User Profile for JohnDCCIU

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Friday, July 08 2005 @ 06:29 AM PDT

BRU Server 1.0.6 (Mac OS X)

Lots of promise, but needs critical fixes and much better support  

As a quick background, we're an organization that runs centralized backups for about 30 servers and 300+ users. We've used Retrospect Windows and Mac versions for almost a decade, as well as Backup Exec before that. We are (still) desperate to replace Retrospect with something else because of some silly bugs and lack of features that make backup monitoring an extreme pain in our environment, and BRU seemed like a possible replacement. Our first contact with development/support in the April/May 2004 timeframe was nothing less than spectacular, and we had very high hopes for the product. Unfortunately, as we gained more experience with the app, and even purchased it, we discovered that it was lacking in extremely critical ways, including technical, customer-service, and general backup philosophy. While many people can probably get good backups with BRU in small scenarios, anyone with enterprise-class needs should look elsewhere, at least for now. The claimed features are there to make BRU a world-class enterprise backup utility, but their implementation is spotty and extremely buggy. To make things worse, rather than taking our specific, serious, and detailed bug reports and using them to fix and improve the product in the next version (we are valued beta testers for various companies large and small for products on both platforms), the BRU support system fails with the classic "blame it on the user" cop-out, even in the face of specific and overwhelming evidence that the app is at fault. Even more frustrating (if not laughable) is that after the company would strenuously and repeatedly deny that the app was at fault for a series of well-documented and serious bugs, the release notes of a subsequent version would then show that one or two of the exact bugs we reported was fixed. Unfortunately, not enough of the bugs were fixed to consider the product viable, and our fear of the tech support system (which apparently consists of one well-meaning but extremely clueless guy with bad, canned answers) grew with repeated exposure to it, especially for an app that is so extremely mission critical and yet so new and obviously full of bugs and documentation errors. After a number of these report/deny/partial-fix bug cycles, the company simply stopped responding to our emails and calls. I sent an email with all of the problems we had encountered to Tim Jones, the apparent President of Tolis Group, and his first response was that he would take a look at the problems I mentioned...then there was no response. My follow-up emails and voice-mails to him were greeted with silence. Six months later, not much has improved, and some of the silly "three-man operation in someone's basement" stuff is still going on with the product. I sincerely hope that the Tolis Group gets it together and starts listening to their technical users and improves the product to the point where it can really challenge the likes of Retrospect. We're still monitoring BRU's progress and we hope that a version 2.0 might correct some of the most eggegious bugs, and the revenue received from small backup clients (for whom the product apparently works, at least somewhat) will enable the company to someday field a competent and properly staffed support structure. But the "ignore 'em" philosophy of customer service seems to go all the way to the top, so it will take quite a shift in priorities and management style (or perhaps the sale of the product to another company) to make this happen. [alert admin]

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Monday, December 06 2004 @ 12:24 PM PST

LogMaster 5.1 (Mac OS X)

v5.1 is not yet available for downloading  

The available version is still only v5.0, even though the link on the website and on VT is v5.1. Frank indicated that this will be resolved later tonight and v5.1 should be available tonight or tomorrow morning. [alert admin]

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Thursday, March 25 2004 @ 01:21 PM PST

LogMaster 4.1 (Mac OS X)

New Bright Light Software Website  

The author replied and gave me the new website address; it was working as of this evening.

Changes have been submitted to VT, so the records for Bright Light Software should be updated shortly. [alert admin]

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Wednesday, July 16 2003 @ 07:39 PM PDT

LogMaster 4.1 (Mac OS X)

Bright Light/Frank Fenn ISP Report  

I just contacted Nucleus, the former ISP of Bright Light Software and their response was 'That customer is no longer with Nucleus as a result their account has been closed and that webspace is no longer active', so this isn't just a temporary thing, at least from the ISP's viewpoint.

Perhaps Bright Light is just moving to a new website, but that's not usually how it's done. Hopefully they aren't simply gone: a lot of good products would be gone with them. I couldn't find any working information for 'Frank Fenn' anywhere else on the web that didn't refer to the old Nucleus site. [alert admin]

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Tuesday, July 15 2003 @ 02:12 PM PDT

LogMaster 4.2 (Mac OS X)

Great app in an IT setting, works as advertised  

This app is great for those of us that monitor a variety of systems. I don't actually use it to monitor my personal OS X logs, but rather I run it on my OS X box in Monitor Mode to watch logs on a variety of other systems, including SQL servers, mailservers, FileMaker Servers, and OS X Servers, emailing my staff and I when there are problems.

There were a few interface features that were missing, but the author has been correcting this over time and the interface is complete and usable, if still a little quirky to figure out. It could still stand to do a little more auto-refresh for User Logs as they're selected, though.

The author is very responsive to suggestions and bug reports; I suggested drag-and-drop functionality about a month ago and it showed up today in v4.2. I haven't seen any of the stability issues mentioned by the other reviewers; it hasn't crashed in over two months of 24/7 use, monitoring logs on mounted shares.

Overall, a valuable app that performs a necessary task for us automatically, and there doesn't seem to be anything like it either for the Mac or even for Windows. Along with WhistleBlower, this app forms one of the cornerstones of our automatic fault-detection system. [alert admin]

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Saturday, July 12 2003 @ 05:12 AM PDT