JONEDWARDS  unfortunately, i have to agree with the last review. when i purchased mira a year or so ago it was a great, simple but full-featured alternative to other remote programs. now it's essentially worthless to all but the most patient redundant button pusher or system tinkerer. even then it's just easier to go up and grab the mouse or keyboard. a shame. going back to remote buddy...  
(Version 1.2.9)

JONEDWARDS  Super-lightweight is indeed the term. For a simple, easily accessed list of checkboxes, integrated with iCal and Mail, this is a great little app. If you want things like priority and due dates, look elsewhere.  
(Version 1.0)

JONEDWARDS  Okay, so I came back to backuplist after a hiatus induced by the issues I listed in my previous post. New computer, new version of backuplist, time to try again! The good news is that it did back up my files. The bad news is that I'm here in the same position as last time. Backing up to a remote volume leaves me in a "scanning..." progress bar with a timer that now reads 7 hours and 11 minutes, half of which has elapsed since I pushed the cancel button. Force quit. Try again. Same thing. What gives?  
(Version 4.0)

JONEDWARDS  This is the handsomest of the text expanders, with a nice bezel pop-up of suggestions for the abbreviation you're typing, but the fact that it doesn't work in Firefox or MS Word, to name only a couple, makes it impractical.  
(Version 2.2)

JONEDWARDS  didn't work in any of the applications i tried (firefox, textedit, textmate). the snippet gets selected but nothing changes. since the text is selected, if you hit space to continue to the next word, the selected text is replaced with the space character.

this could be a good, simple substitute for the pricier alternatives (though rapidowrite is free and pretty -- but doesn't work in non-cocoa apps), but not right now.  
(Version 1.3)

JONEDWARDS  This is the only virtual desktop application that works properly on Intel 10.4.8. It's missing some of the features of a few of the others, but it also doesn't have nearly as many bugs.

NOTE: there seems to be a better version of this application on their website.  
(Version 1.3b1)

JONEDWARDS  A nice application with most of the features of its competitors (though a few are absent, if only because this was released in 2005). Less buggy than some of the others, too, but still fraught with a few on 10.4.

Usable, but not perfect.  
(Version 0.5.3)

JONEDWARDS  This application has great potential. The feature set is excellent and the interface flow is intuitive and pretty. As of v0.54b2, however, it's too buggy to use. Setting the number of rows and columns, for example, is impossibly inconsistent. I initially had one row, but now somehow have two, and it won't let me go back to one. Increasing the number of columns sometimes increases the number of rows, too, but sometimes doesn't. Clicking the up arrow for rows sometimes increases the number, sometimes decreases it, etc.

But one day it'll be great, to be sure!  
(Version 0.54b2)

JONEDWARDS  This is a near-perfect remote application. It does lack some of the power of Remote Buddy, but most users will appreciate the greater simplicity.

My one gripe -- the one thing that keeps me from switching away from Remote Buddy -- is the insufficient EyeTV support. You can do some very basic navigation, but you can't operate between contexts the way you can with Remote Buddy. If mira had better support for EyeTV's full screen menu, it'd be a shoe-in for best remote application out there!  
(Version 1.2.8)

JONEDWARDS  Finally! A simple back-up app that does what it says it does without issue. There have been a couple of quirks, but nothing at all major. I've tried nearly all of the free and low-cost back-up solutions and was so relieved to come across one that just worked. Why don't the others work? It's pretty simple, isn't it? Anyway, thanks iMsafe people for doing it right.  
(Version 2.0b12)

JONEDWARDS  This has great promise. It could be the king of the free back-up apps. But it's not. The first session went very well, as scheduled, everything copied, etc. The next time, it refused to run. It says "scanning" with a timer next to it and a progress bar that doesn't move. After two hours scanning, I tried to cancel. It said "canceling backup session," but the timer kept going and it never canceled. So I had to force quit.

I deleted the contents of the folder that I was backing up to and it ran fine again. But then the next time it hung in exactly the same way. As if it can deal with backing up to the same place twice...  
(Version 3.9)

JONEDWARDS  It is remarkable how difficult it is to find a good back-up program! This one is nice and simple, but every now and then it unexpectedly quits when I'm modifying or adding a back-up schedule, and when I reopen it has forgotten all of my schedules. A pain!  
(Version 2.2.1)

JONEDWARDS  This may very well be a good sync utility, but setting it up for more than one folder was poorly designed enough to have me giving up before even trying it. I have an FTP volume to back up to, and for every folder you want to back up, you have to re-enter the FTP host, username, password, and directory. It does suggest dragging a folder from "any" FTP client as a shortcut, but this doesn't work, at least not with Transmit.

You also have to set up backup details for each folder; the time, method of backup, etc. Again, some may want this control, and it's fine for one folder, but if you have multiple folders and just want to set up a back-up routine, this is not the application for you.

In any event, the level of design and functionality is not worth the price.  
(Version 1.2.8)