Hi Alec,
Thanks for the post. I'm sure DK users will appreciate that. I personally don't have a DK license so it's much a-do about nothing for me. Although I was just thinking earlier today about what a load of crap it is that Norton Calls their 2001-2002 (possibly 2003) scandisk product Norton Disk Doctor. Which is false advertising in my book. It should really be called Norton Scandisk UI or something else that reflects the fact that their application is nothing but a UI to the scandisk features already built into the OS. The reason I think they should divulge this is because what if you're having disk problems and you buy Norton Utilities or SystemWorks specifically, because you know they too have a Scandisk product and you're hoping that it might be the one that has the right features to fix the your problem. I think you'd be extremely disapointed to find out that it's nothing more than a significantly easier to use verion of the ScanDisk that comes with Windows. I think the interface is excellent and like the product just fine. I simply question the concept of making the functionality appear as their own.
Adios Amigo,
Christian

One thing I do know, regarding norton disk doctor, is when you scan active disks like c: or ones with pagefile or open files. it wont scan them online and requires a reboot to scan them. Then at reboot the normal chkdsk.exe scans it, same as running chkdsk. I too have always thought this was rather weak. Seeing as how all it does it call chkdsk for rebooting checking, I would not be surprised if that's all it does for realtime scanning.

Hi Alec and duhmez,
The main defraging program I use is SystemSuite 3.0's Defrag. However they're usage monitoring tool causes I/O crashes. So I disabled that and now everything works fine, slower, but fine. So I'm not getting a full optimization, but it's simply the easiest fix it and forget it type defrag I've ever used. You can just select some or all of your drives in about 5 seconds click next and away it goes. That's what I've always hated about Norton's SpeedDisk you have to set the start and stop times for each drive. There just isn't an option to have it do them all and stop when it's done (which is of course the most logical feature offering). I've never used Disk Keeper though, I'm sure it's good. Have you ever used SystemSuite APK? It's excellent. I like their tools a lot better than Norton's however I heard that SystemSuite 4.0's Zip feature is loaded with adds for the full Zip-It product, but really I never used that module all that much anyhow . I'm just waiting for SS 5.0 to come out before I start using 4.0. I like stable apps . The reason 5.0 isn't already out is because the title just switched hands from Ontrack to V-Com, both companies make excellent product though. However, it's my opinion that the first version of a program under a new owner is usually sketchy at best .
-Christian

Hi Alec,
Sorry for not replying sooner. I can't remember the exact differences between systemsuite and fix-it tools. I think you get PowerDesk Pro and their file archiving tool with SystemSuite and not with Fix it Tools. I'm still stuck on v3.0, but one of these days I buy an updated version.

As for them being sold off to another company I think they moved to good hands. The company that aquired their assets is named V-COm and they make a multi-boot manager called System Commander it's the oldest and best known of it's breed. Recently they have started making a Partition resizing tool and a backup program. I think they have the right expertise to keep SystemSuite something worth using.

As for Roxio vs Adaptec. Roxio is Adaptec! Adaptec created a solf-contained company called Roxio for whatever reason. I highly doubt any of the coders were changed during that process. It was a name change and not a modifcation of employees or locations AFAIK.

As for what's become of the program I think Easy CD-Creator 5.X is a marked improvement over 4.X, especially where the stability of DirectCD is concerned.

This is in part due to the integrated of Roxio technologies into Windows XP. Microsoft got the best burning technology and Roxio learned how to integrate with windows in a more stable and compatible manner. Any ways you look at this it was good for the users and both companies.

Well Gotta Run.
Cheers,
Christian