to start getting really silly, the current version of Diskeeper is a more than capable alternative. What I fear is that this new, dumbed down, everything and the kitchen sink approach heralds a switch to a marketing model that will feature a quite cheap an "dumb" version for regular users and a much more expensive version for power users and IT professionals. What I'm afraid of is PD 9 rolling out to great fanfare as a Professional line with prices to match. I shouldn't worry too much as I'm covered for about 11 months by my $9 investment in another year of maintenance contract cover, but what about beyond that?

I hope you're wrong about the Symantec dig

!

EDIT: clarified the text - I was really out in left field at one point

Lashiec · « **Reply #9 on:** May 11, 2007, 11:18 AM »

I'm a long-time fan of PowerTools, but have learned never to upgrade to a new version until two or three bug-fix releases have made their appearance.
-mrainey (May 10, 2007, 12:37 PM)

That's true, the latest versions had been very buggy, even after fixing lots of bugs during the beta testing phase. And in my case it was much worse, as the program runs much better in XP than in 98SE. Fortunately, Jouni Vuorio is aware of the situation and he coded an special debugger for the 2007 beta versions.

I'm still with Diskeeper 8, since I didn't find anything really worth in newer versions to justify the upgrade price. I wasn't aware of the yearly contracts, but $30 for a program that rarely receives any update 'til the new major version it's a bit greedy. It's not like an antivirus where you pay for using their servers for updates. $9 is a nice price. If it wasn't for the free upgrade to PowerTools, I surely give it a try.

Darwin · « **Reply #10 on:** May 11, 2007, 11:51 AM »

I just checked and the actual figure was $25.90 (yes, I know, $4.10 whoop-de-doo) for the maintenance on Diskeeper 2007. This is about half the cost of the upgrade ($49.95, I think) and given that they upgrade every 12-15 months, about the same cost as skipping every other upgrade. Note that maintenance on either the standard or the Professional (non Premier) editions is cheaper. This is why I highlighted the fact that with PD you get all the functionality at a lower price. I don't dispute that 8-9-10 many not have been significant upgrades but 9-11 (2007) was well worth it my opinion. 2007 is good enough that I have considered replacing PD 8 on my notebook with it. That I haven't is testament to the fact that both are excellent products. Diskeeper is good for my wife's computer because she doesn't know anything about computers and with Diskeeper she doesn't need to (and I don't have to worry about it). PD is good for me because I like/don't mind messing around with settings.

Still, Diskeeper is very pricey (if you want a feature set comparable to PD) - no argument from me. I'll re-iterate my point from a previous post I REALLY, REALLY hope that Raxco isn't going to crank up their pricing on the full blown version of PerfectDisk when version 9 ships!

mwb1100 · « **Reply #11 on:** May 11, 2007, 12:17 PM »

I'd like to ask about defragging in general - is it really important enough to warrant spending money on a tool to perform that specific task?

I use a free command line tool by Dave Whitney (http://www.flexomize...9d-b32145cc1957.aspx) that seems to have about the same performance as the one provided by Windows (ie., nothing special). Not surprising, since it just uses the standard OS APIs for defragmenting - no low-level tricks.

But, I can run it from the commandline and have it perform boot-time defragmentation.

My #1 issue with defragmentation is that I fear corruption. Whitney's tool seems to be safe (I've had no corruption problems, and the author claims that the OS handles the defrag APIs using 100% safe techniques). Even so, I tremble when I press the key that's going to start a defrag operation.

So, I guess my questions are - do the non-free defrag tools provide enough of a performance improvement to justify paying for them, and are they 110% safe? If the power goes out in the middle of a defrag, will my data still be there? (one of these days I'm going to have to test Whitney's tool on this).

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #12 on:** May 11, 2007, 12:34 PM »

Under Windows XP most of these tools use Windows APIs to actually perform the disc operations required and are as safe as saving files to disc. The main difference is the software ability to do boot time defragmentation (which means system files that are usually in use can be defragged) and also rearranging your disc data and application layout to improve performance.

Other than those two benefits you may as well use the built in defragger (which Microsoft actually derived from DiskKeeper under license but with most additional functionality removed).

Lashiec · « **Reply #13 on:** May 11, 2007, 01:33 PM »

and also rearranging your disc data and application layout to improve performance.
-Carol Haynes (May 11, 2007, 12:34 PM)

Questionable statement on developers' side, but...

By the way, is Vista defragger developed by Microsoft or derived again from a third party?

Curt · « **Reply #14 on:** May 11, 2007, 01:37 PM »

Is DiskKeeper and DisKeeper one and the same, in this debate?

Lashiec · « **Reply #15 on:** May 11, 2007, 01:40 PM »

Yeah, of course

. Carol's typos

EDIT: Your signature is hilarious!

Curt · « **Reply #16 on:** May 11, 2007, 01:57 PM »

Yeah, of course . Carol's typos

EDIT: Your signature is hilarious!
-Lashiec (May 11, 2007, 01:40 PM)

Carol is forgiven.

Glad you like the sig' - it is brand new, though it has been for a long time in my Profile, under "Biography of this user". But I finally realized that hardly no-one would ever see it there... Did YOU (: anyone) ever check this feature on DC?

edbro · « **Reply #17 on:** May 11, 2007, 02:42 PM »

Other than those two benefits you may as well use the built in defragger (which Microsoft actually derived from DiskKeeper under license but with most additional functionality removed).
-Carol Haynes (May 11, 2007, 12:34 PM)

Quote from "XP Myths", http://mywebpages.co...pportCD/XPMyths.html

Myth - "The built-in Disk Defragmenter is good enough."

Reality - "This statement would be true if the built-in defragmenter was fast, automatic, and customizable. Unfortunately, the built-in defragmenter does not have any of these features. The built-in defragmenter takes many minutes to hours to run. It requires that you keep track of fragmentation levels, you determine when performance has gotten so bad you have to do something about it, and then you manually defragment each drive using the built-in defragmentation tool." - Source - Comparison Chart (PDF)

Disk Defragmenter Limitations - "The Disk Defragmenter tool is based on the full retail version of Diskeeper by Executive Software International, Inc. The version that is included with Microsoft Windows 2000 and later provides limited functionality in maintaining disk performance by defragmenting volumes that use the FAT, the FAT32, or the NTFS file system. The XP version has the following limitations." - Source

- It can defragment only local volumes.
- It can defragment only one volume at a time.
- It cannot defragment one volume while scanning another.
- It cannot be easily scheduled without scripts or third party utilities
- It can run only one Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in at a time.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #18 on:** May 11, 2007, 03:55 PM »

OK Fair enough I suppose - but personally I would never defrag more than one volume at a time (what's the point - it will probably still take twice as long - or longer if they are on the same physical disc) and I don't use scheduling because I don't like my computer suddenly launching into something disc/memory intensive just when I have started burning a DVD or doing something else that requires the computer to run smoothly.

As for speed - given that Windows defragmenter IS DiskKeeper (sorry about the typo before

) I can't see how DiskKeeper runs faster! Perfect Disk runs at about the same speed in my opinion.

All the speed gains on the websites are highly eggagerated (my experience anyway). They may be a bit faster but it isn't hugely significant as far as I can tell.

The speed of defragging depends much more on how long it is since you last defragged your system than what software you are using.

Darwin · « **Reply #19 on:** May 11, 2007, 04:35 PM »

Curt wrote:

Glad you like the sig' - it is brand new, though it has been for a long time in my Profile, under "Biography of this user". But I finally realized that hardly no-one would ever see it there... Did YOU (: anyone) ever check this feature on DC?

I quite often check people's profiles... Even if they don't have a bio. Always nice to know a bit about the people that comprise the community - where they come from, if they have a webpage, etc.!

Curt · « **Reply #20 on:** May 11, 2007, 05:48 PM »

DiskKeeper (sorry about the typo before )
-Carol Haynes (May 11, 2007, 03:55 PM)

No, Carol; you were right

Diskeeper it is! One 'k' only.

A search for 'diskkeeper' will show that more than 100.000 have spelled it wrong (kk), but the company is called Diskeeper. (k)

Diskkeeper (kk) might take you to this ~~awful~~ dreadful site:

New Raxco Product : Defragmenter - Optimizer ; $9.99 until 2007-05-13

Curt · « **Reply #21 on:** May 11, 2007, 05:52 PM »

Always nice to know a bit about the people that comprise the community
-Darwin (May 11, 2007, 04:35 PM)

Yes, you are right. Though I had to read your post twice. At first I thought you were saying it is nice to know about the people that compromise the community...