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O&O Defrag 15 Professional review

Publié: septembre 24, 2011, 6:40pm CEST par Mike Williams

When you’re looking to squeeze the very maximum speed from your system, a good defrag session, optimizing your hard drive layout for the best performance, remains one of the more effective techniques you can apply -- and there are few more feature-packed and versatile defraggers than O&O Defrag 15 Professional.

The program offers multiple ways to report on your drive’s levels of fragmentation, for instance. You get eight built-in defrag strategies, and it’s also possible to customize the final results further, by, say, sorting specified files by name, last access or modification date, and repositioning large files to better optimize your overall system performance.

And there are so many ways to use the program. You can defrag specific files or folders from an Explorer right-click; run whole-drive defrags on demand, via an excellent scheduler, or when your system is idle; a boot-time defragger can optimize system files; an Automatic Optimization option can run in the background, defragging files as soon as fragmentation is detected; and there’s even support for optimising SSDs with regularly-scheduled TRIM commands.

But what does all this mean in real life? We installed the program on a Windows 7 PC to put it to the test.

User Interface

Launch O&O Defrag 15 Professional and it immediately analyzes your drives, before producing some detailed reports. As well as revealing the total number of fragmented files, these also provide a list of the most fragmented files, the largest files on your system, locked files, fragmented system files and more.

If you’re new to the program then that may seem a little overwhelming, but there’s plenty of guidance here. Simply clicking the QuickStart button will launch a dialog where you can run a defrag immediately, and set up your system to run defrags later, either on a schedule or when the screensaver is active.

And the well-designed GUI provides multiple ways to get your system properly optimized. So you might click Start to launch a basic defrag; right-click a particular drive for more options; or use the New Job dialog to create a defrag task that runs just as you’d like.

This latter approach is the most impressive of all. You can specify tasks to run before or after the defrag, for instance, and decide whether you’d like to optimize multiple drives in parallel. There are options to exclude particular files and folders, or files above a certain size from the defrag. A flexible scheduler allows you to decide exactly when the job will be run, and repeated.

And if you’re tired of scheduled defrags running when you’d rather they didn’t, then you’ll appreciate O&O Defrag 15 Professional’s ability to optionally avoid running your job if the CPU and hard drive is currently busy, if specified programs are running, or when your system is running on battery power. And you can set a maximum time for the defrag job, so if there’s only 30 minutes to spare, say, you can be sure that’s all it will use.

There’s a huge amount of functionality here, then, but a clean and clear interface means it’s all easy to access and configure. Five minutes of exploration and most people will have the system set up to run basic defrags just as they’d like.

Performance

Having plenty of options is great, but how do they perform?

O&O Defrag hasn’t previously been known for its speed of operation. Version 15 has been optimized for performance, though, and the company say its defrags can be up to 40 percent faster than before.

View your drive before and after defragmentation

Certainly the more lightweight defrag modes are quick. Optimizing a lightly defragged drive with Windows 7 took almost four minutes; use O&O Defrag 15 Professional it was all over in 12 seconds, with a new “Before and After” screen showing how our drive map had noticeably changed even in that short time.

A full-scale defrag and optimisation will take far, far longer, though. We ran a complete defrag which also sorted all our files by name, and that required just over five hours. But the first scan always takes the longest: after that you can leave Defrag 15 running the background and it’ll keep future fragmentation to a minimum. It requires little CPU time (typically just 1 or 2 percent), only around 60MB of RAM even when active, and generally we’d carry on using our system without even noticing that a defrag was running in the background.

And the end result of all this work? The benefits were small, but measurable. Boot times were around 5-percent faster after an O&O optimization, than a Windows-only defrag. Outlook launch time fell from around 5.5 seconds, to just over 4, a 25 percent improvement. And the system generally felt snappier and more responsive. We can’t guarantee what results you’ll see -- it depends how your system is set up now, the hardware and software you’re using -- but we can say that Defrag 15 Professional consistently delivered worthwhile performance improvements for us.

Advanced Features

If you’d like to try and improve Defrag 15′s results even further, then the program makes this possible by allowing you to tweak its low-level optimization rules.

Essentially these separate your files into three zones -- one for programs, another for data, a third for seldom-used files that can be moved to the slowest part of the drive -- and it’s easy to add new rules of your own. And so, for instance, you might create special rules to make sure a specific file, a certain file type (*.mpg) or everything in a given folder is optimised just as you’d like.

Figuring out exactly which optimization is best can be an issue. Should you sort the contents of a particular folder by name, modification date or last access time, for instance? There’s usually no way to tell for sure, so you’ll probably have to try various options to see what happens. Which will take a while.

Get feedback about your defrag performance from the History tab

Still, Defrag 15 does at least offer more feedback with the new History tab, which plots the degree of fragmentation and the files optimised for each of your drives, over time. So if fragmentation is increasing then you could, say, activate Defrag 15′s background optimization and see the results immediately.

Or, if your system is underpowered, you might turn off background optimisation, use scheduled defrag jobs instead, and the History tab will soon reveal just how much extra file fragmentation you’ll have to deal with. The History reports are a welcome addition to the package, then. As is the other major new feature this time, Live Update, which sees the program able to detect, download and install updates without requiring any manual intervention.

Put it all together, and O&O Defrag 15 Professional clearly won’t be for everyone. It takes time to learn how to best optimize your system, and run the necessary defrags, and while the program does deliver improved performance, the benefits aren’t huge.

But then again, this program has the tag “Professional” for a reason. It’s a high-end tool, packed with features, highly configurable and surprisingly lightweight. So if you’re looking for something more than the usual freeware alternatives, which delivers better performance as standard, and is far more customisable, then O&O Defrag 15 Professional makes an excellent choice. Take the trial version for a spin, and see what it can do for you.

The software is available for Windows XP, Vista and 7, both 32 and 64-bit editions, and sells for $29.
Apple patent lawsuits are hypocritical

Publié: septembre 24, 2011, 4:27pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

I've been fairly critical of Apple's recent patent bullying -- what I call innovation through intimidation/litigation. The Apple Fanclub of bloggers and journalists defend the company's patent and other intellectual property claims as protecting its innovations from copying, particularly by Samsung. But who's copying whom?

As several Betanews commenters recently point out, Apple cofounder, current Chairman and former CEO Steve Jobs admits to the company copying from others. From a mid 1990s interview: "Picasso had a saying, he said: 'Good artists copy, great artists steal'. We have, you know, always, ah, been shameless about stealing great ideas".

Jobs proudly proclaims that Apple steals great ideas. Shamelessly. I don't have a problem with that. I don't believe there are any original ideas, anyway, something that is becoming more apparent as social media services connect more people. We take cues from the natural world and the people around us. Innovation is a process not so much of creating something new but taking what we know and applying it in different ways or adapted to new situations.

I remember when Apple introduced Mac laptops with backlit keys, which got rave (and deserved) praise from Mac fans and others. But light in darkness isn't a new concept, nor backlit keys. Look no further than your car's dashboard and radio when the headlights are on. Apple innovated in how it brought that concept to the Mac. But even then, the company worked with technologies already available. It's not like Apple engineers spent hundreds of millions of dollars producing a new light source for lighting laptop keyboards. I'm not trying to diminish Apple invention but look at it from a different viewpoint.

Apple defenders don't see it that way. I hear it so often: "No one created touchscreen cell phones shaped like iPhone until Apple, then everyone copied". "Galaxy Tab looks like iPad 2 -- it's copying, stealing". But what's wrong with that? The cornerstone of patent law is limited monopoly. The government grants the inventor a limited-time monopoly on the invention in exchange for publishing it. The idea is to spur more invention by way of derivative works, and in a sense that's innovation by copying on the work of others. Society hugely benefits from this approach, as one inventor's creation leads someone else to make something else -- thus pushing technology's advance. Patents are supposed to spur innovation, not prevent it.

Here's another-universe hypothetical: Apple owns rights to all the technologies in iPhone and its look and feel. The courts rule that no one else can create a touchscreen phone, use proximity sensors, gestures or other functions. As a result, Apple locks up the market for smartphones, and no one else can compete. What happens? Innovation stops. Without competition, Apple has little incentive to innovate. iPhone prices remain high, and the company seeks to protect its market and sales position rather than develop something new.

That just about describes every monopoly that ever existed. Another reason for the foundational principles behind patent law and the granting of limited-time monopoly: Prevent real monopolies from forming like this hypothetical one.

Instead, Apple files patent and intellectual claims with the International Trade Commission and the courts against competitors like HTC or Samsung. Apple uses the legal process to prevent others from innovating, by engaging in competition by litigation. The company's legal filings accuse competitors of copying its products.

But who's copying whom? Jobs' 1979 visit to Xerox PARC, where he was introduced to the concepts of graphical user interface and mouse that he later incorporated into Macintosh, is legendary. Apple is a notorious copier -- granted taking others' ideas and doing something else with them, or something at all. Few months back, I identified five things iOS 5 copies from Android, for example. I could write a lengthy post on Apple's copying practices, there are so many examples.

But that's okay. Building on the work of others is how societies benefit. It's cornerstone of concepts like public domain or even fair use, and absolutely how patents are meant to be used -- not to protect one's invention but to spur even more from others.

Is there something hypocritical here? That it's okay for Apple to copy -- in Jobs' words steal -- but unacceptable for others to do the same or invent something new learned from Apple innovations? I pose the question to you.
Be careful, that PDF might be a Mac Trojan

Publié: septembre 24, 2011, 2:04am CEST par Joe Wilcox

Well, hello Mac users! The 1 billion Windows users of the world welcome you to the wonderful world of malware. F-Secure has identified a new one, and like Mac Defender, this piece of nastiness borrows from malware already released for Windows.

"We may have come across a Mac malware in the making. Detected as Trojan-Dropper:OSX/Revir.A, the malware disguises as a PDF file to trick user into triggering its payload", F-Secure warned earlier today.

The fake PDF is not yet perfected: "As of this writing, the C&C of the malware is just a bare Apache installation and is not capable of communicating with the backdoor yet. The domain was registered on 21 March 2011 and was last updated on 21 May 2011".

Mac security is a hot topic, in part because users are such passionate defenders of the platform. This despite clear signs that cyber criminals are bringing Windows malware software and techniques to Mac OS X. In February Sophos identified back-door Trojan BlackHole RAT, a variant of the free "remote administration tool" darkComet RAT for Windows. The Trojan was written in December 2010 and took months to spread, in beta, but posed no serious threat, even after version 2.0 appeared in April, because it wasn't stable.

In May the first credible piece of Mac OS X malware ever documented started spreading around the Web. Mac Defender used a long-successful technique on Windows -- pretending to be antivirus software while instead infecting the computer. Cyber criminals poisoned search results with fake sites that prompted users with warning of virus infection. Following instructions to take action, they downloaded fake antivirus software to the Mac.

Many Mac defenders (not to be confused with the malware) dismissed the security threat, and Apple with them. But as the number of infections increased, Apple finally acknowledged the problem -- three weeks after it started.

Related: "Five things you need to know about Mac Security"

The same day, new variant Mac Guard appeared in the wild, with the capability of downloading and installing without user interaction. The behavior mimicked the drive-by-downloads long part of the Windows landscape.

I conducted polls to gauge just how unprotected are Mac users, and the results didn't surprise. Among Windows users, 86 percent of respondents said they have anti-malware software installed. Startling contrast: 82.74 percent of Mac users do not run anti-malware software. I've re-embedded both polls to see if the results have changed much. The Q: Are more Mac users protecting their computers, following the ruckus Mac Guard cased?

Is anti-malware software installed on your primary home computer?online surveys

Is anti-malware software installed on your primary home Macintosh?customer surveys

Mac users potentially are more vulnerable, because of behavior. Windows users are accustomed to malware trickery, often via phishing emails or bogus links from instant messaging or social networking services. Then there are the website pop-ups warning the PC is infected with a virus, like Mac Defender. The offered solution infects rather than cures the computer. It's an old tactic applied to a new platform.

Many Windows users have also learned, well hopefully, to be wary of file attachments, like the fake PDF Trojan. Your risk to this piece of nastiness isn't the problem, but the one that comes next -- the Trojan capable of infecting tens of thousands of Macs. Apple has hardened Mac OS X pretty well, but the first line of defense is the user. That's you. Security is only as good as the person using the operating system. Ask this question: Is your Mac safe from you?

Art Credit: Albert Ziganshin/Shutterstock
C Spire Wireless: the new underdog 4G mobile network?

Publié: septembre 24, 2011, 12:58am CEST par Tim Conneally

A new national wireless operator will open for business on Monday, and its name is C Spire Wireless.

To be fair, it's not really a new company, it's just the new name for Cellular South, the regional network operator whose CEO, Hu Meena, has been a defender of the "little guy" wireless carriers of the U.S. by refusing to share its LTE network with Verizon Wireless, and testifying against the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile.

The name change represents an impending shift in Cellular South's business toward more data-centric services.

“We have entered a new era in wireless – an era centered on broadband networks, mobile computing devices and now personalized services. Completing calls is only a small part of what we deliver our customers,” Meena said in a statement on Thursday. “Since 1988, our main focus has been on providing exceptional service for our customers and their wireless needs. Those needs have changed dramatically and will do so at an even more rapid pace in the future. In the new era of wireless, given our continued focus on the customer, we have been inspired to sharpen our vision for delivering the best possible experience in wireless and look forward to doing just that under the C Spire brand.”

The emphasis on broadband has been in place for a long time at Cellular South; and this year, it spent more than $90 million to build up its LTE network in Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama.

Any further growth, however, will be almost entirely contingent upon LightSquared, who partnered with Cellular South five months ago to provide wholesale 4G LTE services for the rest of the company's coverage area.

LightSquared remains hung up in regulatory proceedings over GPS interference issues that its network was shown to have, and right now, the future of that network is uncertain at best.

Without LightSquared, C Spire will stand alongside MetroPCS and U.S. Cellular as regional carriers with limited, standalone LTE deployments. MetroPCS, who was the first carrier in the United States to commercially launch LTE, has networks in Nevada, Georgia, Massachusetts, Texas, Michigan, California, New York, and Pennsylvania. U.S. Cellular hasn't launched its 4G networks yet, but is on track to launch in Iowa, Wisconsin, Maine, North Carolina, Texas, and Oklahoma for the holiday season.

So among these three, C Spire actually has the smallest 4G network; but it looks like it will have other tricks up its sleeve for its dense concentration of smartphone users*, such as an App recommendation service called "Scout," an opt-in analytics system called "Pulse," a new system of customer care that will involve deeper use of social networking and user-suggested initiatives, and "multi-screen converged services" platform, which the company will talk about in greater depth next week.

*Cellular South frequently repeated two factoids about itself: That it is the largest privately-held mobile network, and that it has the highest concentration of smartphone users of any U.S. mobile carrier.