About the new 'free' Prevx1R

This is a thread I start not to discuss about features, stability but about marketing.

I see, the representatives of Prevx1 , touting prevx1r as a 'free' solution, a successor to Prevx Home, but I urge people to read this from their webpage if they haven't yet.

So in effect the 'free' version is a beta. And will always be a beta version of the 'real' version Prevx1. This is unlike the case of PrevX Home vers Pro where both are stable 'final' products in their own right.

The defintion of 'freeware' is one that is debatable but from the point of view of Not recommending products that are beta to less experienced friends and family, it seems that the right thing to do is to not call Prevx1R freeware.

Or at the very least make sure the person you are recommending it, is aware
that "there is a risk. Prevx1R should not be considered or compared with a saleable product. "

Of course for most people in this forum who are skilled users with backups etc this isn't a very big concern. But the people you are recomending it to probably will be less capable of fending for themselves.

Please note: I'm not calling for the debate on the term freeware. Or deploring the marketing strategy of the company in question, this strategy of offering free beta while rare, isn't uncompletely unheard of.

My own limited testing shows Prevx1R to be pretty stable, I managed to BSOD it twice (once running icesword which seems to conflict) . But it appears to be common to the 'real' Prevx1 too.

 

Well, PrevX1R is freeware, but I agree that it's not a product that can be recommended as a free solution to less-experienced folk due to the risks inherent in any beta software.

That said, I've been trying it out for a week or so and it appears to be extremely stable and competent. Any false positives I've seen and reported have been dealt with swiftly by their support team, despite the time of year. In view of that, I would certainly recommend PrevX1 to high-risk internet users who are prepared to pay for security software and who need something capable of protecting them as much as possible. So maybe the marketing is working, since had I been unable to try it out for free, I'd not know how good it was and therefore would probably recommend a competing product to end-users.

 

Well it is definitely betaware, but whether it is also freeware is a debate that comes down to subjective opinions. Ditto for other ware types like lightware, crippleware, time limited demoware, adware,

http://www.pricelessware.org/thelist/glossary.htm

But the most important thing is not the arguments about definitions, but making sure that people you recommend the software are informed about the facts as quoted above.

Well of course if we shell out bucks for it, it will be a different story.

I'm just cautioning against users treating Prevx1R (betaware) as in the same class as Prevx Home (lightware) when they are technically not the same.

I can agree with you about stability, but the important point to note is that the prevx people themselves warn about the extra risks involved and not being able to compare it to a saleable product.

So no matter how stable it seems on my machine, I cannot in good faith recommend prevx1R to less technical people who are looking for a freeware product to use on their production machine, without warning them about the risks.

People who intend to trial it with the intent to buy, should probably use the proper prevx1 trial which lasts for 45 days.

 

I think you're right to do so, DA. One of the things people all too often overlook with betas, too, is that "Free" tag comes with the price of reporting issues. If you don't report any bugs you encounter, then the chances of those bugs being fixed is less likely. Prevx has always proven stable on my systems, but you never know what will happen 5 updates down the road, it's always best to be prepared, and be ready to give the company needed info when the need arises. Unfortunately you're not going to get a lot of community support posting a thread saying "this beta is buggy!"... testers are likely to just respond with "Cool!"

 

I agree with you both, really.

I actually said that having tried out PrevX1R (beta/freeware), I was more than happy to recommend the PrevX1 (non-beta/payware) to users that need it. I would never recommend beta software to anyone other than clued-up people who are prepared to test a beta product correctly, which in my experience is very few people indeed.

 

Beta is beta, which means only for testing purposes by knowledgeable users, who are supposed to report the bugs and suggestions to the approperiate company.
I wouldn't even recommend "Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware Beta1" to other people and certainly not at work.
The same for freeware "IZArc v3.5 beta 3", which can be downloaded by anybody. That's wrong !!!

I thought in the past, that these beta versions were only available for a certain group of people, not for the whole world.
A scaring trend IMO.
A newbie thinks that the word "beta" is a part of the software name, nothing else.

 

I don't think that PrevX can be considered freeware any longer.I mean,is there anyone that is actually PAYING for using a beta?All programs that i know which give a beta software in pubblic release,certainly don't charge for it!
Prevx is as freeware as MS Vista beta is.

 

There are generally different stages of beta releases. The first releases are generally private, and reserved for more serious testers. The public releases usually happen towards the end when all critical bugs are worked out, and it's mostly just minor glitches left.. stuff that wouldn't bring down your system. This is quite normal, and quite acceptable. What I don't like is when the company makes no mention of what Beta means, and what to expect.

Ugh, you'd be surprised. I've encountered some companies that act like it's a privilege for you to beta test for them, and don't offer so much as a "Thanks" afterwards.. Unfortunately I usually found this out after devoting a whole (full-time) work-week's worth of combined time to their program.. that's a whole lot of free labor, when you add it all up.

BTW, since we're on the subject, I started a forum at www.got-beta.com if any of you testers are interested

 

For some reason my installation of Prevx R gets stuck at 90% and just freezes my computer. No way to uninstall, or reinstall. Weird. :T

 

Hi sosaiso,

Yeah, I had a similar problem at 81%. Looking at the messages, I traced it down to uninstalled PrevXHome files in C:\Windows\system32\drivers where I found the following files after removing PrevXHome from Add/Remove list:
PxEmu.sys
pxinst.dll
pxscinst.dll
pxscrmbl.sys
pxtdi.sys

I just moved them all to an archive folder, rebooted, then reinstalled PrevX1R.
It needs to be rebooted to finish the installation, and it may find a few malwares during the installation process - some I found questionable that I think are False Positives, and sent them a report on one. Two others I know are not malware, and one I am still researching.

-- Tom

 

If you hit the "Disagree ?" link, you could specify that you're not sure, and they can research it for you

 

Hi Notok,

Yeah, I did Disagree, but after I researched the issue and ran not only my own PC-Cillin against the file, but uploaded the file to http://virsuscan.jotti.org and the results were that the file was mostly not found and only reported in AVs that get a lot of False Positives and indicated that the file was not entered into the jotti malware database for that reason.

-- Tom

 

Actually, my problem was just with a previous release with PrevxR that could not install with a HOSTS file active.

As for PrevxR there of course will be a lot of false positives because from what I gather, things will be first categorized based on the actions of other people. So, just report to the support team.

 

Well sort of, they make the determinations on their own findings, but if you point out a false positive they'll fix it (as long as it is an actual false positive). I've encountered a few FPs, but nothing like most of the anti-spyware scanners out there (although I've seen a few people around that have, but it's not all that common). I download a lot of software, security and not, and keep a copy of anything that I think looks useful.. that adds up to many gigs of downloaded software.. of that, I've gotten about 5 FPs from the time I started beta testing it (in the very beginning). At this point the only ones that haven't been fixed are riskware.