TOD WICKS  OK, I'll jump on the bandwagon. I too remember this from the 1990s and after it went into a deep coma, I went over to Art Text. While AT fills my basic needs, I'd really like to justify going back to TS. Unfortunately the price (even the upgrade price) is a huge turnoff in these economic times.

To Strider Software: Please offer this up as an MU Promo at a very reasonable price (like $65?) or a "re-introduction" holiday promo for $85 good through Dec 31, 2009.

As others have stated, you'll have us users beating down your door. What can you lose? It appears that very few of us will buy it at $100 or $200 so if you lower the price for a while, you're guaranteed sales. It's not like hard goods where the margin is too little if you discount it. A copy sold at $60 is a $60 bonus for you.  
(Version 10.6.39)

TOD WICKS  I do indeed like this app, especially the ease of setup and the control over the opacity.

I echo the sentiment of earlier commenters: Please add the time, perhaps next to the month text.  
(Version 0.800)

TOD WICKS  Your experiences mirror mine (see review above).

I've heard that there's such a backlash of anger against Souther Asia support centers that some web sites have a "badge" or something indicating that all tech support is US-based. Wish I could remember where I saw that.

Everyone in the market for mission critical software such as cloud backup or remote site hosting should ask one question: "Where is your tech support center located?" If they answer South Asia, you should say something like, "Sorry, no thanks." and hang up.

This whole notion of outsourcing tech support to people with impeccable English that lack any inspiration or initiative is coming back to bite the outsourcing firms. I'd really rather deal with someone in the Ukraine or Lithuania whose English might not be perfect but who easily understands the issues and knows how to think rather than flip through a box of index cards with scripts on them.  
(Version 1.5.2.1)

TOD WICKS  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 off 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. Dog-gone it. What is with this outfit where no one gives a flying teabag about a customer's problems?

Finally, on October 14, six weeks into this journey to nowhere, 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.  
(Version 1.5.2.1)

TOD WICKS  to the developer:

1. Is the $9.99 the 1/2 price cost or is it the full cost?

2. Once you get the 10.6 version working, will the half-price sale still be available?

Thanks for creating these things - they look very useful but, alas, I'm running Snow leopard.  
(Version 4.2)

TOD WICKS  "This is a really wonderful, powerful piece of software, at a mere fraction of the cost of similar applications."

Holy cow - how can you say that with a straight face?

I'm glad you have deep pockets to buy something that is ten times as expensive as Cheap Imposter and PDF Garden, apps that do the same thing at a mere fraction of the cost of a so-called "Wizard," which sounds like something a PC developer would call his program.

and adding insult to injury: Labeling a $300 program as "shareware" is the height of deception! I've seen packages that were labeled "Commercial" that ran far cheaper than this bit of smoke and mirrors.

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"

-The Wizard of Oz  
(Version 1.4)

TOD WICKS  " iDick " tools? Does this sweet suite include the latest iViagra? :-)  
(Version 4.2.6)

TOD WICKS  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.  
(Version 1.2)

TOD WICKS  Holy cow, is this puppy still around? Alive and breathing? Good grief, what's wrong with the built-in zip function of the finder? Need security? Just run your file through something like Filelock ($25) first and save some money.

I haven't used this dog since version 8 and only then it was the free "Unstuffit" version.  
(Version 2010 14.0)

TOD WICKS  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 the free AutomountMaker, 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.  
(Version 2.0)

TOD WICKS  Holy Cow! $150 for something that MAMP does for free? That MAMP Pro does better for $60? Good luck, folks.  
(Version 1.1)

TOD WICKS  So SyyzZzygy, exactly what is your point? I think you logged in just to waste everyone's time with a smart-ass comment.  
(Version 1.3.8)

TOD WICKS  Have you tried MAMP? It will install Apache, MySQL and myPHPadmin in one shot.  
(Version 3.2.2)

TOD WICKS  @sjk: You hang out here too? Looking for PC-type apps after all? :-)

-The Terrier  
(Version 1.0.6)

TOD WICKS  When i first tried this using 10.6 it didn't work. I was in touch with the developer, who was quite prompt and helpful in his emails, and he promised that they were both aware of the 10.6 problems and they were working on an update.

Today I received an email from Jalada indicating that the latest release had fixed the 10.6 problems and was now available for download. they even provided me with a download link in the email! How cool is that!

I bought the app a few weeks ago and had been using it under 10.5 for a couple of projects. Now that it works in 10.6, I don't have to bother with rebooting...

Thanks Jalada! Great app.  
(Version 1.2)

TOD WICKS  What a joke! What features does this have over Apple's Disk utility, which is shipped with every Mac and OS DVD. Simply launch DU and select from a few options and away you go.

I choose FREE over grEEd.  
(Version 1.0)

TOD WICKS  At least you received same-day response. I've been sending log files for over a week for connection errors 1 and 3, for client errors (which they say to reinstall Mozy and if that fails, to send a report with log files to Mozy support). I finally accessed a chat person (from guess where? Right - India) whose written English was pretty terrible. I spent more time asker that person to reword the answer, that the answers made no sense, etc. No resolution at all. I've sent them alternate email addresses and still no response. right now I'm going to flood Mozy Support with an email and log file each time Mozy quits on me. Some day Mozy might get the message but that'll happen about the time that the SF 49ers win another Superbowl.  
(Version 1.4.3)

TOD WICKS  Thanks for the warning. That's a deal-breaker for me right there - I don't want to even have to answer such a silly question. "NO! I want to look at my inventory, not go to your store and don't ask me again. sheesh."

Not even worth the download if it's got this kind of nag screen.  
(Version 1.1)

TOD WICKS  From the description:

"Bash script to politely quit applications using Terminal."

How do we find out which applications are currently using Terminal? And how do we know when an application uses Terminal? I'd like to know that before having a script quit any application that uses Terminal.  
(Version 1.1)

TOD WICKS  I made a grave error in my comment above in stating that Collage crashes in 10.5.7. It most definitely does NOT crash in 10.5.7 and worked extremely well for me. In the demo I was able to make a few very nice collages in a very few number of steps. If you're looking for a means of gathering images together into a single 'canvas," then this app is what you're looking for. In the past I was using Lumapix Fotofusion on my (dare I say it?) Boot Camp partition because no other Mac app worked quite like it.

What I meant to write is that it crashed in Snow Leopard 10.6 and that Jalada is aware of this problem.

I am extremely distressed that I mistakenly wrote something completely erroneous about a fine product, which I intend to purchase.

-Tod  
(Version 1.0.1)

TOD WICKS  Unfortunately this application crashed on me when trying to add images to the work area. I tried it using a Mac Mini 2.26 and OS X 10.5.7. I've sent a crash report to Jalada.

I'd be interested in hearing how others fared.  
(Version 1.0)

TOD WICKS  Devon Technologies has licensed the Abby OCR engine for use in DevonThink Pro Office 2.0 (which is in a prolonged but fairly bug-free beta). I have been a medium user of DTPO and Abby (that's how we shorten the name in the DT forums) has been a great OCR machine. I've scanned in some pretty shabby documents and magazine pages that were printed with no regard to ink flow or other non-qualitative aspects, and the difference between Abby and my previous workhorse (Omnipage) is immense.

Whether you use the DTPO version or you buy it outright, you can't go wrong if you want OCR accuracy.  
(Version 8.0.0.2806)

TOD WICKS  Fair Warning: I am a provincial American from California.

This software is for those who wish to learn the British way. While the speaker has a good speaking voice and is understandable to native English speakers on both sides of the Atlantic, he does introduce some quaint pronunciations, such as the word "north" rhyming with "both" as in Nothe America. He also lets his "L" slide away in the word "pole" so that it sounds like "Poe." The demo lesson is very basic geography - the continents plus poles.  
(Version 1.0)

TOD WICKS  Beru is a known troll and constant whiner on the DevonTech forums. He's so wrapped up in this ongoing beta cycle that he even believes his own rants about losing data. It has been shown many times over that the data remain intact and are in fact in readable format (ie PDF, RTF, JPG) and totally accessible through the Finder, even if you decide not to continue with expiring betas. The betas have expiration date, it's true, but there is a very good reason for this: It keeps support overhead down by not having to support older versions once the product ships the final release. Even so, simply setting your computer's clock back a few months will "reactivate" the expired beta should you ever need to extract data (for instance if you ignore the fact stated above about the data being Finder accessible even if DT is no long on your Mac).

This guy doesn't know what he's talking about and should be totally ignored just like we do on the forum.  
(Version 2.0pb6)

TOD WICKS  To The Dev, who logged in as "anonymous":

True there are many applications pitched in MU and VT that are beta versions, versions that the honorable developers think need to have a broader test before releasing the product. The big difference is that most honorable and decent developers don't charge for the beta until it goes FCS.

I personally don't like greedy developers charging people to test their beta (and as you state, often buggy) software. This is what we expect from a sleazy outfit like Microsoft but not shareware indie developers in the Mac community.

I always urge users to go ahead and try out beta software but not to ever pay for it. That's like buying a 2011 model car that's still in the design phase. Of course I'd test it if they gave it to me (with the proviso that I had to return it at the end of the test period).

To other visitors reading this: DON'T BUY BETA! DON'T BUY BUGGY SOFTWARE!  
(Version 1.0b4)

TOD WICKS  I don't understand why anyone would *pay* for a product that's in Beta. Why fund something that isn't ready for prime-time yet?

I looked for anything to do with "rotate" and couldn't find a darned way of doing a rotate except to rotate a doodled in box.

It is not intuitive, not easy to figure out,especially when dealing with crashes. This app crashed once while selecting the box doodle tool, once while clicking one icon after another trying to see which one would bring up the rotate tool, and once as I sat there staring at the window after dragging an image into it. All crashes occurred within a couple of minutes of each launch.  
(Version 1.0b2)

TOD WICKS  I downloaded TCC via MacUpdate. When I launched it this evening, there's a message that states:

"Windows Genuine Advantage has detected a problem. This application is not genuine and scannot [sic] continue."

Clicking the OK button causes TCC to quit. I don't even get to the point where i can enter the license info.

And what the devil is this garbage about "windows genuine advantage" anyway?  
(Version 3.2.11)