15-Minute Reviews :: Elprime Media Recovery v1.5 (Quick)
Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s quick review is on Elprime Media Recovery version 1.5 by Elprime Software – An application to help you attempt to recover files from damaged media.
This is labelled as a quick review because not much has changed between version 1.0 and 1.5 ( Revision List )
Please read my review on Elprime Media Recovery v1.0 for more information as well.
What’s Changed
Apparently very little has changed; For such a large revision jump in my opinion, I was hoping for more to have been changed. Let me list the changes ( Found here )
- New Product Logo
They changed the file icon for the application. I don’t specifically remember what it looked like before, but now it looks like a CD or DVD with one quarter of the circle green.
- New Menu Icon Set
Not sure if they were there before, but they are now. The menu items all have little icons next to them; They all have similar looks to their big brorthers right below them.
- New Licensing Policy
They changed up their licensing now, and actually made it for the most part cheaper. $20 gets you 20 days of usage; $39 gets you an unlimited personal license; And $69 is for a business or commercial license (Including offering recovery services). This is probably the best change to the entire software, and it didn’t do anything to the application itself.
- Affiliate Program
While the product listing does note there is now an affiliate program, I can not find any reference to it anywhere on their website. Looked for quite a bit. Again, another ‘change’ that isn’t really a change to the application itself.
Again, something that doesn’t add to the application itself; However, it does have some helpful information for those who may be stuck or looking for other tips, though I’d be careful with the toothpaste, Brasso, or car wax and making sure you don’t destroy your CD/DVD or your drive.
Expansion
I went through and re-tested some of my issues (I used the same discs as well) and saw no improvements whatsoever. The application still can’t recover audio CD tracks, only its .cda header files. The application still is based on the fact that the file allocation tables have to be intact and the media has to be still mountable to be used. There is no batch functionality yet, requiring a file at a time to be recovered. The application has really not appeared to change much, if all besides its minor cosmetic changes. I would love to see functionality to recover an entire damaged media unit (including fat table) from this application, or even the ability to temporarily recover as much of the file allocation tables as can and run from that for picking your files (Allow for choosing folders, files or the entire drive) and then we will have an awesome application.
Final Verdict
Essentially nothing has changed except some cosmetic work to the interface, new pricing and some filler to make the changelog look longer. I am disappointed that nothing else changed in the months since the initial release mixed with such a large revision jump. Granted, the new lower pricing (Except for businesses and corporate which went to $69) from $55 to as low as $20 is a definite improvement and makes even a quick data recovery task affordable. The price is more in line with what I would have expected from a title such as this one, though the $39 unlimited personal license still seems a tad high. I do worry about upgradability however as well; If this is what you get in a .5 revision increase, what will an entire new version entail and will your license cover the upgrade? I can’t find easily on their site any mention of lifetime upgrades or otherwise.
For more information, I do recommend reading review I performed previously of Version 1.0 here for some of my recommendations for other titles, and check the comments from the previous release on Giveaway here
Posted by BladedThoth on Wednesday, August 15, 2007
