Macrium Reflect 8 Update Discussion

pietcorus2 said:

Little patience , will solve all problems............8-version is available next month !

That's Great!

Source?

f14tomcat said:

That's Great!

Source?

jimbo45 said:

Hi folks

I'm not sure why we always need "More and More Features" on what should essentially be a basic Backup system.

Nothing against Macrium -- works superbly and good customer service - but remember 99% of Windows users are probably basic "Home" users - not I.T professionals - and just a simple backup / imaging system is the best option for them. It's hard enough to get a lot of people to backup their systems at all !!!!

I'm sure people here must read on other sections of the Forums (and here we hope we are usually better knowelegable in I.T than the "bog standard user" ) - how many problems could have been resolved had the users just made a simple Image of their system before tinkering with it.

A lot of good software sometimes gets to the "Unuseable" or chuck it out state because "Features" and bloat comes in to what essentially should be a simple package.

I still use the basic built in DD linux command a lot (nothing can be easier or simpler than that) - to copy / clone parts of HDD's / partitions etc -- hasn't changed for Donkeys years -- and the rsync program for copying data to NAS backup - also been a part of Linux for more years than I care to remember.

Macrium Free for backing up Windows images works just perfectly.

Remember K.I.S.S (Keep it Simple Stupid !!!).

Please Macrium don't go overboard with "extra features".

@Bree - the ISO naming feature though sounds like a good idea -- if you know / can remember anything about the old IBM Mainframe systems e.g MVS/SP then they had an excellent cataloguing system called GDG's or Generation data groups - so you'd create say data1(0) which would be current, data1(-1) the previous one and data1(+1) the next one.
After running a job the data1(+1) would be data1(0), the data1(0) would become the data1(-1) and so on so it was easy to get the backup or data file you wanted. Really excellent system. !!


Happy Hols everyone and please stay safe - especially with these new variants of C-19 reported from various European Countries inc the U.K

Cheers
jimbo

This is one of the most outstanding posts in this thread!

Sometimes we get caught up in the "What is the latest and greatest" routine that we tend to forget the most undeniable fact that if the product works, why on earth is the original not good enough. Without a doubt, the GUI always can be improved and in fact always changes a bit with each upgrade.

However, the concept that bloatware/more features is somehow a replacement for how a product is promoted or improved, well........that is a concept that I'll never understand from a marketing strategy standpoint. Or actually, I should state that the market strategy is basically outweighing the products performance in most cases because it is always better to scoop up the money first and then deal with the problems based on user feedback.

So maybe I do understand the concept; but marketing should never outweigh performance and unfortunately, performance is what suffers when the bean-counters keep reminding developers that they are on a budget and schedule.

Ever since the induction of Windows 10, all I see are posts about how to strip down the OS in an attempt to speed up the loading and boot times of the system. Since Windows 10 integrated a lot of the bloatware directly into the OS, all you get is problems when you try to lean the OS out.

A lot of users found out the hard way, the less you tinker with the product, the better it performs.

I'm with you on this one jimbo45. - The "KISS" method is overlooked by developers so often these days because they are pushed by corporate big shots that seem to think the shortest distance between two points is how fast the money hits their bank account.

There are so many "open source" options that outperform so many paid versions of products, I'm starting to wonder why anyone would want to pay for headaches and problems. I remember a time when I paid to have photos hosted by a company, only to find out that even though I was paying them, they still couldn't recover my photos to a certain thread hosted on another site.

So what was the point of me paying them for something they couldn't correct? I found out the hard way that even though I was paying to have photos hosted, it didn't protect me from losing my pictures linked to a thread. In this case, backups come to mind, and after all, isn't that what this thread is about?

jonnied12 said:

I copied this info from the New Macrium Reflect Updates [2] Thread:

All purchases of Reflect 7 on, or after, 15th November 2020 will receive a free upgrade to Reflect 8.
For licenses purchased before then, there will be a generous upgrade discount.

I guess I got lucky. I purchased mine on 20 November 2020.

You did! I've had mine for quite awhile, so I guess I'll be in for the generous upgrade discount.

Mark Phelps said:

Like others, I bought a 4-pack of the current MR licenses. But, I use MR on over a dozen PCs I support and only 4 of them have the paid version. The free version is more than enough for all the other PCs.

I've see the proposed new features and can't see using them on other than my primary PC -- so even with a discount, I would be struggling to justify buying another 4-pack of licenses.

Plus, if you can buy one license, make a bootable USB stick from that one license, and boot any PC using that -- unless you need the new features permanently on other PCs, you could probably then make do with one license.

Well yes, you can make one bootable rescue disk/USB to work on any number of PCs, that's available with free version too.