PerfectDisk 10 @ -20%

[MerleOne]

Just received this from Raxco :

{PerfectDisk 10 has officially arrived and everything you need to make your system so much faster and cleaner is ready to take out for a free evaluation. If you've ever used PerfectDisk in the past, or any other defrag tool, you will not believe how much system performance you'll gain after running PerfectDisk 10 just once. Customers already using the new release tell us they absolutely love the brand new look and can't believe how much faster everything is. To see what's new in PerfectDisk 10, click: What's New

The entire PerfectDisk 10 family has so many new things to offer, so please make sure you take the time to look around the new www.perfectdisk.com

If you would like to add, upgrade, or purchase any new PerfectDisk 10 products, make sure you do so by midnight on Saturday (1/31) and use coupon code THEPERFECT10 to receive a 20% online discount.

20% Online Special: Purchase or upgrade any new or additional PerfectDisk 10 product(s) from the PerfectDisk Online Store before midnight on Saturday (1/31), and after you add the product(s) to your cart, type coupon code THEPERFECT10, click the enter code button, and your entire license purchase will be discounted by 20%. Click Online Store now to get the ball rolling.

Read the first PerfectDisk 10 review from Softpedia: Softpedia PerfectDisk 10 Review}

I personnaly don't use PD any longer, I have switched to PuranDefrag V6 which better suits my needs, but there must be some hard-core PD fans here and there...

[Carol Haynes]

I use PerfectDisk and got a free upgrade to version 10.

As usual it seems good and solid but it really is the same package as they always sell and I can't see any noticeable difference from version 9 (2008).

They say:

• version 10 is faster - well it doesn't seem to be on my system
• new AutoPilot - which looks pretty much the same as in the previous version as far as I can tell
• enhanced user interface - the only difference I can see is that they changed th colours in the drive map (which is just plain confusing when you are used to their colour scheme in previous versions)
• Free Space Management - looks exactly what they had in the previous version and all it does is list duplicate files and lets you choose which one (if any) to delete. They also have a warning that deleting duplicates is not a good idea in many cases - so why not avoid flagging duplicates that are potentially dangerous to delete?

They are MS certified - well whoopty-do .... they actually pay MS for a certificate - bully for them. Doesn't actually mean much!

The only genuinely new things seems to be:

• you can pause indefinitely - why would you want to do that? If you are doing something disk intensive then you would want to reanalyse the disk before continuing with a defrag wouldn't you?
• Win7 support - but given that Win7 still uses NTFS as its base filing system it isn't exactly a great leap (plus Win7 isn't finalised yet so they really shouldn't claim compatibility until they can actually test the product on the final version!)

All in all it is a solid app and if you are buying with 20% discount then it is worth having but as an upgrade I am not convinced unless you want Win7 support at this point? Certainly if you are tempted by the upgrade give the trial a run and be prepared to reinstall the old version.

[KenR]

I use PerfectDisk and got a free upgrade to version 10.

As usual it seems good and solid but it really is the same package as they always sell and I can't see any noticeable difference from version 9 (2008).

They say:

• version 10 is faster - well it doesn't seem to be on my system
• new AutoPilot - which looks pretty much the same as in the previous version as far as I can tell
• enhanced user interface - the only difference I can see is that they changed th colours in the drive map (which is just plain confusing when you are used to their colour scheme in previous versions)
• Free Space Management - looks exactly what they had in the previous version and all it does is list duplicate files and lets you choose which one (if any) to delete. They also have a warning that deleting duplicates is not a good idea in many cases - so why not avoid flagging duplicates that are potentially dangerous to delete?

They are MS certified - well whoopty-do .... they actually pay MS for a certificate - bully for them. Doesn't actually mean much!

The only genuinely new things seems to be:

• you can pause indefinitely - why would you want to do that? If you are doing something disk intensive then you would want to reanalyse the disk before continuing with a defrag wouldn't you?
• Win7 support - but given that Win7 still uses NTFS as its base filing system it isn't exactly a great leap (plus Win7 isn't finalised yet so they really shouldn't claim compatibility until they can actually test the product on the final version!)

All in all it is a solid app and if you are buying with 20% discount then it is worth having but as an upgrade I am not convinced unless you want Win7 support at this point? Certainly if you are tempted by the upgrade give the trial a run and be prepared to reinstall the old version.

Thanks for the summary of what's new Carol.

Ken

[KenR]

... I personnaly don't use PD any longer, I have switched to PuranDefrag V6 which better suits my needs, but there must be some hard-core PD fans here and there...

MerleOne, would you mind telling us why you switched and like Puran better? The feature set seems to be largely similar to me.

Thanks, Ken

[KenR]

Anyone have any thoughts about DiskKeeper vs PerfectDisk?

Thanks, Ken

[Carol Haynes]

I haven't used DK in a while so I don't know what the current version is like but I like PD's ability to organise data much better than DK and also when I swapped I found it much better at doing a complete defrag than DK.

[MerleOne]

... I personnaly don't use PD any longer, I have switched to PuranDefrag V6 which better suits my needs, but there must be some hard-core PD fans here and there...

MerleOne, would you mind telling us why you switched and like Puran better? The feature set seems to be largely similar to me.

Thanks, Ken

Hmm, that's a long story.  For one, I was not happy with PD having some task always running on in background.  Not the case with Puran when you don't activate auto-defrag.  I find Puran to be much faster to defrag & optimize, I find the optimized disk to run as fast or faster than when defragged with PD.  Boot Time Defrag is also working fine.

Folders are placed at the beginning of the partition, which makes more sense than PD solution (at the end of all files).

One thing I am missing from PD : the offline defrag without reboot for non locked disks.  AFAIK, this is rather unique.

Also :
- Re-defrag is often quicker with Puran than with PD. 
- You can chose not to optimize file placement, just folder placement, which is enough for partition that contain only data (in most cases).

Like Carol, I stayed with PD version 6 since I found next version had too few improvements. I did try RXSuite, which was a cut-down version of PD, packed with other uninteresting tools, just a "marketing gone wild" product, and Raxco was suddenly less attractive.  Funnily enough, Puran Defrag, which I discovered through Donn Edwards Blog and his "Defrag shootout", is now also in version 6. 

There is still  room for improvement with Puran, like the possibilty to exclude files from a size criteria (like in SmartDefrag from IObit), it's certainly less polished, but I just say this : try it on your system - after a full image backup of course 

[Darwin]

@Carol - thanks for the summary of v.10 - I’ve just put in my request for the upgrade (have a current maintenance agreement with Raxco). Not sure I should bother installing it, though, as I run PD on an XP box...

@Ken - I run DK Pro Premier on my Vista machine and it is seamless and I forget that it’s there. Invisible. However, I can’t properly offer up a comparison of the two products because I’ve not tried running PerfectDisk on that machine. Perhaps when I receive my PD 10 license I’ll install it there and compare them... Everything works just fine as is now, so not sure I want to tempt fate!

[tinjaw]

I purchased a maintenance agreement late Feb of 2008 for PD. I just checked my email spam folders and there is no notice from Raxco. I'll hop over there tonight and grab PD 10.

I purchased a new 320GB 7200 RPM HDD and am moving from XP to Vista on my (development) laptop. Grabbing new versions of (possibly) TrueImage and PerfectDisk should help with the changeover.

[Darwin]

Heh, heh - I upgraded a 5400 rpm drive to a 320GB 7200rpm unit in my laptop a couple of weeks ago - awesome! Have fun, tinjaw 

PS I've gone through the same process re: PD upgrade - despite my maintenance agreement I have not received anything from Raxco other than a notification of the 20% off offer. Odd as when PD 2009 came out as a maintenance agreement holder they sent me a link to it a week or two in advance of its release. I've contacted support for a serial number but haven't had a reply, yet.

[J-Mac]

I've had the maintenance agreement with Raxco for a few years and I always received proper notice of new versions with a password for downloading and installation. Except this time. I did receive a notice to try it early a week ago but I thought it was the last pre-release version and so didn't bother. Now I am realizing that was probably the actual release version since I did not receive any other notice, except the discount offer that most people got.

Jim

[Carol Haynes]

I received discount offers (by the trash can full) but I did receive maintenance upgrades for the two versions I own - they came in the form of an email including a new license number. It was only a few days ago so maybe they are working though them.

Out of curiosity how do you renew the maintenance agreement - I only seem to have it having bought an upgrade last year?

[bugis]

Anyone have any thoughts about DiskKeeper vs PerfectDisk?

Thanks, Ken

I haven't used PD in a long time, and I am used to Diskeeper so take it FWIW: the 2009 edition of Diskeeper is pretty decent. The 2k9 Pro that I have has added i-faast (file sequencing) that was previously only in Propremier versions, and a few other tweaks. Best part about DK is that it's truly set and forget and it works really brilliantly in that respect. Very stable and never has any issues with any of my other apps.

[Darwin]

I received discount offers (by the trash can full) but I did receive maintenance upgrades for the two versions I own - they came in the form of an email including a new license number. It was only a few days ago so maybe they are working though them.

Out of curiosity how do you renew the maintenance agreement - I only seem to have it having bought an upgrade last year?

Hi Carol - I rooted around  looking for an upgrade link/serial/download link while logged into my Raxco account yesterda and noted that on the page showing my latest purchase of a maintenance agreement is a link that offers to extend it. They also send out an email ahead of your agreement's expiry date with a link to purchase an extension, last time with a 20% discount so two years cost me about $7 and change...

[Carol Haynes]

Thanks - I'll go an look. Come to think of it I think that is how I ended up with 2 licenses for the main product - plus I bought the VMWare products as well.

[Darwin]

Jim and tinjaw - any luck with getting a PD 10 license? My e-mails have been met with a deafening silence...

[J-Mac]

Jim and tinjaw - any luck with getting a PD 10 license? My e-mails have been met with a deafening silence...

Yep - that email I received about a week ahead of the release? The one I mentioned above that I figured at the time was a pre-release version? Apparently that was indeed an early release of the real thing. I had a download link and a registration code in that email.

Up and running now.

Jim

[Darwin]

Thanks Jim. To update my own situation - I received a download link and key 18 minutes ago 

[tinjaw]

They must be listening. 

Hey! Pick me next !!!