"Try&Decide" is like a "DeepFreeze" but buggy?

Hi all,

It appears that the new 2009 feature "Try&Decide" is a take on Faronics "Deep Freeze" and other similar products. Am i correct?

Also, from the threads i have been reading, "Try&decide" appears to be a little buggy.

 

Doesn't Try & Decide use the Acronis Secure Zone to create a current image and then reboots so you can try the new software. Then, if you decide it's not going well you revert back to the previous image from the Secure Zone?

I have not used this because it seems like a waste of time for me as I generally make an image of a perfectly working system before installing any major software so that if the new product is garbage, I just restore the last image. I guess that's my own manual method that T&D does in a more automated fashion.

I prefer to use Microsoft Virtual PC to create a virtual machine in which I install new software to try. If it works well in that I install in on the host. No imaging necessary. All other software I install are major products (such as Photoshop) which don't require a try and decide but can require a try and see if it interferes with anything else before loading more software.

The worst part about T&D I can see is that I believe it requires a Secure Zone and I don't have that set up. I just use a second hard drive for all my images.

Sorry, not much of an answer. More of a discussion....!

 

Try & Decide does not create any images and does not need a reboot to start. When activated it intercepts all disk activity and redirects it to the Acronis Secure Zone. It only takes a few seconds to start and if you don't like the results you can just reject them and reboot. The main advantage that Try&decide has over a full backup is speed. It takes seconds to set up and a reboot to restore or a minute or two if you decide to accept the changes.

It is great if you want to quickly test a small piece of software or mess with some registry settings. ATI2009 will allow you to continue testing over reboots but only protects one partition whereas ATI11 will protect all partitions but the testing does not carry across reboots. There is a performance hit however that varies according to your hardware.

The main issues some people have had with try&decide are
(a) It may not work at all.
(b) It does not carry across reboots.
(c) It does not want to leave try&decide mode.

I have had none of these problems. In fact I never had a problem with ATI11 or ATI2009 Try&Decide.It works great for me and I always use it for testing small programs or messing with the registry. To test large programs I do a backup.

You should also bear in mind that this is a support forum and that people only come here when they have a problem and are frequently quite upset about their issue. As a result, it is difficult to tell whether any of these problems are rare or common. But you should bear them in mind and do a backup before using Try&Decide for the first time just in case you happen to run into one of these problems.

 

thanks guys,

I always have several backups of my system so i'll give T&D a whirl.