PerfectDisk Blog from Raxco.com| Defrag Software

Defrag You? Defrag Me!

There's a new lady in the PerfectDisk house. We call her the DefragMe Lady. There's a lot more to come, but you can get a glimpse of her here, at www.defrag-me.com.

Check her out.

                       

PerfectDisk 2008 Command Center Service Pack 1 (Build 60)

PerfectDisk 2008 Command Center Service Pack 1 (Build 60) is now available. Several bugs have been fixed, and the following enhancements have been made:

• Detection of a remote desktop session and ability to set deployment credentials if the Command Center is running under Remote Desktop Connection.
• Added a volume name to email Alert and Warning notifications.
• Added the ability to set a time period when synchronization with PerfectDisk clients will not run. 
• Diagnostics on a local computer now checks the Windows Event Log for Command Center errors.
• Added a button to view local event log to action list on Queue pane and Task Details dialog.
• For the migration of PerfectDisk 8 Command Center database, added a status message of what is currently being migrated.
• Deployment -- A warning message is now shown if the location of installation files is on a mapped network drive.
• Deployment -- the Command Center now does not allow deployment of earlier than Build 52 of PerfectDisk clients.

Existing Command Center users can manually check for updates to update to the latest build.

                    

Q2 Recap

Our preliminary results for the second quarter are in, and we have continued to experience strong growth. Revenue for the quarter (April - June) was up 20.4% over the same period in 2007, with June revenue up over 27% from the previous year. We sold over 370,000 new licenses of PerfectDisk during this period, This growth allows us to continue to make investments in delivering the solutions our users want. While all business areas experienced growth, we saw particular strength in enterprise sales, as the release of the PerfectDisk 2008 Command Center in APril led to several key wins for PerfectDisk. 

Thanks to all of our users and everyone in the growing PerfectDisk user community.

Raxco at TechEd -- Demos and Defrag Me Campaign Kickoff

The Microsoft Tech Ed 2008 IT Professionals show is once again a buzz down in sunny Orlando, Florida.  The show started yesterday and runs through this Friday, with thousands of attendees, and Raxco Software is participating, as usual.

                    

Although we exhibit at this show every year, we’ve been especially excited this year, as we’ve greatly increased our presence at the show. Our new Defrag Me! marketing campaign has kicked off to rave reviews and is creating quite a buzz. We have already given away hundreds of Defrag Me! t-shirts, a few iTouches, and are giving hourly presentations on PerfectDisk 2008 over the duration of the four-day event, to overflow crowds.

                              

On the heels of PerfectDisk winning the Windows IT Pro Editors’ Choice for Best Defragmenter, we are seeing a lot of interest from enterprises of all sizes looking for a flexible, automatic disk defragmentation and optimization tool. It’s also been great to catch up with many of our new and long-time customers.             

Defrag Me! is on – and we’re defragmenting Orlando and beyond.

PerfectDisk 2008 wins Editor's Choice from Windows IT Pro for best enterprise defragmenter

Windows IT Pro Magazine has selected PerfectDisk 2008 as its Editor's Choice for best enterprise disk defragmenter in its upcoming May edition. The review states that PerfectDisk does the best and most thorough defragmenting, is easy-to-use, easy to deploy, offers the best value - well, the words used were "outstanding value" - and is backed up by knowledgeable technical support. We always say don't take our word for it. Try Windows IT Pro's word...

"Best."

      

New today -- PerfectDisk 2008 Command Center, PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware ESX Bundle, PerfectDisk 2008 in German and French

We're excited to be making several major announcements today:

• The PerfectDisk 2008 Command Center is now available for sites requiring a centralized management console. It includes a much-improved user interface, new reports, enhanced reports, improved performance, new deployment options, new installation options, and more. One thing has not changed - it is still offered for free, as we believe centralized management is something businesses should expect in the most robust enterprise defragmentation solution.

          

• PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware ESX Bundle, a turnkey solution that provides a simple yet robust performance optimization solution for sites running VMware ESX Server.

• German and French versions of PerfectDisk 2008 are now available. Click on FR (French) or DE (Germany) in the upper-right hand corner of the Raxco Software website to obtain information and the products in the respective languages.

              

Still more is coming in 2008 - stay tuned.

PerfectDisk 2008 Service Pack 2 (Build 52)

PerfectDisk 2008 SP2 is now available. We have fixed some bugs, and made an enhancement to significantly improve boot time defragmentation performance. Times will vary between machines, but you should see significant improvements in the time it takes to perform a boot time defrag.

New Feature

• Improved boot time defragmentation performance -- up to 5 times faster. Results will vary based on number of files, file sizes and drive size.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed boot time defrag issue on very large drives.
• Occasionally boot time defragmentation passes cannot move a file. Changes were made to minimize this condition.
• A change was made to the boot time defragmentation code to work around changes in Vista SP1. Previously, user may have received a driver conflict message and the boot-time defragmentation pass was skipped.
• When querying files with more than 1000 names, PD91Engine may sometimes crash. This has been fixed.
• During a boot time defragmentation pass on Vista, the computer sometimes failed to reboot after the defragmentation pass completed. This has been fixed.
• Fixed defragmentation schedules that would run "in series" while scheduled "in parallel".
• Added to the Excluded Files tab all files excluded from defragmentation by default.
• Formatted the display of file and drive sizes as xxx.xx.
• Put a higher resolution PerfectDisk icon that is displayed when switching applications via Alt-Tab.
• The file $Secure:$SDS is no longer excluded from online defragmentation.
• Fixed inconsistencies and omissions in PerfectDisk's Support Info.
• Fixed negative value of Number of Clusters on the Drive Properties dialog.
• Fixed not working "?" (Help) icons.
• Fixed statistics errors saved to a file in File Organization Summary section.
• Fixed network port configuration via Config.ini file.
• Fixed find files selection on the drive map for small (~300Mb) drives.

You can "Check For Updates" under the Product Resources tab in PerfectDisk, or wait for Autoupdate.

Q1 thanks

Raxco experienced another strong quarter, with revenue up just under 25% for the first quarter of 2008 compared with 2007. Response to PerfectDisk 2008 has been phenomenal, and all key areas -- consumer, SMB and enterprise -- experienced significant growth. We also completed infrastructure updates to help accommodate the huge increase in download activity we experience every day. We increased staff to help us keep up with demand.

I want to thank all the Raxco employees and partners for their above-and-beyond efforts to keep us moving forward and never being satisfied. Every day we are amazed to receive emails from people such as Jay in Tennessee, who, after working through a customer service issue with our team, wrote "...in the 25 years that I have owned and worked with PCs, you provide the best software, value and customer support that I have ever experienced, by far..." We appreciate that feedback, but we know whatever happened yesterday won't carry us forward. So we continue to look at everything we do to try to improve it all.

But most of all, I want to thank our customers around the world for their continued support. We know times are tough, and we appreciate every home user, every small business, and every major enterprise that is fueling our growth.

And there's more to come in Q2. We announced a major expansion on the international front today with software distributor Lifeboat Distribution, which strengthens our position outside North America. The PerfectDisk 2008 Command Center will be released soon, and there's more to come on the VMware front. German, French and Japanese versions of PerfectDisk 2008 are close to being released.

As Albert Einstein said, "life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."

We intend to.

PerfectDisk 2008 for Windows Home Server -- now with WHS console integration

A new build of PerfectDisk 2008 for Windows Home Server is now available. This build includes full integration with the Windows Home Server console.

Existing users should uninstall their existing version of PerfectDisk 2008 for Windows Home Server and install the new version via the link here. For new users, when you purchase the product in the Raxco software ecommerce store, you will have access to the latest build that includes the console integration.

Installation instructions can be found here.

Thanks to everyone for your patience as we put together this console integration. We've maintained our pricing for PerfectDisk 2008 for Windows Home Server, so it is far and away the best deal out there. And when you add in things like Space Restoration Technology with total free space consolidation, SMARTPlacement optimization, and complete NTFS metadata defragmentation at no extra cost, it's a great value.

As Microsoft says, "Your family. Your stuff. Together." We'll add -- "All that stuff -- faster."

            

Top 10 reasons to use PerfectDisk during the recession

It may not be officially declared by the ones that make such declarations, but with this week's cover stories entitled Recession and You, Bracing for The Slide and Waking up to the Recession, from Information Week, Computerworld and Business Week respectively, I'd say if we're not there yet in the U.S., we're close. Here at Raxco, we're actually on pace for another record-setting year, but we know times are getting tough. And just maybe, PerfectDisk 2008 is the answer to your recession woes.

                 

Here's a list of the Top 10 Reasons to use PerfectDisk During a Recession.

      

#10 Bitmap and Fragmeter provide good, clean, free entertainment

#9   Save time and resources with single-pass defrag rather than attempting to defrag over and over and over again with a multi-pass defragger

#8   Flexible scheduling options allow you to schedule a defrag run while you're out looking for a job

#7   Run all your Windows Home Server clients for a single low price, leaving more money for food and gas, rather than the alternative that charges you for every copy

#6   Take advantage of improved performance with MFT placement so you can track your declining investments more quickly

#5   Defragment and report on all your NTFS metadata so you can tell your friends using other defraggers that they didn't get what they paid for -- defragmentation of their entire drive

#4   Defragment the Hibernate file so you can feel confident you aren't ending up with more fragmentation when you're off your laptop and watching CNBC for the latest on the recession

#3   Use Selected Files Defrag to defragment just your resumes, which keep getting updated

#2   Total free space consolidation so you can delete those ancient free credit offers and still have a clean drive with plenty of contiguouse free space to store your new threatening bank notices

And the #1 reason for use PerfectDisk 2008 during the recession:

Large drives, patented optimization...every feature - no extra charges means NO RIPOFF!