Will there be more updates to TI9 Home?

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by tachyon42, Oct 8, 2006.

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  1. dbknox

    dbknox Registered Member

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    Another problem with not fixing version 9 is that there are still some of us that are running windows 98se as our choice of os and True image 10 does not support win 98se so we cannot update to version 10. The only thing that will help us is a fix for version 9. If I was Acronis, I would not take the chance of losing all the help that is supplied in this forum by upsetting people like Menorcaman, foghorne, the weaz, seekforever and so many others that have helped us in the past.
    To them I say thank-you all of you for your time and support.
     
  2. Spaghetticodebuyer

    Spaghetticodebuyer Registered Member

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    Forums regulars do a lot of unpaid beta testing, support and promotion for Acronis. They would be barking mad to throw that away.

    I doubt Acronis have the resources to fix ATIH 9 and do everything else necessary. Cheapest and simplest would be a free version of ATI 10 for anyone on the forum with a significant problem with 9. Overnight it would turn an army of doubters back into an asset.
     
  3. Menorcaman

    Menorcaman Retired Moderator

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    Hi Matthias,

    For me, TI has never, ever, failed to carry out what I consider to be its primary function i.e. successfully restore a Disk/Partition image. However, TI 9.0 Home Build 3677 has a number of hardware/software-independent problems in less critical areas that I would hope have been addressed in TI 10.0. Are you able to advise whether the following anomalies have been fixed?

    <Build 3567 - Unnecessary Verification?>
    <Does Acronis take account of deleted folders in differential backups?>
    <TI 9.0 Build 3666 Direct to DVD Imaging - Still Some Problems>
    <Boot Mode Files & Folders Restore: PDF file corrupt and unreadable>
    <Bug Report - Bootable Rescue DVD Selection Screen>

    Regards
     
  4. Xpilot

    Xpilot Registered Member

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    That does rather assume that TI 10 has fixed all the outstanding problems of TI9. IT HAS NOT.
    It has instead added a heap of largely valueless additional features complete with their own set of bugs and failings.

    True Image HOME is what we are talking about. The user guide now runs to 95 pages ! I cannot guess the sort of audience that it aimed at. For the average home user it has become an unfathomable monster. I wonder how many will buy it and then drop it as an unusable complex system they would rather do without.

    It took me a short time to work out what features I really needed with version 8. It was much less complicated then than version 9 and now version 10, to a brand new home user, will take a lot of study to be able to use it at all.

    Acronis always advise users to update to the latest build and even recommend that users move to the latest version and yet they will not put their own house in order. Inadequate support for the latest hardware and a reluctance to adapt to the latest linux upgrades is inexcusable.

    I have been a great supporter of True Image and have recommended it to many as well as using it myself but disillusionment and even despair are creeping up rapidly.

    Xpilot
     
  5. Spaghetticodebuyer

    Spaghetticodebuyer Registered Member

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    Nope. 10 does not have to be perfect for it to be a better option than 9 because Acronis is more likely to fix problems in the current version 10 than the old version 9.

    Edit: And it is much better for Acronis to have forum regulars doing unpaid beta testing, support and promotion for the current version than to have them grumbling about faults in an old version.
     
  6. Christopher_NC

    Christopher_NC Registered Member

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    I think there are separate issues here.

    One, how well True Image does what it says it does. If an operation can't run as stated in the user guide, then it should be fixed, or that feature clearly marked as non-functional, and users advised.

    Two, how Acronis deals with the issues and bugs that arise. Promising timely fixes that don't materialize does not inspire confidence.

    Three, how Acronis deals with their customers. Changes can be made well, or poorly. I don't see how releasing a new version and leaving everyone hanging who has asked for clarification of the future of the current version makes good business sense.

    Fixing bugs and issues alone, be it in Version 9 or Version 10, is not the sole issue, at least not for me. And whether or not I spend $30 is not the issue either, and I doubt the price of the upgrade is at the core of many people's frustrations.

    If we trust this product, and the company that creates and supports it, then many will opt to go forward, offering support, and upgrading when useful, in an admittedly less than perfect software and hardware marketplace.

    -- Christopher
     
  7. foghorne

    foghorne Registered Member

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    Define widely used. Is ATI widely used compared with MS Office for example.

    As usual Howard I think you playing sematics with your loose language, It seems your only motivation on this forum is provoke unproductive discussion and quote your website address at people. All the views you come up with are so wide of the mark your participation makes me suspicious.

    F.
     
  8. foghorne

    foghorne Registered Member

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    Hi Atomic_Ed

    Sorry I don't buy it. I have developed commerical software for many years. If a feature is advertised it needs to be provided. There is no room for saying sorry I know I said this version would have feature x and it will work - but we can't afford it so tough titties.

    That's not the real world as far as I see it. Any provider of goods or services needs to realise the long game is in meeting customers' expectations. Oh hang on in this case who was it that gave us those expectations. Oh yeah Acronis. They promised, they took our cash, they have an obligation to deliver.

    F.
     
  9. max0071

    max0071 Registered Member

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    Don't you guys get it. Acronis has been using you. You "gurus" are the only reason that my 9.3677 works for me. I would have been long gone had it not been for Christopher NC, Menorcaman, Xpilot, Starsfans and Bvolk just to name a few. At first I thought you guys were being paid by Acronis (you weren't), but you should have been.

    I'm sure i'm not the only idiot newbie who stuck around only cause they were getting support in this forum. Acronis should be paying you cause they are asleep. Even though its gonna hurt me personally not to have you guys around when I no doubt run into a problem, the biggest loser is Acronis. People will at first no doubt buy 10, but without the support you guys give they will do what was my first instinct, and that I'll take the monetary loss but I gotta move on to a more friendly backup/image program.

    I hope for this forums sake (and me) that you guys do stick. However, the real losers are the guys buying 10. It sounds so much more sophisticated and complex than 9. These guys with 10 basically have no support if the experts are gone. I doubt, but hope that Acronis gives you the response you need to stick around.

    You guys and this room sold me on 9 and now I'm somewhat proficient for my simple purposes in using 9.1. I would dread the thought of having to go to 10and not having the backup that this forum use to provide. I'll be around reading the posts and seeing how this all unfolds. Good luck and if things don't go your way, I would like to thank all those who have helped me to get to where I am with 9.1. I could never understand that my "basic" questions were answered with patience and courtesy that they did not deserve.

    The issues I raised were basic and as I later learned were asked previously and I was redundant and obvious, but the regular posters humored me and walked me thru it. I can never thank you enough. I hope this works out for the better, so I can count on you guys.

    Once again thanks to all.
     
  10. bodgy

    bodgy Registered Member

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    I get the feeling that the Acronis decision has been such a long time coming that;

    1. They hope this issue will just run out of steam, and everyone will slink away.

    2. The gap between the statement and the release of v10, has now grown to such an extent they've made the problem of accomodating the major niggles to v9 a problematical one.

    They can't now offer a free upgrade to v9 users, because v10 users who were v9 users will be upset.

    They can't now say, only those who've lodged a support ticket with us can have an upgrade or update - as there will be the v9 -> 10's problem plus of course some people won't have raised a ticket, just use some of the workarounds, hoping for the problem to be resolved (as promised in the various Acronis replies) and apply the update when available.

    Acronis seems to have forgotten about goodwill of the business to it's customers, the power of word of mouth advertising, or the opposite in some cases.

    Goodwill can be far more powerful than many $K's of advertising (I use to work for a company that rarely advertises, and relies totally on reputation and word of mouth to gain business. The UK'ers here may well be able to guess the name of the retail chain to whom this applies).

    Acronis, all that is being asked for, is to fix the most reported bugs for v9 - which hopefully haven't been carried over to v10 - new chipsets that have appeared after your final beta testing of v10 don't have to be accomodated for v9 users - you have v10 for that - but the DVD burning problem, the Linux wireless/usb problem and a couple of others should be solved as advertised by pronouncements on this forum by Acronis representatives.

    True you might not get v9 users moving to v10 immediately, but we are unlikely to move to v10 at all, even if we all troll off and buy Vista, if we haven't been completely satisfied with v9 and the promised fixings of problems.

    From a marketing point of view, there should have been a final upgrade to v9 no less than 1 month before the release of v10 in my opinion. Then people would have been more willing to look at the new features of v10 and decide whether they were going to make the move.

    Of course only Acronis have access to the sales figures and may have had enough of an uptake on v10 full and upgrade to be able to p*#s off their v9 users.

    Colin
     
  11. MSprecher

    MSprecher Registered Member

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    Hi Menorcaman,


    first of all let me say thank you for your very helpful tips in this forum during the last year. In contrast to Acronis support asking for "report.txt", "sysinfo.txt" and promising to forward the information to the developement team, you confirmed a lot of problems we all had, often you even had a workaround for it.

    For me as a former Ghost-user the main purpose of TI is to reliably backup and restore my harddisks on external USB or Firewire drives and in some rare cases on MO-Disks or DVDs.
    The main problem for me with TI9 and its infamous (sometimes false) corrupt archive-messages was: I could not trust it and that is one of the worst things that can happen with backup software, isn´t it?

    Since I always restore from Bootmanager (F11) or from Rescue-CD I cannot confirm whether this bug has been fixed.

    Till now I have not come across this problem. But I shall have an eye on this.

    As described in an earlier post for me the only problem now is that the writing speed cannot be reduced for some incompatible media. I am not willing to buy special media for TI. What I can say for sure is that the verification process is now successful on DVD+R and DVD+RW media from Rescue-CD or from within windows.

    I never do this kind of restore. In this case I copy files and folders from a mounted backup. Sorry, that I can not say.

    Regards
    Matthias
     
  12. Menorcaman

    Menorcaman Retired Moderator

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    Hi again Matthias,

    Thanks for taking the time to respond.

    Is that by setting the option to validate as part of the image creation task or after the event via the Backup Archive Validation Wizard? It's the former that revealed the endless loop anomaly.

    Unfortunately, there remains a question mark over which, if any, of the common reported problems have been fixed in TI 10 Home. I guess the only way we will find out is for Acronis Support to answer the original question or some adventurous/inquisitive TI 10 users to undertake the necessary specific testing.

    Regards
     
  13. bVolk

    bVolk Registered Member

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    You may add to the above the bug that requires all the intermediate differential files to be available to validate the last one, even if they aren't required for restore.
     
  14. Menorcaman

    Menorcaman Retired Moderator

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    Hi bVolk,

    I agree that the anomaly detailed in this previous thread titled <Problem with Differential Backups> is also hardware-independent and could therefore be added to the list. However, I have a sneaky feeling that Acronis may have decided that this is a "feature" :)dry:) and have covered it off by inserting the following statement into Chapter 10.1 of the TI 9.0 Home User's Guide:

    Regards
     
  15. bVolk

    bVolk Registered Member

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    Hello there Menorcaman,

    That's very interesting indeed ...

    In the thread you refer to, on Feb. 26th 2006 Acronis Support wrote:

    "Our Development Team is aware of this issue and will do their best in order to fix it as soon as possible."

    So they did. :D

    OK, let's be tollerant then and not insist on a final build of TI9. A final edition of the TI9 User's Guide with the peculiarities and limitations clearly stated will do. :D

    Past promises notwithstanding.
     
  16. bVolk

    bVolk Registered Member

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    Seriously now:

    I do plan to write down a note listing the procedures to avoid in TI9 and send it to the friends I recommended True Image to.
     
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2006
  17. starsfan09

    starsfan09 Registered Member

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    bVolk,
    I'd like a copy of what you write...in case I ever want to use Acronis to its fullest potentials. Remember, I'm one of the few that uses only the "Recovery Boot-CD" for everything. At this point, I only make Full Backups. Who knows,...that could change one day.:) :cool:
     
  18. MSprecher

    MSprecher Registered Member

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    Hello Menorcaman,

    Since TI10 does not allow to burn incompatible media at a lower speed I have to burn with Nero. Therefore the validation is in a separate process form the resue-cd or from within windows. With TI9 every such verification of DVD+R-Media failed in the past.

    Kind regards
    Matthias
     
  19. Atomic_Ed

    Atomic_Ed Registered Member

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    I do agree with you 100% on this and my views from previous post were more of how I see the current situation where it stands now. There is no doubt I believe as you do that the customer should be adequately taken care of when promises about a product are made and not delivered. Unfortunately, I have watched in disgust really, over the past 10 or so years now where many companies have moved away from the concept of doing the right things and embraced cost cutting measure which always inevetiably cause the customer grief. This has further perpetuated in the past 3 or 4 years now to even encompass the elimination of skilled worker positions in favor for yet even further cost savings by using third world labor. Now keep in mind I am not knocking third world workers by any means but the sad part is that many companies exploit these people to save money and do not even provide them with adequate training or systems to properly support the customer. What they do end up with is a bean counter's paper savings without any regard for the true cost which is hidden to them where loyal customers and sales start to drop off from all the nonsense.

    Anyhow, as I said I agree they should make it right but unfortunately based on the amount of time this has gone on without official word as to what they will do about it and the fact that it is evident to me they took some sort of direction or decision with v9 that they are now not financially willing to accept. So based on these things with the current situation, I do feel my suggestion more of a compromise on the customer's part but possibly something Acronis might realistically consider. I still do believe their products are of real value to me and regardless of the situation with this being their fault, I really do not want to see them fail in the long run by losing customers over it. Of course this type of compromise is not something I would likely do again with them if they do not learn from whatever mistakes caused the issues and we find ourselves down the road again in the same boat as now.

    I have been hoping for years that some shred of quality and customer commitment will return again but sad to say it appears it hasn't and yet gotten even worse.
     
  20. bulldog356

    bulldog356 Registered Member

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    OK, well that's it for me. If none of you guys are going to provide help here, then I'm not going help either.

    Actually...I don't provide help here...I usually ask for help. But if I could provide help then I won't from now on.

    We can complain about Acronis, but I came here from Norton <ptui!>Ghost. This conversation would never happen with Ghost...because there are no user forums in Symantec-land. And you won't hear from a Symantec dev under any circumstances, just clueless script readers.

    Sure, True Image has its faults and quirks. Ghost is worse. Symantec is worse. I'll take True Image any day. Which is not to let anybody at Acronis off the hook, of course. I'm only saying that I'd sooner through my lot in with these bums than the ones over at Sin-mantec.
     
  21. max0071

    max0071 Registered Member

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    wow......the movement gains momentum...........what will be the resolution......interesting
     
  22. foghorne

    foghorne Registered Member

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    Sadly, I suspect Acronis' strategy here is to ignore the situation until it goes away. I hope I'm wrong.

    F.
     
  23. mareke

    mareke Registered Member

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    I never upgraded to version 9.0 since 8.0 works perfectly on my computer and today I get an email telling me version 10.0 is out and inviting me to buy it. I won't be doing this after the bugs I read about in this forum to do with version 9.0. It surprises me that Acronis would bring out a new version so quickly after version 9.0 hasn't been out that long. I'll buy version 10.0 if and when I need it but not until it's been out a while and any major bugs are fixed. I'm happy with version 8.0 and am glad I didn't upgrade just for the sake of it and if version 9.0 still has unresolved flaws Acronis should either continue to work to resolve them or give version 9.0 owners a special discount on version 10.0 or even a free upgrade if it doesn’t intend to resolve the issues remaining in version 9.0.
     
  24. foghorne

    foghorne Registered Member

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    Hi mareke

    or you could wait for AT11 which will probably be out in the next 9-12 months. From (hazy) memory :

    v1.0 2002
    V7.0 2003
    V8.0 2004
    V9.0 2005
    V10.0 2006
    V11.0 2007 ? ?

    F.
     
  25. kendor

    kendor Registered Member

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    Reading this thread is, to quote another participant, scary. An uneasy question is popping up in my mind. Has Acronis perhaps decided that backup programs don't have a profitable future with the impending inclusion in Vista of the similar, free backup utility mentioned in other posts? Perhaps Acronis is just extracting the last few drops of milk from TI before moving to new pastures.

    Or, less dramatically, Acronis may feel that the best way to counter the threat to TI's survival is to keep ahead of MS by offering all sorts of new bells and whistles. This might explain why attention seems to have been diverted from fundamental issues that remain unattended to. I suspect that professional IT reviewers' reviews are what sells a product more than any other factor, and my broad impression of such reviews is that they tend to focus on bells and whistles with nary a glance at what users are actually saying on users' groups. In fact, I sometimes womder if the reviwers just read one another's reviews.

    I hope that both surmises are wrong, but Acronis' failure to come into the thread effectively in the face of such trenchant criticism is, I think, unlike them and leads me to wonder whether some serious soul-searching is taking place. A vibrant, knowledgeable users group is a great asset for any program - and saves the software developer a mint of money in technical support - so why else would Acronis risk jeopardising the participation in this group of so many experts? This all would not seem to augur well for us, the users.

    Ken
     
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