Shovelware

If it was so easy to keep your system running so smooth with a little utility, why wouldn't M$ put it in the OS by default? Exactly... snake oil.

Some of the tools can actually make your system more unstable. So I hate pointless utilities. If you really must then just use Gizmos Freeware and find free alternatives.

My advice is save up the pennies and buy an SSD upgrade, far more use than any of these so called 'system' tools. The only exception would be the cheap VPN.

Regards
Flea

If they offered "lifetime" licenses to these, they'd raise an absolute sh*t-ton of money. As it is, I doubt many will pay out for just a year's licence when the free versions do all you really need them to.

Unfortunately I think all the free versions of Revo and IOBit work well enough for me.

Bought the $8 Bundle...gonna venture into the VPN world. Many thanks OP! Used to use this company for indie game bundles so I know it's safe and usually for a good cause. Cheers again.

Shovelware

If they offered "lifetime" licenses to these, they'd raise an absolute sh*t-ton of money. As it is, I doubt many will pay out for just a year's licence when the free versions do all you really need them to.

Happy to sit this one out

2nd tier might be worth it if the VPN service is any good.

Any of these software useful?

Also how's the VPN?
I'm using cyber ghost from a earlier bundle
Would it be good to get this VPN to use when my ghost expires?
Or is there a use by date with the key?

Worth it for Backup Home.

check out stack social for VPN deals if you're interested - some "lifetime" subscriptions available for cheap prices

https://stacksocial.com/search?cat=390&query=VPN&sort=lowest_price

I had rare BSODs so I figured after reading some positive product reviews I'd give IOBits driver booster ago to see if it missed anything. It **** things up causing more BSODs and I believe I had to reinstall windows. Revo Uninstaller seems decent, though haven't used it often, even then only the free version once personally.

The VPN aims for speed over security....not sure that's a great purchase.

What's with all these 1-year licenses :disappointed:

IOBit constantly give out free PRO licenses

If it was so easy to keep your system running so smooth with a little utility, why wouldn't M$ put it in the OS by default? Exactly... snake oil.

Some of the tools can actually make your system more unstable. So I hate pointless utilities. If you really must then just use Gizmos Freeware and find free alternatives.

My advice is save up the pennies and buy an SSD upgrade, far more use than any of these so called 'system' tools. The only exception would be the cheap VPN.

Regards
Flea

" just use Gizmos Freeware and find free alternatives" Thanks for that, forgot about that site.

A pretty poor bundle imo, all of the IObit stuff and EaseUs Todo are often in giveaways. These 1 year licenses for ordinary software are sadly becoming all too common nowadays. I think the previous comment of "Shovelware" is about right really.

That I don't find this this deal useful.

What's the vpn like would it work with android boxes ?

Just had a look at Speedify.
Interesting kind of VPN that allows connection bonding, so you can use your home broadband + a 4G connection together to boost download speeds. Or perhaps your home wired ethernet and neighbours wifi together.

Would also like to know if the Speedify and Driver Booster keys expire, or if I can leave them a while until my current subscriptions end.

I can't see when the Speedify keys expire but Ive only just had an email from Humble informing me that the key for CyberGhost is due to expire if I haven't used it, and I must have bought that about 5 or 6 months ago - So hopefully this is the same - I bought it anyway so hopefully I'll be able to use it round about the time my CG sub runs out in (November was it?)

First thanks for the link to Gizmo's Freeware, I normally go on alternativeto.net/ to find free programs.

Why do people use different web browsers when windows has one by default? I bet you're not using IE. Some programs just work better then the default, allow you more configurations or allows easy access to more hidden Windows settings. Though not necessary just more convenient to use. How many people know how to set up Auto-Login without having to have researched it?

But I do think these 2 are the most useful here though not Pro is needed;
Revo uninstaller - Will find leftover files and entries that the standard uninstaller misses.
Drive Booster - Windows update, where to start how how much it doesn't do.

I'll just mention what I think of the other things.
SystemCare - Similar to CCleaner, you shouldn't really run a registry clean (apparently!) but I do find some tools in them a bit more accessible, then through Windows. Also all IOBit does is advertise it's other programs.
Smart Defrag - No idea if it works better, but does give a few more options, not as though I run a defrag often.
Backup, Malware Fighter, Recovery and Winzip - Most likely better free alternatives out there.

A VPN is something I pay for unlike programs, but I'll just assume at that price download speeds and security aren't going to be the best, might be OK for general browsing.

Shows how limited the majority of users knowledge are, smart defrag is a useful tool, the rest of the products are niche but still useful, sounds more like someone being tight fisted as theres a difference between not buying something when you can get something just as good for free and getting something that does the job and ok at best and something quite a lot better for a little money.


"shovelware" that is recommended on various tech forums, so who are you to judge?

That's a great site that I usually forget about when recommending software sites, simply because it's been around for so long it's like part of the furniture! Another site that's worth a look is AlternativeTo; put the name of a software application in the search box and it'll give you a list of alternatives, which you can then restrict by platform (Windows/Mac/Linux) and/or licence (commercial/free/open source). It's not always spot-on - for example, it might suggest stuff that is potentially abandoned - but it'll usually point you at something worth trying.

Just under £70 for lifetime Pure VPN seems like a pretty good deal!

Heh, basically a bunch of 1 year trials. Driverbooster often giveaway year licenses in promotions, I've registered pro with them about 4 times in the last few years.

I'll probably go with the first tear just for EaseUS Todo Backup. I literally downloaded the free version 2 days ago because it was very well reviewed, and kinda wanted the get the home version to schedule backups, so this kinda timed itself well.

Humble Malware Bundle: AVOID
All the IO software is just snake oil. They used to (still do?) make scareware.
Revo Uninstaller is available for free.
Speedify VPN forces you to use there software and its a US company... no thanks.
Auslogics File Recovery is crap in comparison to free alternatives.
Ha... who still needs WinZIP?

Connectify looks like only decent thing here...

No love for Connectify? That's saved my bacon a few times. The rest of the upper tier is a bit meh though

Thanks for that, didn't know about AlternativeTo. Already downloaded Krita, a free alternative programme to Photoshop looks a very good programme and easier to use than Gimp.

I have used connectify in the past and was great to combine tethering and btfon wifi though at the timr didn't work for video streaming like netflix as couldn't connect twice to their servers but was good at general websites and allegedly good at torrents. Will consider but not overwhelmed

trying to work out what countries the vpn has. i use torguard and it is slow on india for hotstar for footy highlights and ok for middle east for be in sports and I have to get an extra server for us netflix

oh this is only hotspot connectify. i thought it was connectify dispatch which speeds up internet with multiple connections.

oh yes even in mobile which would be useful to combine mobile and wifi.

i wonder if it is by connectify people?

here is server list

no middle east which means no beinsports

does have india for hotstar

but no china for qq tv

and us servers will no doubt be blocked by netflix

not bad if the country list works for you. but beinsports is critical for me

http://speedify.com/features/speed-servers/

I believe Opera comes with VPN

Anyone comment on what speeds they're getting using SpeedyVPN? Just got the bundle today. On my 70mb connection where I'd normally max out at just over 8mb/sec over torrents (not the best example for reliable consistent speed).....I seem to generally be sat around 3.8-5 tho seen it go to 7.odd so far. Speedtest site is giving my about 8 however.

edit: seems to be hitting 8.2mb now....both (occasionally) on the tor, and trying usenet too

not too impressed with Speedify. It did hit full speed for a while. Although the speedify app itself is reporting alsorts of random figures, such as 15Mbps when I'm currently on about 520k-1Mb/sec. Running speedtest.net at this point in time is reporting 3mb (on my 70mb connection)...so seems hit and miss

I am a long-term happy Connectify user. It's frickin' awesome, and as a testing tool it is invaluable.

Speedify is by the same people, and while it's primarily for speed/failover, it's not the best tool for torrenting. It basically (for speed) splits your traffic into multiple streams and sends the streams over your different Internet connections. Then the reassemble thode streams at their end, so everything works normally as far as your apps are concerned.

For Torrenting you want Port Forwarding (at the VPN end assuming your VPN service uses NAT). Privateinternetaccess do this with their client if you switch it on and select one of the enabled servers.

Or do it properly and use a seedbox. And pulling stuff from your seedbox would be perfect for Speedify.

I'll be picking this up. Heat added.

I'm not a Plex user but yeah, content on the seedbox is available in Plex with the seedbox providers I've used.

I don't know the exact ins and out of Plex as it isn't my tool of choice, it lacked hardware accelerated transcoding at the server end (even self-hosted) when I looked into it, so it wasn't the best tool for what I wanted to do.

That said, when I played with it, it wasn't a whole lot more than a click (and wait), username and password for Plex and the stuff showed up on the Plex app on the TV. No Encryption iirc, but not a significant issue if you're tunnelling all your traffic anyway. It was fast enough for 1080p realtime streaming on a Samsung TV and it played everything on that seedbox. I haven't tried 4k though.

I don't know if that's in any way helpful to you.

If you're looking for grabbing content from binary newsgroups, a seedbox is the wrong tool for the job but then you already know that. And don't need port forwarding, so Speedify would be awesome for newsgroups (albeit not strictly necessary as you could balance the different pieces across connections at your newsgroup client end).

Never used SR or Couchpotato, tbh I didn't know that they would grab stuff by BT.

I did play around with having RSS. but I did have RSS working but the shows I followed weekly got picked up on legit services so I've not used the RSS stuff in long time. I assume it would still work, but YMMV. They're not listed as supported by the seedbox providers I've tried, but it's probably not too difficult or there's likely already a working alternative.