After working on hundreds of computers with our Cloudeight Direct Computer Care service we’ve discovered that a lot of people are using programs we once recommended but which we don’t recommend anymore. And while it may seem like we’re being capricious, we’re not. Things change and as they do we have to keep an eye on things — because sometimes change is not always for the better. Nothing is as certain as change — it’s too bad that when things change they don’t always get better.<\/p>\n
We have been remiss in not keeping you updated about the programs we once recommended which, because of changes developers made to the programs, we’re no longer recommending.<\/p>\n
So today we’re going to start a list of programs we don’t recommend any longer. With a brief explanation as to why.<\/p>\n
1. Avast
\nWe can no longer recommend Avast. This once great free anti-virus has grown into an unmanageable suite that affects your computer from Web browsing to its useless email scanning. Avast has turned into Norton Jr. We don’t like Norton and never have – so we cannot recommend the new incarnation of Avast. Our recommendation — uninstall it and install Microsoft Security Essentials.<\/p>\n
2. AVG
\nIt’s been years since we’ve recommended AVG — but at one time we did. AVG became Norton Jr. long before AVAST. But AVG is even worse than AVAST because at least once in the past year it was listed as “Not recommended” by an independent anti-virus testing lab. AVG’s basic anti-virus protection is questionable and its suite has too many tentacles. It needs to go. Replace it with MSE.<\/p>\n
3. Advanced System Care (free or paid versions)
\nWe once thought this suite of system maintenance and system repair tools was a good bet, but not anymore. After seeing it in action on dozens of computers we can’t see where it does any good. It uses resources and isn’t useful for much of anything except running in the background and trying to up-sell you to the paid version. Verdict: Dump it<\/p>\n
4. Digital Lifeboat
\nDigital Lifeboat was our freeware pick of the week last year. It was in beta then and they were offering users who helped them test the software unlimited cloud storage space. A year later, Digital Lifeboat seems to cause many users problems, it users a lot of network bandwidth, and consumes huge amounts of resources. We’re really sorry that Digital Lifeboat didn’t make all the improvements that were planned. While it was in beta testing we were willing to give it a break, but no more. There are better cloud storage \/ syncing programs available like DropBox and SugarSync. If you want to store your files in the cloud for safekeeping that’s fine — but we can’t recommend Digital Lifeboat anymore, if for no other reason than it consumes far too much of your computer’s resources.<\/p>\n
As we think of more programs we used to recommend that we don’t anymore — we’ll add them to this list.<\/p>\n
One more thing we want to mention here is that we have never recommended any “PC Speedup” software. None of them work, all of them start with Windows, some of them can cause big problems, and not a single one of them does anything to speed up your computer. You don’t need a PC-speeder-upper program. Well, you might need to speed up your PC but those programs aren’t going to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After working on hundreds of computers with our Cloudeight Direct Computer Care service we’ve discovered that a lot of people are using programs we once recommended but which we don’t recommend anymore. And while it may seem like we’re being capricious, we’re not. Things change and as they do we have to keep an eye on things —\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1655,1656,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4405"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4406,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4405\/revisions\/4406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}