There is however one thing that makes me hunt for the software on download sites, and not on the developer website. Some developers like to display surveys or registration forms to users who want to download their applications. While it is their right to do that, I personally dislike this. If I like the software a lot, I’d come back anyway and register an account to keep tabs on the development and closer contact to the developers. Forcing users to fill out forms leads in my opinion to a higher drop rate which in turn means less users that download and install the software.

Whenever I come to a site where I’m forced to fill out a form I’m immediately appalled, and tend to search for the program on portals like Softpedia or Betanews. It is not always possible to find those programs on those sites, but if I do, I download them from there instead.

One example: I recently tried to download the excellent free to use virus scanner Dr. Web CureIt from the developer site. Before I could do so, I was asked to enter my name and email. Thinking this was all, I complied, only to be greeted by a survey on the next page. Even worse, I failed to enter the captcha on that page correctly and was taken back to the start form as a consequence.

Fed up with it, I decided to search on Bing for the download and found it on Softpedia. I downloaded the program there without having to fill out a form or give away my email address. I tend to use temporary email addresses for this anyway whenever possible.

What I would have liked to see on the Dr. Web page is an option to directly download the software, and an optional registration, not the other way round.

Where do you download your software? What’s your experience? Let me know in the comments.

There is nothing wrong with user comments and ratings as long as they do not influence a software’s visibility on a website.

Softpedia for instance allows users to vote for software, but does not use the overall rating to determine where and how a software is presented on their site, as this is solely determined by the number of downloads.

That’s not so with Betanews. If you take a look at the software listing you notice that ratings play an important role on the site. They are displayed prominently and trigger the popularity listing as well.

betanews

That alone would not be a problem, but the system could be used by individuals or companies to increase the ratings and reviews of their products, with the purpose to gain visibility on the site.

Remove It Pro SE for instance currently has a rating of 4.2 (of 5) with 213 votes. That’s a lot of votes for a program that is not well known. It has for instance roughly the same amount of votes as PC Wizard, PHPmyAdmin or Audacity and at least twice as many as MemTest 86+, Gspot or HashTab.

remote it pro review

The amount of ratings is an indicator, but not proof that something is wrong with the program’s listing. If you take a closer look at the reviews you notice huge differences. Some users have rated it with 1 or 2 stars, with the following comments:

Took Removeit for at test run, found 16 files and tagged them as dangerous, only problem, every single file are good file, and if I’d had quarantine the files I would have crippled my system.

Nothing but FALSE POSITIVES.

This is Crapware, almost bordering on Rogue (IMHO)
Got a handful of false positives from this one.
Best was when it detected my PPPoE protocol driver (RasPPPoE) as a Trojan.
I know people say prevention is the best protection, but not letting me on the internet (had I deleted PPPoE) is just too much for me.
Too bad the lowest rating is 1. I would rate it 0 if I could.

I find it suspicious how it ALWAYS finds something on your system the first run, probably a false positive too. Seems mainly designed to scare people into getting their ‘paid’ support product.

I gave it a 2 for effort….but still too many false positives.
On my system were three (supposedly dangerous) files identified (2 were part of Tune Up Utilities 2007 and one belongs to BoClean 4.25/Comodo Firewall)
After uploading these files to Virus Total where they were scanned with 31 AV engines everything came back clean. So I recommend you get a second opinion before becoming all panicky and trust the findings of this scanner too much.

The majority of voters on the other hand rated the program with five stars, the maximum available. Let’s see what they have to say:

I have tried just about every Antivirus Antimalware program on the market. But RemoveIT Pro has always proven to be more efficient in removal of Virus attacks….Fantastic Program

After using adaware, malwarebytes and avg, only RemoveIT Pro fixed malware problem. Great tool! :-)

It is the best malware removal tool ever, works well and fast!

Light, user friendly and very effective in removing malware.

The trend is obvious. The low rating commenters mentioned false positives, the high rating commenters how fast, efficient and great the tool is.

Let’s give the program a test ride, shall we? First problem, the program only starts if it is executed with administrative rights.

Scanning of the system started and it quickly found the first trojans and malware on it. First up was googleupdate.exe, identified as Win32.Unknown.Random.X, then several system32 folder files, heck, even the Windows Screensaver that ships with the operating system was detected as a virus.

RemoveIT Pro SE detected 27 threats on the computer system, that Kaspersky missed, apparently.

remote it pro

Next step was the verification of the findings. Opened Virustotal.com and submitted every single file for inspection. All 27 files were clean, according to Virustotal and the 41 different malware scanning engines it uses.

false positives

The confirmation that RemoveIT Pro detected false positives added weight to the user comments who stated that, and all who did rated the program with 1 or 2 stars.

The positive ratings, especially those stating that the program removed malware that no other program was able to find could be attributed to those false positives in some cases. RemoteIT Pro does actually detect malware that no other program detects, problem is, they are all false positives.

The amount of five star ratings on the other hand could also indicate a campaign to artificially increase the program’s rating on the site, and likely on other software sites as well.

How do you handle user ratings on software download sites? Let us know in the comments.

A registration is required which requires entering a name and valid email address. A verification email is send to the mail account. That link leads to a website containing the download link of East-Tec Backup 2009 and the registration code to register the software program.

The backup software program offers four modules in the main interface: Backup, Restore, Tasks and Sync.

New backup jobs are created in this module. One of the interesting – and user friendly – features of East-Tec Backup 2009 are presets that are available. Presets can be used to backup specific, and usually important, files and data. It is for example possible to backup the mail accounts (recognized the email clients Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook and Opera on the test system), Registry keys or user settings from programs such as Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Winamp, Windows Media Player, various web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera but not Google Chrome), Putty and dozens more. It is of course also possible to select files or folders from the computer system.

The data can be backed up to local folders, external hard drives, local area network folders, removable disks, CD, DVD or remote locations using the ftp protocol. The usual set of options are available to use compression and encryption to ensure data safety and integrity. Several backup types can be selected ranging from incremental backups over differential backups to stack backups. Backups can be scheduled and warnings configured.

It is furthermore possible to run programs before and after the task starts and to verify the backup after it has been completed. Another great option is to place backup jobs into groups which can be executed sequentially then.

Backups that have been created can be restored completely. It is also possible to only restore specific files or folders which is obviously great if you only need access to some files or folders of the entire backup.

The Sync option makes it possible to synchronize files and folders between two computers or devices like a local computer and server, desktop computer and laptop or a local computer and a network location.

The interface of the backup software is user friendly, tasks are easy to create. Users who are currently looking for a backup software should take a closer look and download East-Tec Backup 2009 for a test run. It might be exactly what they are looking for.

Update: The offer is over, the page where you could get the free copy of the backup software is no longer available.