Tag: 2

FREE Hi-Q Recorder

version 1.92

When some software makes me pissed off, I use this pages to rant and lament.  But, I also sometimes write positive reviews;) Today is time for a negative one.

What is advertised as a free program is actually a stripped down version of Easy Hi-Q Recorder. Immediately upon start you are faced with the nag screen: You are offered a discount to buy a full version. If you don’t close this window, and instead go directly to options, you end up with 3 windows open (the main window, the nag window and the options window) – all frozen. I had to use the task manager to kill the program.

Verdict: The mark would be 1, but since I did not try to actually use the program I can not exclude the possibility that it has some good points I’m not aware of. So, let it be 2, just in case.

RedfernPlace Path Editor

Version 2.1.3.0

This program gets improved rapidly. Let’s hope the issues will be solved.

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Version 2.1.2.0

I installed the version 2.0.2.1 and immediately saw that “%JAVA_HOME%\bin” is recognized as invalid – because it’s quoted – and the removal is suggested. I reported this issue and in version 2.1.2.0 it is solved. The program now does not suggest removal of quoted paths any more, but their cleaning instead.

The authors claim that it has “intuitive interface”. Well, the psychologists would say that intuition is actually based on experience. So, from experience from using other programs, the Windows Explorer is a notorious example, I would expect F2 to switch to edit mode and the context menu should double this functionality. Almost every if not every file manager can do this. But this program can’t. Instead, the context menu has only one item and it is to change font?! As I suspected, this changes the font for all items. Of course, I mean, why would anybody want to change the font for a particular item? That is how I knew that this will change font for all items. Right? You might call it intuition, or logical thinking. But why then put this in the context menu?! It clearly belongs to the View (or Options) menu. But the program has neither View nor Options menu, so the author decides to put this in the context menu. This is bad design.

Also:

  • no help so I have no clue what are these things in the Edit menu for
  • a checkbox labeled “Can contain directories” instead of “Must contain directories”

etc.

On the program homepage (http://www.redfernplace.com/software-projects/patheditor/) there are some comments regarding potentially dangerous issues in older versions. Well, were! The comments are removed now!!

Very basic functionality. Weve offers the same or better (backup) functionality and better design.

Verdict:  There are other, better free programs, so there is no point using this one.