Existing users, 
User Name tod3
Member Since 2005-04-15
Total number of Feedback Posts: 44
Total number of comments: 17
Last 10 Feedback Posts by tod3 [ Search for All ]
Mozy Online Backup 1.5.1.5 (Mac OS X)
Warning! Stay away from this unresponsive outfit! 
I had been using Mozy for the Mac since it was in beta in 2007. Things had been going along pretty smoothly until August of this year (2009) when suddenly connections would be dropped when backing up either of our two computers. I ran several network speed tests and all passed with upload and download speeds right at my ISP's specs. I uploaded and downloaded several gigs of files to my remote host and never encountered sluggish or complete shutdowns in speed. I was completely satisfied that my Macs and my network connection were reliable. When I contacted Mozy "support," I got no response for a week. I sent multiple messages and included my primary and alternate email addresses as well as my phone number. Still no luck except an automated response providing me with a trouble ticket number. I had had an email correspondence with one of their technical engineers in March or April so I began copying him on my emails. Even those went unanswered. I found that Mozy had been acquired by some larger (ie cost-cutting) firm and one of the things that went by-by was the toll-free tech support number. There was no way to easily get in touch with Mozy support! I tried the "live chat" route and had a drone on the other end who had no inkling of what I was trying to describe as my problem, even though I was copy-pasting info from the Mozy log into the chat window. She went of onto tangents, such as "What's your ISP?" "Uh, Comcast." "Oh, yes, Comcast has been known to have service disruptions in the past. Do you like lamb and curry?" I thought that well, every ISP has had disruptions in the past but I can prove that that wasn't the case with me. I located the Mozy Business services blog and wrote a comment at random to one of the blogger's recent posts, begging him to get someone to contact me and help me get my backups working. A week later (now nearly three weeks into my odyssey) he responded and appeared to take some semblance of ownership of my case. Also at that point I simply wanted a refund of the unused amount of my advance subscription. Done he told me. Nothing further happened, no further contact with me. Then I researched the company and found the VP in charge of Decho (Mozy) and wrote him a letter sent by the old-fashioned way - the USPS. No response. God-damn it. What is with this outfit where no one gives a shit about a customer's problems? Finally, on October 14, six weeks into this shit, I get a note from someone informing me that my credit card account has been credited with the balance on my subscription. I quickly went to my CC online service center to verify (and to take a screen grab!) that I had finally been credited. This outfit used to be really responsive. Now they simply wade about in copious amounts of deep kaka. Furthermore, the treatment I received has demonstrated yet again how truly awful off-shore tech support has become. Can you spell i-n-d-i-a? Very precise English but not an ounce of technical expertise or individual initiative. Why did no one take total ownership and responsibility of my case? Why did no one telephone me as I had suggested? Because those are things not spelled out in the little drone handbook and script they read from. If you're looking for mission critical cloud backups, Mozy is NOT for you. However, if you enjoy online mystery or hidden object games, then try Mozy - see if you can find the hidden tech support engineer within five calendar days. Bonus points if you find the lamb & curry. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 3 of 3 users found this helpful
Thursday, October 22 2009 @ 08:58 PM PDT
Imposition Wizard 1.4 (Mac OS X)
Somewhere the definition of "shareware" and the cost of same got corrupted. To charge $300 for something reaches far into the realm of "commercial" not shareware, which is typically $70 or less. One other thing: What's with all these new apps being called "wizard this" and "wizard that?" I had enough of so-called wizards when I spent 8 months on a job that required a windoze machine. Wizards are for Windoze fercrissakes. [alert admin]
Friday, October 09 2009 @ 09:07 PM PDT
RadicalCodex 1.2.0 (Mac OS X)
You take s your chances with this dev
Bryan Lund, former head honcho of Radical Breeze, is back with a different name. Over at Radical Breeze he bought several titles from original indie developers and added a couple of flashy icons, sold them through VT, then abandoned them. He was beat up about pledging to introduce upgrades (upgrades that were just this close to being ready) and then crept into his cave and we enver heard from him again. Even appeals for help from registered users were met with deafening silence. No support whatsoever. Nada. Then he took over a site called Resexcellence and ran it into the ground. See Phill Ryu's observations on that here http://phillryu.com/2006/08/03/good-riddance-bryan-lund/ Apparently Lund is good at hype but when the complaints come in, he complains that Mac users are unbelievably rude. Oh, poor Bryan. Buyer beware on this one. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Wednesday, September 30 2009 @ 08:12 PM PDT
WebDrive for Mac 2.00.183 (Mac OS X)
I'm running SL 10.6.1 on a Mac Mini 2.26. I tried this and after setting up my FTP site on a web drive, I selected "mount" from the options and got a message "successfully mounted." However, that was the dying gasp of my system as the entire Mac froze. No Finder, no Safari, couldn't force quit, nothing except to hold the power button in for several seconds. Tried again, same result. I went and downloaded AutomountMaker as another commenter suggested and it does indeed work fine in SL. Easy to set up, no need for the app to run (Webdrive requires you to select a drive from within the app), it just creates a script that mounts the drive. I've got the script in my Finder side bar and clicking simply mounts my remote servers. Slicker than ice in the Antarctic. Aside: My only gripe about AutomountMaker is that it always comes up in icon mode rather than list mode but that's a real small nitpick. Another choice is Expandrive (listed here on VT) but it runs $40. [alert admin]
Read Comments (2) | More Info | 0 of 1 users found this helpful
Tuesday, September 22 2009 @ 09:35 PM PDT
Isolator 4.4 (Mac OS X)
@ DrLeonP: At the bottom of the isolator web page is this: Contact & Donations Bug reports, suggestions, etc to bdeb at willmore dot eu. This is in large type. Perhaps you were expecting an email address that was formatted more to your liking rather than the "anti-email collecting spiders" defensive formatting that the developer used? I haven't yet tried this but I certainly intend to tonight. It sounds like a great little utility. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 0 of 1 users found this helpful
Thursday, September 17 2009 @ 07:16 PM PDT
MeshWrite 1.3.9 (Mac OS X)
Is this the Windoze section of VT?
I took a look at the screenshots and did a double-take thinking I's somehow wandered into the Windoze section. Hey Developer: You might want to take the time to make some decent screenshots of this dog while it's on a Mac monitor! Displaying what looks like a port to the Mac is pretty sloppy. I urge all Windoze developers who think about porting such ugly apps to the Mac platform to reconsider that thought and leave us strictly alone with lame stuff like this. Oh, and check out the pricing of the competing GTD apps here on the Mac side of VT before you think we'll pay such outrageous "shareware" prices. [alert admin]
Sunday, September 13 2009 @ 09:43 PM PDT
jalada Collage 1.2.0 (Mac OS X)
I tried this out a few weeks ago and it worked fine using 10.5. The Snow Leopard came out and there were issues, and I was in contact with Jalada. The developer was responsive and professional, and assured me that they were working on a 10.6 upgrade, which the above 1.2 version represents. They sent me an email letting me know that the 10.6 version was ready, with a direct download link. I downloaded and installed the new version and am very happy to report that Collage works great in 10.6. I really like this program as it has a number of tools in it that I've been looking for without having to launch and mess around with PSE or Print Shop or others. This one has all the features I need and is easy to use. [alert admin]
Saturday, September 05 2009 @ 09:29 PM PDT
HoudahSpot 2.5.7 (Mac OS X)
The best contact manager ever: Houdah Man! [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 0 of 3 users found this helpful
Tuesday, September 01 2009 @ 07:25 PM PDT
uBar 1.0 (Mac OS X)
It doesn't surprise me that the developer didn't submit screen shots to VT or even have much more than a corner of this so-called task bar showing on his web site. No real screen shots. The little I saw on his site convinced me that if I ever do cuss at my Dock, I'll remember this little thing and declare everlasting love for the Dock. Plus, the developer's web site proudly states that the Windoze Task Bar is the one thing M$ got right. Yeah, well, that's certainly a matter of opinion and he's welcome to his. LOL! [alert admin]
Read Comments (2) | More Info | 4 of 4 users found this helpful
Saturday, August 29 2009 @ 10:47 PM PDT
DiskWarrior 4.2 (Mac OS X)
Heheh, your opening phrase tickled me: "I can't count the times this utility saved my tail..." I have to wonder just what nasty things you're doing to your Mac to make it necessary uncountable times. :-) For the record, I've used it quite a few times as well, usually just maintenance rather bacon-saving. [alert admin]
Read Comments (1) | More Info | 2 of 3 users found this helpful
Friday, August 28 2009 @ 09:04 PM PDT
Last 10 Comments by tod3 [ Search for All ]
Is so true! I have Safari in 32 bit mode since I need 1Password. PDF Browser Plugin blocked all PDFs from either downloading or displaying in 10.6. Removing it from the Internet Plugins folder fixed the problem for me.
Original feedback item : Read More
Wednesday, September 02 2009 @ 08:36 PM PDT
How about presenting your problems to the active user forum or open a trouble ticket. Pissing and whining in VT only shows how ignorant you are about the product and the excellent support provided by the developer.
Original feedback item : Read More
Thursday, May 21 2009 @ 09:34 PM PDT
Version 2 Appears To Be Vaporware
Wow! I didn't know someone walked on the moon in the last five months! Oh, right, you're being sarcastic. Well, for your information, this outfit has a lot of stuff going into this version and they're rolling out limited sets of features with each public build. This means that they control what is being tested by the user community and they can respond fairly rapidly to bug reports. Oh, I know, this goes against…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Thursday, May 21 2009 @ 09:25 PM PDT
yes, velly ersay to use, me glad to hear that large font support is in this crappy softwares, that make me want to go buy right a way. Dipstick.
Original feedback item : Read More
Thursday, March 05 2009 @ 07:53 PM PST
You make me not surprise. You make me throw up. You shill who go around write happy reviews about these crappy softwares. You go around promote 4Media, Aimersoft, AVCWare, iEffectsoft, ImTOO, iSkysoft, iTool, kigo, Tipard, & Xilisoft = all application from the same crappy coder be sold under thirty different name. You not good person.
Original feedback item : Read More
Thursday, March 05 2009 @ 07:41 PM PST
You are one of the paid shills who go around promoting 4Media, Aimersoft, AVCWare, iEffectsoft, ImTOO, iSkysoft, iTool, kigo, Tipard, & Xilisoft = all applications from the same crappy coder being sold under thirty different names. You're a real piece of work.
Original feedback item : Read More
Thursday, March 05 2009 @ 07:37 PM PST
I gotta ask: Why does it seem like you're in the minority here on VT? Nearly every other product that interests me has a list of new features an/or bug fixes posted here on VT. What's the problem - won't VT post what you send them? I don't understand why you say it's VT's fault. I'm not a developer but this excuse sounds like a copout to me. I really…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Wednesday, July 16 2008 @ 07:18 PM PDT
Modiver: Download the new version. If you're still having a problem, contact the developer, Mike Sykes. -Tod
Original feedback item : Read More
Saturday, April 26 2008 @ 09:51 PM PDT
So today is the 29th of March, more than two months since the revelation of private email correspondence between Eddie Marks and Bill Goldstein implied that we wouldn't have long to wait. I really loved this app back in the day and I encouraged Bill Goldstein to continue development on this when it became apparent that Spaces was on the horizon. I was assured that a new snappier version would indeed be brought out. I'm still…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Saturday, March 29 2008 @ 09:21 PM PDT
Then please list files installed
Apparently the developer isn't too familiar with the Mac way of life - that things can be done automagically, as someone else mentioned, the first time an application is launched. Unless you're going to created files willy-nilly all over the Library, System, Application and Document folders, you don't need an installer. This isn't some massively-complex application that needs to insert its extraneous files here and there like is done in Windows. Windows…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Saturday, January 26 2008 @ 12:00 AM PST
