AccessWatch

Review added for Talking Communities Web Confrensing version 7.5

Jamie Pauls — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:16:23 +0000

This is an alert to let you know that ccrispin has just added a review for Talking Communities Web Confrensing version 7.5. You may read it by using the following link:

http://www.accesswatch.info/reviewdisplay.php?pid=207

Reviews For Auslogics Disk Defrag version 1.4.12

Jamie Pauls — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 01:54:43 +0000

Reviews For Auslogics Disk Defrag version 1.4.12
Average Rating: 4 Based On 2 Reviews
Date: March 13, 2008, 11:13:55am
user:
gepley
computer: Intel Celeron D, 3.33GHZ, 2 GB RAM & AMD Turion 64 Mobile, 1.58GHZ, 1 GB
RAM
operating system: Windows XP Media Center & XP Pro
screen reader: JAWS 9
rating: 4
comments: Auslogics Disk Defrag is a disk defragmentation program, like Microsoft’s
Disk Defragmenter tool… Start menu, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter…
only it’s a great deal faster than Microsoft’s tool.
It’s also free, so the price is right!
Disk defragmentation occurs on your computer over time, as you add and delete files.
Bits and pieces of your files can become spread over various parts of your computer’s
hard drive, so the disk drive head has to move about over various areas of the drive
to access the file, which can produce a noticeable loss in speed of your computer.
Disk defragmentation programs, like Auslogics Disk Defrag, take the defragmented
files and write them back on the drive as the single files they originally were,
so the drive head can access the file later in a single place.
For years, you’ve either had to tolerate the extremely slow performance of Microsoft’s
Disk Defragmenter tool, or you’ve had to go buy software to do the job faster. Auslogics
Disk Defrag is finally a free solution that works, and works well, even with screen
readers, and, as it’s free, you can’t beat the price.
When you run the program, you’re presented with a friendly wizard-type screen that
lists your various drives, along with “Next”, “Help” and “Close” buttons. You simply
select your drive from the list… it’s usually drive C:, and I’ve found this to
be the default… then you can either tab to the “Next” button or press Alt+N for
“Next”, and the program gets started on defragmenting your drive.
You can tab around to various buttons after this, to pause the process, stop it,
get help or close the software. I’m not really sure why there’s both a close and
a stop. I usually pause, stop or allow the program to do its job. I haven’t really
run any benchmarks on the software, but in my experience, whereas Microsoft’s Disk
Defragmenter might take several hours to do the job, Auslogics Disk Defrag tends
to take perhaps a half hour to an hour, so you get some idea of how much faster it
is.
I’ve found the software quite stable, and it seems to do the job it’s designed to
do without causing any strange disk errors or other system problems, which one usually
expects to find with some free system utility software of this type.
The only complaint I really have about Auslogics Disk Defrag is the screen that’s
displayed while the software’s doing its job… the screen with the pause, stop,
help and close buttons I mentioned. If you want to see the various statistics on
what the program’s finding on your system as it’s doing its job, you’ll need to switch
to your mouse cursor to read the screen. This is the reason I gave the program a
4 rating instead of a 5, and maybe I’m being a touch picky here, but it would also
be possible to have the various stats in a read-only edit window so screen reader
users don’t need to use the mouse cursor or other means to read the information.
Had this feature been there, I’d have given the program a 5 rating.
The software does let you display a report once it’s done, which is an HTML file
shown in your web browser, which is nice, because this makes the report accessible.
Caution: Auslogics has changed its installer for this program a bit as of this version,
apparently because they offer some other programs. I noticed that the installer for
this version wants to create an Auslogics program group in your Start menu, with
the Disk Defrag group inside that, which is different from previous versions. Therefore,
I recommend you uninstall any previous version before installing this one, unless
you don’t mind clutter in your Start menu.
Auslogics also has a registry defrag tool, but I tend to stay away from these, as
a general rule, because I’ve never found that they help a lot with overall system
performance or startup, and can sometimes do more harm than good. The reviews I’ve
read on the registry defrag tool would seem to generally back me up on this, but
I’ll leave the use of such a tool up to you.
However, I do highly recommend Auslogics Disk Defrag, for its speed, ease of use
and accessibility… it’s such a joy to find a system utility tool like this that
doesn’t require scripts or other screen reader kludges, that’s just written right,
and does the job for you… and… you can’t beat the free price tag!
Date: March 13, 2008, 1:51:34pm
user:
marrie
computer: hp pivillion laptop
operating system: windows xpsp2
screen reader: jaws 7.0
rating: 4
comments: I would also give this program a 4. it slowed my system down for a second
and it’s currently using about 76 percent of my cpu. The installer was fast though
and very easy to use. The web site is at

http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag

accesswatch review system custom -designed by
Tyson Treasure

Reviews For AVG Anti-Virus version 7.5

Jamie Pauls — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:44:30 +0000

Average Rating: 5 Based On 1 Reviews
Date: March 02, 2008, 6:45:21pm
user:
jajoehl
computer: Dell Inspiron
operating system: Windows Vista Home
screen reader: JAWS version 9.0.552U
rating: 5
comments: AVG Antivirus has now been updated to version 7.5, and from what I can
tell the program is basically no different from earlier versions. There has been
some tweaking of the virus definitions and other minor enhancements. The program
may be downloaded for free from
http://
www.savemybutt.com. Click on the Downloads link and you should find it straight
away. I had to hunt around and have assistance at Grisoft’s website, but I could
independently download the program at the other website.
accesswatch review system custom -designed by
Tyson Treasure

Review For Kaspersky Antivirus version 2007

Jamie Pauls — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:24:05 +0000

Average Rating: 1 Based On 2 Reviews
Date: March 01, 2008, 2:29:23pm
user:
ari
computer: Laptop
operating system: Windows XP Home
screen reader: JAWS 9
rating: 1
comments: This mini review is to basically tell you that, if you like to change settings,
or basically do anything at all with your antivirus or security suite, Kaspersky
is definitely not for you. This program is a full internet security suite, but there’s
really hardly anything to go on as a blind person. You can install the program, but
when you open it via the programs menue, even if you use your other cursors, you
can’t move to anything. There is a system tray icon, but the only option in it was
about kaspersky, you can’t even get to the settings to start a scan, check for updates
or change firewall settings. It will run in the background for you though, and I
know some blind people just bought it and have it on, but I’ve got no idea what they’ll
do if they become infected if the window is inaccessible, nor even if they’ll be
notified in an accessible way that they were infected. I was so disappointed with
this program, that I didn’t even try and see what happens when I try and access the
internet with aplications, to see how the firewall would react. Really sad story
of a totally inaccessible program, this program is really utter rubbish.

Review added for Spyware Terminator version 2.1

Jamie Pauls — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:56:38 +0000

This is an alert to let you know that gepley has just added a review for Spyware Terminator version 2.1. You may read it by using the following link:

http://www.accesswatch.info/reviewdisplay.php?pid=201

Review added for Replay Music version 3

Jamie Pauls — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 03:55:19 +0000

This is an alert to let you know that petrogia has just added a review for Replay Music version 3. You may read it by using the following link:

http://www.accesswatch.info/reviewdisplay.php?pid=0000000198

AccessWatch Gets An Update

Jamie Pauls — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 21:46:20 +0000

I didn’t realize how long it had been since I updated the AccessWatch web site until I undertook the project this afternoon. You won’t see any drastic changes in the site, but if you look arefully you should notice some changes. Stay tuned for more improvements.

AccessWatch Finds a New Home

Jamie Pauls — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:58:11 +0000

Greetings AccessWatch Users:

Over the past four days I have written to you more than I have over the past three years. I told you the AccessWatch review system appeared to be in trouble. I sent a couple of you into a panic when I suggested the worst-case scenario I was looking at regarding the cost of maintaining the site. I asked for honest feedback regarding whether or not users would be able or willing to subscribe to the site. A few of you were willing to do so, but most of you stated candidly that, although you would hate to see the review system go away, you didn’t use it anywhere nearly enough to justify paying for it. I visited with people smarter than me about what I did and didn’t need in the way of a web host. I read dozens of reviews on the Internet regarding a myriad of Web host providers. I am amazed at how negative most of those reviews are. I looked at pricing and wore Tyson out on Skype batting ideas back and forth. I took the review system offline for an evening and spent the rest of the time reconfiguring the Victor Reader Stream discussion list to reflect the fact that I had been given the position of list moderator by the former owners. Tyson called GoDaddy with our AccessWatch database issues and, while one tech support person was able to replicate the problem, the advance team running all their scripts on the database was unable to replicate the problems we have been having. I put the site back online for a day and found that it worked marginally at best. Thanks Blake for managing to get one more review up while the site was still really unstable. Tyson continued to scour the Net for any affordable Web hosting company who had decent customer reviews. He sent me a link to ICDSoft.com last night. I read some very positive reviews about the company and decided to sign up with them today. So here is where we stand.

AccessWatch is up and running at its new home. The review system is working again. Be aware that after you activate the submit button, you will need to wait about 15 seconds for the review to go through. That feels like an eternity when you’re waiting, but just be patient.

I have 60 days to decide whether this new host is going to work out. If it doesn’t, I most likely will take the review system down. The new guys are a bit more expensive and give me less storage space, not that storage is a big issue for me now. Nevertheless, if ICDSoft can’t deliver what I need, I might as well stay with GoDaddy. I need you all to submit as many reviews as you can reasonably think of. Let’s put the system through its paces in the next two months. Oh, by the way, the site is still free!

For the person who requested that I find a way to post reviews on the blog, I’m looking into that as well. Stay tuned.

Happy holidays from the AccessWatch staff. (That would be Tyson and me.) Can we be staff if we don’t get paid? (smile)

Back Online? We’ll See!

Jamie Pauls — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 03:58:03 +0000

I decided to bring the review system online again this evening to see what would happen. Low and behold, I was able to add a review for Studio Recorder. If you are receiving these messages, try to submit a review or two and let’s see if this thing will actually fly. I may still switch web hosts. Reviews for ICDSoft.com look pretty good. If anyone knows about these guys, drop me a line or leave a comment on the blog. GoDaddy can’t seem to consistently replicate my database problems on their end and apparently neither can I. Stay tuned for more details!

The Exciting News I Promised Yesterday

Jamie Pauls — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:52:44 +0000

I told you yesterday about some exciting news I wanted to share with you but was not at liberty to divulge at the time. Well now I can tell you that I am the new moderator of the Victor Reader Stream discussion list. Whether you are interested in purchasing a Stream or you already own one and want to visit with other users about how to more efficiently use it, this list may be of help. Send a message to vrstream-request@freelists.org with the word subscribe in the subject.