First of all, spend time talking in their forums for a couple weeks before buying. Seriously. I know everyone visiting here has either deleted files in OS X by accident (like I did) or experienced a HD crash of some sort. As such you want to recover your files ASAP. And perhaps, like me, you tried other programs like Data Rescue II or FileSalvage first, but they failed to get all your files back which is why you are considering Boomerang. But take my advice -- watch the forums. The so-called "developer" is named "Adam" and is active in his forums. He actively deletes posts and entire threads if they say anything negative about his software. And something "negative" could simply be a report of a crash in Boomerang! Through my shock of watching the way this Adam character conducts himself in the forums, I further investigated the company behind the Boomerang product:

* I conducted a whois search on their domain name. This yielded no info as they hide behind a whois filtering company. While that is not necessarily a bad thing, it's not a good sign either -- especially in light of their horrific customer support.

* I cannot pull up any public records on "Boomerang Data Recovery" nor could I get anything from some "Company Profile" sites. So I must assume "Boomerang Data Recovery" is a dummy business name? That would also explain why they hide behind a whois filter.

* They are not listed with the Santa Barbara BBB. (But I am sure that a threat of a complain with the Better Business Bureau would get Adam on his toes to actually start supporting his Mac customers.)

* Click the "resellers" link on this page:
http://www.boomdrs.com/aboutus/
The page that appears is quite odd indeed. I would have expected a list of resellers. Hmmm.

* They claim to be funded by a venture capital firm named "Webvestments" but Googling for that name doesn't result in much info. And the webvestments.net site appears to be broken. And Googling for "webvestments venture capital" yields only 3 search results, 2 in Chinese and a link back to the boomdrs.com site.

* Adam's lack of technical knowledge (and unusual responses) in the forums shows that he is not a programmer of Boomerang. If anything, he appears to be a very smooth talker who knows how to get venture capital money to fund operations like Boomerang. At any rate, I would not consider him "a developer" in the true sense of the term.

All rather disconcerting to be sure. Indeed, I've been a Mac user since the 128k came out in 1984, and I've dealt with hundreds of software and hardware vendors for the Mac. But I have never, ever experienced anything as bad as with the people behind Boomerang. But again, you don't have to take my word for it. Participate in the forums. You will soon come to discover what I have. This is a very unscrupulous operation! And it is unfortunate to because we need a better file recovery tool -- one that will allow us to search for custom file types (yes, I tried FileSalvage but it didn't get some custom file types back).