TerryWood
February 27th, 2007, 03:18 AM
I have been reading a number of favourable reports on PowerShadow in this forum, indeed there seems to be a very strong following for it.
I am looking for a sandbox/virtualisation freeware for my own system so I decided to try it as I have been doing with Sandboxie.
For the record I am a non Techie no allegiance to any product and will tell it as it is!
PowerShadow has a GUI in contrast to Sandboxie, it is somewhat spoiled by a rather poor english translation from the chinese. I particularly liked the fact that you could choose which mode to enter at bootup.
I have to admit that I struggled to find the euphoria about PowerShadow that a number of forum members have demonstrated. There are a number of limitations, for example you cannot easily switch in and out of sandboxed/virtualised mode (without a reboot) With Sandboxie you can. You have to remember to save files you want to keep from Shadowmode to another hard drive although there are plenty of reminders about this. With Sandboxie this can be done automatically.
Also with PowerShadow I found it difficult to save to an external USB drive. I have two backup programs SyncBack and Backup4All3 despite both programs appearing to backup email changes neither actually did. When I restored from my USB drive there was no change. Yet if I physically copied the mail folder from the ShadowMode to my USB drive it worked when copied back to the hard drive in none shadowmode. I assume there must be a problem with copying from a virtual drive to a USB drive using a backup program. No problems with Sandboxie in this respect.
Sandboxie is limited in the types of progams you can install "sandboxed" it won't accept those that want to install drivers, and like PowerShadow its a pointless exercise if a reboot is required.
So despite Sandboxies crude almost non existent interface it is actually more flexible than PowerShadow and does not require reboots.
To me the differences are so obvious and weighted in Sandboxies favour that I am surprised to have seen so little Sandboxie comment and so much about PowerShadow.
Grateful somebody correct me if I have got it badly wrong because I want to make the right decision
Thanks
Terry
I am looking for a sandbox/virtualisation freeware for my own system so I decided to try it as I have been doing with Sandboxie.
For the record I am a non Techie no allegiance to any product and will tell it as it is!
PowerShadow has a GUI in contrast to Sandboxie, it is somewhat spoiled by a rather poor english translation from the chinese. I particularly liked the fact that you could choose which mode to enter at bootup.
I have to admit that I struggled to find the euphoria about PowerShadow that a number of forum members have demonstrated. There are a number of limitations, for example you cannot easily switch in and out of sandboxed/virtualised mode (without a reboot) With Sandboxie you can. You have to remember to save files you want to keep from Shadowmode to another hard drive although there are plenty of reminders about this. With Sandboxie this can be done automatically.
Also with PowerShadow I found it difficult to save to an external USB drive. I have two backup programs SyncBack and Backup4All3 despite both programs appearing to backup email changes neither actually did. When I restored from my USB drive there was no change. Yet if I physically copied the mail folder from the ShadowMode to my USB drive it worked when copied back to the hard drive in none shadowmode. I assume there must be a problem with copying from a virtual drive to a USB drive using a backup program. No problems with Sandboxie in this respect.
Sandboxie is limited in the types of progams you can install "sandboxed" it won't accept those that want to install drivers, and like PowerShadow its a pointless exercise if a reboot is required.
So despite Sandboxies crude almost non existent interface it is actually more flexible than PowerShadow and does not require reboots.
To me the differences are so obvious and weighted in Sandboxies favour that I am surprised to have seen so little Sandboxie comment and so much about PowerShadow.
Grateful somebody correct me if I have got it badly wrong because I want to make the right decision
Thanks
Terry