US Fleet Tracking, established in 2005 in Oklahoma City, is one of the oldest and biggest GPS tracking businesses, providing services in over 150 countries around the world.
US Fleet Tracking is a company that provides fleet tracking services and hardware to companies like Academic Pest Control. They take pride in their logistical support at numerous marquee events in the US, including the 2010 Pro Bowl, 2011 NHL All Star Game, and 2010 Winter Olympics. They have also offered their services at every Super Bowl since 2007.
The company specializes in providing precise GPS tracking data through a user-friendly system that is reasonably priced for most people. Its pricing structure makes it suitable for both businesses with large fleets and individuals who want to track their personal vehicles. US Fleet Tracking's operations in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, South America, and Africa make it easier for businesses with a global presence to work with a single fleet tracking provider.
US Fleet Tracking: Pricing
US Fleet Tracking is one of the most popular GPS tracking providers for a number of reasons, including its affordable pricing. The company offers a simple pricing structure with a base plan starting at just $29.95 per device per month for 10-second updates, and a slightly more expensive plan at $39.95 per device per month for 5-second updates.
Both plans are contract-free, and can be canceled at any time. They offer live, real-time location data to keep you up-to-date on the movement of your vehicles/assets, as well as mileage reports, hours of operation, and alerts based on preset geofences. They connect over the cellular network.
Businesses can choose a hardware tracking product from the website to meet their specific needs, in addition to the monthly service fee. The products available range in price from $129 for the AT-V4 Wireless GPS Tracker to $299 for the PT-V3 Pro GPS Tracker, and include the NT-V4 GPS Tracker, AT-V4 GPS Tracker, AT-V4 Pro GPS Tracker, and OBD-V4 GPS Tracker.
In addition to tracking devices, the company also sells a variety of accessories, such as USB cigarette lighter adapters, USB replacement antennas, wiring harnesses, interface cables, cases, and wall chargers. This makes it simple to locate a replacement cable or charger for the tracking device.
Apart from these tracking devices, the company also sells a bunch of accessories like USB cigarette lighter adapters, USF replacement antennas, wiring harnesses, interface cables, cases, wall chargers and more. This makes finding a replacement cable or a charger for the tracking device easy.
US Fleet Tracking: Features
US Fleet Tracking is one of the oldest and most well-known GPS tracking providers. Unlike most other providers, it does not offer fleet management services. This makes it a good option for businesses that are only looking for a vehicle or asset tracking solution and do not need features like scheduling, fuel reports, or periodic inspections.
The company's goal is to provide a truly live tracking solution that is affordable for most businesses and individuals. To keep prices under control, the company offers a basic tracking service.
While the basic features of US Fleet Tracking products include vehicle/asset tracking, most products offer additional features such as speeding alerts, aggressive driving alerts, one-way communication, routing updates, warnings when a vehicle/asset moves out or enters a geofenced area, idling alerts, and a panic button.
The cloud-based tracking software provided by US Fleet Tracking is a simple and effective way for administrators to track vehicles. It is OS independent and can be run on any device connected to the internet. The company also offers native applications for iOS and Android mobile platforms for people who want to track vehicles on the go.
Here are some of the key features and selling points to bear in mind:
Fast updates: US Fleet Tracking offers two plans: a premium plan with 5-second updates and a base plan with 10-second updates. Both plans provide near-live location tracking, so admins can always know where their vehicles are.
Alerts: These GPS tracking devices can send SMS or email alerts when they detect harsh braking, sudden acceleration, or long idle times. They can also alert the admin when a vehicle takes a detour, moves out of a geofenced area, or goes anywhere apart from the route planned for the vehicle. These alerts are generated the moment the device senses an incident, thanks to the tracker's ability to update faster than most.
US Fleet Tracking offers additional ELD compliant hardware to meet the necessary compliance standards, as most GPS tracking devices are not ELD compliant. One such device is the ELD-ECM link, which is sold on the platform and enables the transfer of data from the vehicle's ECM to a desired smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth. This is important because it ensures that companies are in compliance with the ELD mandate, which requires commercial truck drivers to use electronic logging devices to track their hours of service.
Multiple hardware products: US Fleet Tracking service provides a variety of GPS tracking devices for businesses to choose from, allowing them to customize their purchase according to their needs and keep costs down.
Location history: US Fleet Tracking's historical playback feature allows administrators to access up to 90 days of past GPS data for a vehicle. This enables tracking the vehicle's historical movements in the event of an incident.
US Fleet Tracking: Support
The company provides direct email and phone support, available weekdays from 7am to 7pm CST and Saturdays from 9am to 4pm. Businesses that want to deactivate or reactivate tracking services can contact a dedicated helpdesk. A set of video tutorials is also available online to help users understand features like reports, historical view, maintenance, and more. Other self-help content includes a FAQ and product manuals.
US Fleet Tracking: Final verdict
US Fleet Tracking is a reliable GPS provider that is a good fit for businesses that do not need advanced analytics or the features of a fleet management solution. It is reasonably priced and offers the option to customize the package to meet your specific needs.
While BBB (Better Business Bureau) rates US Fleet Tracking as 'A+', the company has no user reviews on the BBB, and is not accredited.
Acronis is a software company with its corporate headquarters in Switzerland and global headquarters in Singapore. It was founded in 2001 as a business unit within SWsoft, a company that developed software for running data centers.
Acronis develops on-premises and cloud-based backup software that also incorporates disaster recovery, cybersecurity, and endpoint protection and management. It maintains 18 offices and over three dozen data centers worldwide staffed by 1,900 employees.
Acronis Cyber Protect: Plans & pricing
There are three pricing plans of Acronis Cyber Protect – Standard, Advanced, and Backup Advanced – differentiated by features. For each plan, you can also add specific extra features at checkout for a fee.
The Standard tier costs $85 per year per licence if you want to protect a single workstation, and prices become cheaper if you purchase three- or five-year licences. It includes standard backup features and advanced security. If you need the Standard tier for Windows Essentials it’s $285, the product costs $595 if you’re protecting a server and it’s $705 for virtual host.
As the name suggests, Backup Advanced flips the script to provide advanced backup but only standard security. It costs $109 for a one-year, one-workstation licence, $175 for Google Workplace or Microsoft 365 licences per seat, $779 for a server licence and $1,019 for virtual host.
The Advanced product, which has top-end backup and security features, costs $129 for a one-year, one-workstation licence, $925 for a server and $1,175 for a virtual host. Again, prices become better value with multi-year licenses, but at this tier there’s no Windows Essentials option.
While all Cyber Protect plans include backup, recovery, cybersecurity and centralized management, you now need to pay extra if you want cloud storage or disaster recovery. For 250GB of space for one year it’ll cost $206, for 1TB it’s $620, and prices rise for multi-year deals.
Disaster Recovery costs $549, and the Acronis onboarding service is $305.
Features
Cyber Protect offers three main features; backup and recovery, security, and endpoint protection management.
You can upload individual files or all the files on a particular device to servers operated by Acronis and retrieve them at any time. Every Acronis Cyber Protect plan includes file-level backup, image-based backup, local, mobile and NAS backup, incremental backups and multi-destination backup – it’s one of the most comprehensive backup products you’ll ever see.
And if you don’t want to pay the extra fees for Acronis’ cloud storage, you’ve got options there too. You can also back up data to public cloud services like Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud.
If you want to back up your data automatically, you can use the continuous data protection feature. The platform lets you define a list of critical apps that you frequently use. Afterwards, Acronis' agent monitors these apps for every change you make and continuously backs it up. Hence, you'd not lose any data from these apps permanently. Elsewhere, there’s backup validation and compression.
When it’s time to recover data, Acronis lets you do it quickly and seamlessly. It stores data in a unified backup format, so you can recover it on any platform, regardless of the source system. To prevent restoring infected files, Acronis scans all files for malware before backing them up and alerts you if it detects any.
Universal restore and bare metal recovery are both supported, and on the Protect Advanced and Backup Advanced products, you get XenServer, KVM, RHV and Oracle VM Server support. Users on those tiers also enjoy one-click recovery and Synology NAS backup.
Acronis provides a tool to monitor your workstation or server in real-time and alert you to anyone it detects. At any time, you can scan your machine for vulnerabilities to ensure all applications are up-to-date and can hardly be exploited by cybercriminals.
Endpoint protection secures endpoints of devices such as desktops, laptops, and mobile phones within a single network from cyber threats. It involves many activities, many of which Cyber Protect lets you do.
All Cyber Protect users benefit from ransomware and crypto-jacking protection and vulnerability assessments. Unless you’re on Backup Advanced you get antivirus and anti-malware protection, exploit prevention, URL filtering, forensic backup and dozens of additional security features.
This platform lets you manage software updates on the Windows operating system to prevent vulnerabilities. You can schedule or manually deploy updates to any app on your device and make sure they’re always up to date. It also employs fail-safe patching, so you can restore a previous version if an update causes issues.
You can also manage devices remotely with Cyber Protect. For example, you can wipe data remotely to prevent disgruntled employees or rogue users from stealing them. Likewise, if employees work from home, you can assist remotely and conveniently.
There’s no doubt that Acronis Cyber Protect is one of the most powerful and comprehensive backup and protection tools on the market today. That makes it an ideal option for any business that wants to take backup seriously, and it’s especially useful for larger enterprises with more complex needs and security requirements.
That said, home and small business users won’t need this level of backup and protection and won’t need to spend so much to protect their data.
Interface & use
Experienced system administrators and network managers won’t be phased by Cyber Protect’s interface – there are loads of options here, but it’s pretty easy to understand after a little bit of time familiarising yourself with the layout.
Main options, like monitoring, devices, management and protection, are found in a nested menu on the left-hand side of the window, with those options loading into the center of the screen for adjustment. Need to go further? Easy – click something and a menu unfurls from the right-hand side of the display.
And because it’s a web-based interface, you can log in and manage your devices, backups and protection from any browser.
Happily, the smart interface is bolstered by truly sensational speed. We tested our latest slate of backup apps with a 42GB document folder, a 2.5GB spreadsheet folder, a 162GB folder of media and an 82GB file that mixes all of those file types. We backed them up to three different SSDs to weed out any inconsistency.
In our latest suite of tests, we’ve evaluated nearly twenty apps, and Acronis Cyber Protect was consistently the fastest.
In every file test it averaged under three minutes – something no other app managed so consistently. Its Spreadsheet average of 1 minute 25 seconds was its best performance, and its second-best result came in our Mixed text, which bodes well for protecting varied workloads.
Support
Thankfully, this business-critical app has plenty of support options. Documentation is easy to find, the knowledge base is packed with articles, and there’s a forum and even the option for professionals to benefit from training and certification.
If you need to get in touch, users can submit a ticket, start an instant chat for faster help, or phone the company. And as Acronis Cyber Protect is a high-level enterprise product, a range of managed services are available if your IT team needs some extra expertise. It’s a very comprehensive offering.
Competition
Many alternative products provide similar features to Cyber Protect. For example, you can get backup/restore through Veeam and endpoint protection through Malwarebytes.
However, we think Cyber Protect has the upper hand, as it packs multiple features into one bundle with enterprise-level features, protection and management. It’s not cheap, but it’s a top-tier bit of software.
Verdict
There’s no denying that Acronis Cyber Protect is expensive, then, especially if you need to pay to add any level of cloud storage.
But there’s also no denying that this is one of the best options if you need fast, enterprise-level backup and protection. It’s absolutely packed with options, web management means access from anywhere, and it’s the fastest app we’ve tested.
It’s never going to be the cheapest option, but it’s arguably the best for larger businesses. You get what you pay for.
Verizon Connect is a leading telematics provider that offers a comprehensive range of fleet management solutions. The company has a global presence with over 24 offices in cities around the world, including the city of San Jose and Costco.
Verizon Connect is a conglomerate of three companies: Fleetmatics, Verizon NetworkFleet, and Telogis. Each of these companies was a leader in its own category and region before joining Verizon Connect. Fleetmatics focused on small and medium-sized businesses, while Telogis served large enterprises.
Verizon Connect is now a large entity able to offer almost any fleet tracking and telematics solution that clients need. With key features like an advanced Fleet Management System (FMS), Field Service Management, and more, Verizon Connect can provide solutions to a variety of companies of different sizes. However, businesses with larger fleets stand to gain the most from Verizon Connect, as it collects a large amount of data that can be used to provide detailed insights.
The company offers a variety of vehicle tracking devices, from plug-and-play models to more advanced hardware and software solutions. These solutions are tailored to the specific needs of businesses and can help both field employees and office staff.
Verizon Connect: Plans and pricing
Like many other software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers, Verizon Connect does not disclose pricing information on its website. Instead, you must contact the company through a portal that asks a series of questions to assess your needs, and the company will contact you with a quote. While Verizon Connect does not provide specific details on its plans, it does offer a wide range of products and services that can be tailored to businesses of all sizes.
According to online reviews from customers who use or have used Verizon Connect's services, the company requires a 3-year contract, which is longer than most other companies in the same industry. This is beneficial for large organizations that do not want to change vendors frequently, but mid-sized and smaller companies are often more cost conscious and prefer shorter contracts.
In addition, the pricing of Verizon Connect's products will be directly proportional to the solution a company is looking for, as well as the specific software and hardware required, since the company offers a variety of products. Verizon Connect offers a free demo of its software, allowing you to assess exactly what add-ons or features are helpful for your business needs.
Verizon Connect: Features
Verizon Connect is a smart fleet management and optimization solution that provides clients with data and insights to seamlessly manage their vehicles and workforce across multiple aspects, including efficiency, safety, productivity, and compliance.
Unlike some other fleet management companies, Verizon Connect’s software refreshes its data every 30 seconds, providing the most up-to-date vehicle location information to the company using the system.
Some of the key services offered by Verizon Connect include:
Fleet tracking
Hardware
Compliance management
Asset tracking
Field servicing and scheduling
Marketplace for ready to implement solutions
The software provides a variety of reports, including fuel efficiency, vehicle maintenance, safety management, driver scorecards, and more. These reports allow businesses to monitor fuel expenses and vehicle performance and to provide coaching, feedback, and training to drivers as needed. Drivers frequently follow their own preferred routes; therefore, coaching them improves not only fuel efficiency but also overall delivery time and customer experience.
Verizon Connect also offers another interesting feature: maintenance alerts. These allow businesses to schedule maintenance cycles and ensure that their vehicles are in good working order.
Key features include:
Routing: Verizon Connect makes life easier for administrators by providing an automatic routing option. This feature automatically identifies the shortest route between two locations. It can also plan an optimized route that takes into account all deliveries and orders for the day, saving time and effort for both the backend team and drivers.
Dedicated apps: Verizon Connect has apps for Android and iOS phones; the dashboard is cloud based, so it can be used on any device. The apps are designed from the ground up and optimized for different screen sizes, such as phones and tablets. When we looked into the iOS Verizon Connect app, be aware that it has received only 2.7 stars based on just six reviews.
Electronic Logging Device (ELD) compliance: It provides ELD-compliant solutions that can save drivers from manually tracking their Hours of Service (HoS), prevent log errors, and most importantly reduce the risk of policy violations.
Alerts: The software issues real-time alerts for predefined safety events. Administrators can be notified as soon as a vehicle enters or exits a geofenced area and when sudden acceleration or braking occurs, among other things. It is also quite useful for managing various assets.
Dashboard: The company is proud to be one of the only solution providers that integrate data from all possible sources, such as vehicles, workers, and assets. This allows clients to manage all of their field operations in a single, cloud-based platform. The intuitive dashboard has separate segments for different teams or departments, allowing them to stay up-to-date on the latest developments and trends.
Verizon Connect is one of the largest fleet management companies, but it has a grade of F from the Better Business Bureau. Based on reviews on TrustPilot and among the 143 complaints closed in the last 3 years from the Better Business Bureau, the most common complaints are a lack of clear communication, customer support issues, and software problems.
Verizon Connect: Support
Verizon Connect doesn’t really specify the support options. There is a toll-free phone number listed, with hours of operation on weekdays at 7:30AM to 5PM EST, but it does not indicate if this is for sales, support, or both.
We also did not find any self-help support information on the Verizon Connect website, but there is an automated chatbot on the main screen. However, when we went through the questions and indicated that we could use information on support, we did not receive the information we asked for, nor did we get a connection to a live person that could provide some help; we only got a response saying “Thank you for completing the survey.”.
Verizon Connect: Final verdict
Verizon Connect is one of the leading providers of fleet management solutions, offering a wide range of features and benefits to its customers. While there is room for improvement with its customer service and support, it is still a choice to be considered for businesses that require a comprehensive end-to-end solution, as it offers global coverage.
NexTraq is a top telematics solutions provider based in Atlanta, USA. It is a Michelin group company and provides services such as fleet tracking, a job scheduling board, automatic driver assignment, routing, and real-time alerts. The company has been in operation for 19 years and offers its services to a wide range of industries, including construction and heavy equipment, food and beverage, manufacturing, transportation, oil, gas and mining, agriculture, distribution, government and public safety, and many more.
NexTraq: Plans and pricing
Unlike most fleet tracking services, NexTraq does not list pricing details on its website. Instead, businesses must contact the company directly for a quote. NexTraq is suitable for businesses of all sizes, as there is no limit on the number of vehicles that can be included in a contract. The company can be contacted by phone, through a chatbot, or by filling out a contact form on its website.
NexTraq's key selling point is that it offers free installation and does not charge an activation fee. Many people are not experienced in installing hardware on vehicles and machinery, so having a professional set up the tracking system is a highly desirable perk.
NexTraq, like most other companies, offers a three-year contract. The hardware cost is paid upfront, while the monthly payment is primarily a software license fee.
NexTraq: Features
NexTraq is a cloud-based fleet management solution provider that offers a cost-effective way to manage and track moving assets, while also helping businesses optimize their resources for maximum output. To meet industry standards and stay compliant with government regulations, NexTraq offers ELD, HoS, DVIR, and FMCSA compliant solutions.
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NexTraq's system is powered by Google Maps, which means it can provide precise location and terrain information to meet business needs. Its software refreshes every 30 seconds, providing admins with real-time vehicle location details.
The software is easy to use and allows users to track vehicles, as well as a variety of other features that help businesses stay informed. Geofencing, two-way communication, and other options are available, and the system can generate a variety of reports that keep administrators up-to-date on driver performance.
The following features make NexTraq’s software extremely useful:
Cloud-based solution: NexTraq provides a cloud-based solution that can be accessed from any mobile device, laptop, computer, or tablet, regardless of the operating system. This gives users the flexibility to monitor their fleet from anywhere, even on the go.
Third-party integration: NexTraq's software integrates with the most widely used back-office systems, allowing businesses to seamlessly manage their operations and monitor vehicles using a single integrated system.
Route optimization: NexTraq's data and insights can be used to create and manage fuel-efficient optimized routes for fleets.
Fuel efficiency: NexTraq's fuel cards are very helpful in tracking, managing, and monitoring fuel consumption for each vehicle. This helps to reduce fuel waste and inefficiency, and to coach drivers to follow better fuelling habits.
NexTraq also has a native mobile app for both Android and iOS devices. Drivers can use the app to log their daily attendance, record start times, break times, and finish times. On the back-end, the app can be used to generate various reports, such as individual or team attendance reports, or to compare historical data.
NexTraq is unlike other fleet management companies in that it has a strong focus on safety features. It provides a detailed comparative report based on driver performance, which can be used to reward top performers and provide necessary coaching to those who are lagging behind.
The company offers a suite of features ensuring driver safety and accountability. These include:
NexTraq Dashcam: This provides HD video evidence that makes it simple to show driver accountability in situations involving disputed claims, disputes, negligent driving, insurance fraud, staged accidents, and more. Encouragement of safe driving practices is also beneficial to lower insurance costs.
NexTraq MobileBlock: This feature makes sure that the driver's smart gadgets, such as phones or tablets, are locked while they are in motion. This keeps the driver's attention on the road rather than on playing games, sending texts, or checking email.
NexTraq Driver Training: Drivers may be provided training based on their performance reports in order to break poor driving habits like speeding or texting while driving, and to encourage defensive driving and fuel-efficient driving. Such training not only aids drivers in enhancing their performance but also aids the company in resource optimization.
NexTraq Driver Safety Scorecard: Detailed reporting on driving habits, fuel efficiency, and other topics can hold drivers responsible for their actions. These comparison scorecards show the drivers who require tutoring on various difficulties and help identify the drivers who are performing well, who can then be recognized for their performance.
NexTraq Driver Awareness: Drivers can adhere to business policies while driving thanks to this tool. Every time the vehicle is involved in an event, such as a harsh acceleration or aggressive braking, an automated beep cautions the driver to drive carefully.
NexTraq: Support
Customers can reach out to NexTraq via multiple mediums. The company offers telephone support six days a week via a dedicated helpline with available hours from 7:30am to 6pm EST, and hours from 8am to 3pm on Saturdays. The support team can also be reached via email.
While there is limited training material available online on NexTraq’s website that includes a FAQ, whitepapers and a blog, its YouTube channel offers some resources. The company has explainer videos that can help first time users and drivers while on the go, but the most recent videos are from 2 years ago.
NexTraq has been rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau. However, it has some feedback on the site related to price increases during the 3 year contract, and then users complaining about the cancellation fees under those circumstances. On balance, it does appear that these issues when escalated to the BBB were all resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.
NexTraq: Final verdict
NexTraq is a solid choice for GPS fleet tracking services due to its focus on safety, lack of minimum vehicle requirements, free installation, and lifetime hardware warranty.
Choosing the best data recovery software can help you recover lost files and data from computers, portable hard drives, USB sticks, and more. In our Recuva review, we’ve looked closely at this popular file recovery program to determine whether it’s worth using. It’s competitively priced and comes with a fast, efficient data scanner.
Recuva: Plans and pricing
If the name 'Recuva' is unfamiliar too, it's a creation of the developers of CCleaner, an extremely useful utility for clearing out junk file and generally maintaining the health of your PC.
A free version of Piriform Recuva is available for personal users and those wanting to test the software.
For commercial use, you will need to upgrade to a paid license, which starts at $24.95 per computer per year. For just $5 more you can also receive a license for CCleaner Professional for Windows, macOS and Android as well as Speccy Professional hardware monitor.
Piriform Recuva doesn’t use a tiered pricing structure, so all users have access to all features. The software comes with quick and deep scan options, and it works with memory cards, iOS devices, and virtual drives, among others. Unfortunately, though, it’s only available for download on Windows PCs.
Recuva: Features
Piriform Recuva was designed to be fast and efficient, reducing business downtime when recovery is needed. While the basic free version can only recover files, the Pro version can not only take a snapshot of your recovered files but also create a virtual disk image to prevent future data loss.
On top of this, Recuva Pro is compatible with data recovery from virtual hard drives (VHDs). And, it even enables you to create and restore to a new virtual hard drive.
Unsurprisingly from the makers of Ccleaner, Recuva can also securely overwrite tool to ensure sensitive or confidential files are truly deleted forever. To do this, you need to wait until a scan is complete, then check or highlight a file or group files. Next, all you have to do is right click and choose "Securely Overwrite Highlighted" or "Securely Overwrite Checked" as appropriate.
Recuva: Client and client setup
Downloading and installing the Recuva client takes no more than a few minutes and requires no technical knowledge. Simply click the download link and follow the prompts. No special setup is required before starting a scan.
Upon first launch you'll see a helpful wizard. First it will ask you which types of files you wish to recover. You can choose "All Files" or just a specific type like "Music".
Next you're asked to specify a file location such as the Recyle Bin. There's even an "I'm not sure" option in case you can't recall where the deleted files were. You can then click "Start" to begin your search.
If you choose to skip the wizard, the Recuva user interface is just as simple and effective. It includes a drop-down menu for drive selection, a button to start a new scan, and an options popup. In the options menu, you will be able to select your language and specify the layout of the client.
Different scanning options can also be chosen, including deep scanning and scanning for non-deleted files.
From looking over Recuva's documentation, it seems the "Deep Scan" feature scans drives on a sector by sector basis. While you may have more joy recovering files with it than a simple scan (as we did during our tests), the documentation states it can't recover filenames.
Recuva: How we tested
For our data recovery tests we used a virtual machine with a clean install of Windows 11. The only third-party tools installed besides Recuva were VLC Media Player and GIMP.
Data files
The files we chose for recovery are an album of Mozart's Music available from the Internet Archive.
We did this as we wanted to see how the utility performed with a wide variety of files.The album included 4 music files (2 in Mp3 and 2 in FLAC) format, 6 JPG image files of album covers (with thumbnails) and 2 PNG image files. The files also included 2 XML files, a torrent file and an 'SQLite' file containing details of the album. There were 25 files in total.
We copied the files in the music album to a 512MB virtual NTFS-formatted hard drive, which was then attached to the Windows 11 virtual machine.
Data tests
The tests were performed one after the other on three separate virtual drives:
1. File deletion: the album files were simply deleted from the drive and the Recycle Bin emptied. No other data was copied to the drive. We then tried to recover the files.
2. Delete & format: The files were deleted as outlined above and we also performed a 'Quick Format' using the 'Disk Management' utility built into Windows 11. We then tried to recover the files from the formatted partition.
3. Recover corrupted files: We used the freeware program 'Victoria' to overwrite the volume header of the drive containing the files with zeroes. The drive didn't mount automatically in File Explorer and showed as being unpartitioned in Windows "Disk Management" utility. We then checked if the utility could see it and if so, recover the files.
We do not believe that running data recovery tools in a virtual environment has a significant effect on how they function. Still, if you're considering buying software we encourage you to read all reviews thoroughly and make sure that the developer offers a refund policy.
Recuva: Performance
To gauge Piriform Recuva’s performance, we completed both a standard and a deep scan on our three chosen virtual drives.
First we tested to see if the utility could recover files that had simply been deleted and the Recyle Bin emptied. The results were great.
All 25 of the original files were found and listed. Recuva listed their status as "Excellent" and when we copied them to a folder on the main hard drive found that they all opened without issue.
We weren't quite as successful with the drive where the files had been deleted and then "quick" formatted to NTFS. A simple scan had no results, so we followed Recuva's suggestion to do a 'deep' one.
This time, 19 of the 25 files were recovered : all of the image files and the two MP3 music files. The remaining two audio files in FLAC format, the 2 XML files and the torrent file weren't recovered. As the documentation warned, the image filenames were missing but the names were intact for the two working audio files.
For our final test we simulated the drive with a corrupted header volume. Recuva was unable to see the drive or the 'damaged' partition, so no recovery could take place.
All the scans took less than 3 seconds to complete on the 512MB drives. On average, it used around 10% CPU and 600MB of RAM. This is impressive and suggests that you shouldn’t have any problems running Recuva alongside other programs.
Recuva warns that a deep scan can take hours, but if its footprint is so small, we could comfortably run it in the background while working on other tasks.
Recuva: Efficiency
We were very happy with the results of our Recuva test. Alongside the test files we deleted intentionally, we ran a scan on the main hard drive partitions and found thousands of objects in under a minute. These included a wide range of file types, among them images, text files, and cached web data.
Additionally, the vast majority of files retrieved were fully recovered. A small percentage of older files had been overwritten or were in poor condition, but that’s to be expected. If you know what sort of file you’re looking for, you can also specify this before commencing your search for a faster, more effective file recovery scan.
In cases where you're working with many different files, Recuva has a handy preview mode which can show thumbnail images, as well as file info and headers.
One of our favorite features, is that at the end of each scan Recuva will display a summary of exactly how many files have been recovered and the time it took. We were slightly less impressed to see that the developers also take this opportunity to push you to upgrade to the paid version of the software to benefit from the premium features.
Recuva: Support
Recuva users can contact customer support directly by submitting an email ticket. Those with a paid subscription have access to priority support and most issues are sorted quickly.
There are also four different self-help resources. The FAQ section contains answers to popular questions, both about Recuva and data recovery in general. For instance, the website states (correctly) that it's much easier to recover data from NTFS file systems than FAT.
They also acknowledge that even if a file's been deleted, the preview and header information may still be visible. Luckily this is easy to spot using Recuva's "Advanced" mode.
The technical documentation pages also provide a detailed overview of the software. Our only complaint was that when we clicked "support" on the main CCleaner website, the only products listed were their flagship ones. We had to scroll down to find Recuva.
More specific questions can be asked in the active community forum and an impressive selection of short video tutorials is also available. There's also a dedicated troubleshooting section for people having difficulty registering their copy of Recuva Professional.
Recuva: The competition
Recuva is good, but there are similar applications that could be better suited to your needs.
For example, if you’re looking for a simple data recovery program for occasional use, the Ashampoo Undeleter costs just $14.99 for life. It doesn’t come with any advanced tools, but it does the job.
Meanwhile, Recover My Files has similar features to Recuva. It costs from $69.95 for a lifetime license and is suited to those with high-spec computers and regular data restoration needs.
Recuva: Final verdict
Ultimately, Piriform Recuva is up there with the best data recovery programs we’ve tested. The free version is great for those who want to test the software before purchasing, and annual subscriptions are very competitively priced. In our tests it had no trouble recovering every single file that had been deleted intact. It also recovered most of the files from a formatted drive.
What’s more, Recuva is backed by powerful features, including a deep scan tool, secure file overwriter, and formatted drive scanning. And although its client interface isn’t the most attractive we’ve seen, it is simple and effective.
Scans are fast and thorough, and the program runs comfortably in the background.
The only real letdown was the fact that it couldn't detect the drive with the corrupted volume header. Most data recovery utilities with free tiers can not only do this but offer features to try to rebuild broken headers and/or partition tables.
Still, Recuva is a perfectly reasonable choice if you’re looking for a reliable data recovery solution, provided the drive can still be mounted in Windows. While we're on the subject, it would also be good if Recuva could enjoy the same cross-platform support of CCleaner, which is available for Windows, macOS and Android.
Remote desktop tools are the best option if you need to use a computer without being physically present. Different software offer different features, so it’s important to find the best remote desktop software for your business.
Microsoft Remote Desktop is one of the most commonly used remote desktop applications, and it provides strong features for both personal and business contexts. In our Microsoft Remote Desktop review, we’ll examine the software’s pros and cons and see how it compares to other remote desktop solutions.
Microsoft Remote Desktop: Plans and pricing
Microsoft Remote Desktop is compatible with all versions of Windows 8, 10, and 11. However, only Windows Pro and Enterprise users can set up their computers to be accessed remotely. In other words, any computer running Windows 8, 10, or 11, including the Home edition, can be used to access another device, but the device being accessed needs to be running the Pro or Enterprise version of Windows.
Windows Pro costs $200 and up. If you’re running Home and want to upgrade to Pro for remote desktop access, go to Update and Security and then Activation from the settings menu. Home to Pro upgrades are currently $99.
Microsoft Remote Desktop: Features and utilities
Users can access remote devices from a computer or by downloading the mobile app on iOS or Android. Either way, Microsoft Remote Desktop provides a seamless experience that’s almost as good as having the computer in front of you.
If you’re using a mobile device, the app includes separate keys for modifiers like control, alt, and option. This enables you to perform keyboard shortcuts as if you were physically using the computer.
Similarly, Microsoft Remote Desktop gives users access to files stored on the remote computer, making it easy to print or share documents from any location. You can also set your desktop to stay awake when not in use to prepare for a remote connection. Your admin can publish resources for remote access, including virtual desktops, session-based desktops, and RemoteApp programs.
Microsoft Remote Desktop: Setup
To set up a connection in Microsoft Remote Desktop, click Add, then enter the computer’s name and your user account. Keep in mind that the host computer also needs to be configured to accept remote connections. This option is available in System Settings under Remote Desktop.
The Settings app also contains an option to allow remote desktop connections from other user accounts. These need to be approved in advance to create a remote connection later on. You should also write down the name of the host computer, which you can find under “How to connect to this PC.”
Microsoft Remote Desktop: Interface and performance
The Remote Desktop app runs well and comes with a sleek interface. Unfortunately, local users are logged out while using Remote Desktop, so we didn’t have a way to test the lag between devices.
After opening the application, you’ll be able to add a new connection or adjust settings. The simple and clear interface makes it easy to understand how to set up remote desktop connections.
Performance was excellent throughout our tests, with videos and other types of dynamic content displaying well on the remote device. Of course, results may vary depending on your internet connection and the kind of work you’re doing.
Microsoft Remote Desktop: Security
As in other areas of the app, Microsoft provides powerful security tools without making them obvious. You can create a secure environment for Microsoft Remote Desktop in a few simple steps.
For example, the Local Security Policy app includes an option to limit remote access to certain groups. It’s easy to mandate manual whitelisting for each new connection—just click Local Policies, then User Rights Assignment, and finally Allow Log On through Remote Desktop Services. From there, you can add individual users in Settings under Remote Desktop.
Current versions of Microsoft Remote Desktop come with network level authentication, which automatically verifies users through the network before connecting them to the device.
Microsoft Remote Desktop: Support
The Microsoft website contains help articles covering a variety of topics, including several on Remote Desktop. If you don’t find the information you need, you can also search the support forum or create a new post. The community is extremely active, so you shouldn’t have any trouble getting help.
Alternatively, the Get Help app is the best way to get one-on-one support in Windows 10. Help is provided by Windows Advisors. There aren’t any listed support hours, and response times can be unpredictable—we waited for more than ten minutes before closing the chat window to receive an email reply.
Microsoft Remote Desktop: Pros and Cons
Microsoft Remote Desktop is a service that enables users to connect to and control a computer from another device over a network connection. It is part of Microsoft's suite of services and allows users to access the desktop, files, and applications of a Windows PC from another Windows device and from iOS, Mac, or Android platforms. This profoundly impacts productivity and collaboration, especially in an increasingly mobile workforce.
One significant advantage of Remote Desktop is its integration with Windows operating systems. This provides users with a consistent and reliable experience, especially when connecting between Windows devices.
Microsoft Remote Desktop is built into most versions of Windows, making it a cost-effective option for individuals and businesses. For basic remote desktop purposes, there is no need to spend extra on third-party software.
Security is a priority for Microsoft; remote desktop connections are encrypted, and users can implement network-level authentication (NLA) to provide an additional layer of security before establishing a connection.
Businesses that utilize Windows Virtual Desktop can benefit from Microsoft Remote Desktop's multisession capabilities, which allow multiple users to access a single Windows server simultaneously.
Microsoft Remote Desktop has one major limitation—it is only available for Windows Professional and Server editions. Users with Windows Home editions cannot receive remote desktop connections, which may be problematic for some people.
Setting up a Remote Desktop can be difficult for those lacking technical expertise. It involves configuring network settings and permissions, which can be challenging for less tech-savvy users.
The performance of the remote desktop largely depends on the quality of the network connection. Slow or unstable connections can result in laggy performance and inconsistent user experiences, affecting productivity.
While it is effective for remote connections, Microsoft Remote Desktop lacks some advanced features in third-party solutions, such as robust file transfer, remote printing, and collaboration tools, which may vary depending on the version used.
Microsoft Remote Desktop: Final verdict
Microsoft Remote Desktop can be complex, as there are two distinct Windows apps and additional options in Settings and Local Security Policy. Nonetheless, it delivers remote solid desktop performance on Windows 10.
Moreover, it offers helpful features such as seamless access to remote files, function keys on mobile devices, and access to remote resources like virtual and session-based desktops. Overall, Microsoft Remote Desktop is a convenient and robust solution for accessing a desktop remotely.
For businesses operating within a Windows-centric framework, Microsoft Remote Desktop provides a straightforward solution for remote access. It is beautiful for companies using existing infrastructure without investing in additional remote desktop software. Its secure connection and multisession features make it suitable for various business scenarios.
However, platform compatibility limitations, setup complexity, and a basic feature set may lead power users to seek more advanced third-party solutions. Before deciding whether to rely on Microsoft Remote Desktop, businesses should assess their specific needs, the technical abilities of their workforce, and the level of support needed to maintain productive remote sessions. Trial and evaluation can offer valuable insights into whether Microsoft’s solution aligns with organizational remote access and support requirements.
The competition
Microsoft Remote Desktop offers essential advantages compared to Chrome Remote Desktop, one of the most popular free remote desktop applications. For example, Chrome Remote Desktop doesn’t support file transfers between devices, and the mobile app is limited to the standard smartphone keyboard.
Conversely, certain paid solutions include critical features for some business contexts. TeamViewer provides comprehensive reporting, integration with CRM and helpdesk systems, and a dedicated Management Console that enables administrators to manage connections throughout their organization. Team licenses cost $199 per month, while Multi-User and Single-User Licenses are $99 and $49, respectively.
The world of work has seen a fundamental shift towards remote and hybrid work models, making remote desktop solutions more crucial than ever. Whether you are an IT professional managing a corporate network or a small business owner looking to support a remote team, the right remote desktop software can make all the difference in performance, security, and productivity. Here’s what to consider when selecting a remote desktop solution for your needs.
Security
Security should be your top priority. A good remote desktop solution should offer strong encryption for data in transit and at rest. Look for features such as TLS/SSL encryption, multi-factor authentication, and the ability to set robust password policies. The software should also comply with industry standards and regulations relevant to your business, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS.
Ease of Use
The best remote desktop software is the one that everyone in your organization can use without extensive training. Look for intuitive interfaces and straightforward setup processes. Quick connectivity and the ability to save frequently accessed connections can also enhance user experience. Ensure that the solution provides robust support and tutorials to help users navigate any issues they might encounter.
Performance and Reliability
In remote access, performance is measured by how seamlessly and quickly you can control a distant computer. High-quality remote desktop solutions offer optimized speed and screen refresh rates, even on slower internet connections. They should also provide reliability, guaranteeing connection stability and offering redundancy to minimize downtime.
Cross-Platform Support
In today’s diverse technological landscape, it’s essential that remote desktop software supports a wide range of operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Linux, and mobile OSes like iOS and Android. This ensures all team members can access the network, no matter what device they are using.
Customization and Scalability
Your remote desktop solution should grow with you. Look for customizable features that can be tailored to your specific needs and the scalability to support an increasing number of users and machines. This could include session recording, file transfer capabilities, and the integration of branding elements for businesses.
Cost-effectiveness
Evaluate the cost relative to the features and benefits provided. Many solutions offer tiered pricing plans based on the number of users, the level of support, and additional features. While it might be tempting to choose a free or low-cost option, ensure it meets all your needs without compromising on security and functionality. Consider investment in quality software as saving money in the long term through enhanced productivity and reduced downtime.
Customer Support and Resources
Good customer support can significantly impact your experience with remote desktop software. Look for providers that offer 24/7 support through multiple channels, such as phone, email, and live chat. Additionally, a comprehensive knowledge base, community forums, and how-to guides are invaluable resources for troubleshooting and learning.
Choosing the right remote desktop solution is a critical decision that impacts the efficiency, security, and productivity of your team. By focusing on the aspects mentioned above, you can select a robust, reliable tool that supports your business needs while ensuring a seamless remote working experience. Remember, investing time in researching and selecting the best solution pays off in the long run, contributing to the success and growth of your business.
Wise Data Recovery is one of the best options you’ll find anywhere if you want to recover data, photos, and files without paying for any extra software, and its abilities are turbo-charged when you upgrade to the pro version.
That sounds great on paper, especially for people who don’t want to spend any cash, but the free photo and data recovery software market are busy and packed with top contenders – so any successful app needs to have an intuitive design alongside a broad range of features.
This software enables you to restore deleted files for free, and can also help recover your files after hard drive damage or reformatting. While this review focuses on the Windows version, there's also Wise Data Recovery for Mac. It's compatible with M1, M2 & T2 chip-enabled Macs but the free version only allows you to recover up to 1GB of data rather than the more generous quota for Windows versions (see below)
So, is this the right data recovery tool for you? Our Wise Data Recovery review will help you decide.
Wise Data Recovery: Plans & pricing
The free version of Wise Data Recovery is one of the most generous free photo recovery options you’ll find anywhere. Its 2GB recovery limit is better than most no-cost rivals, and you can use the free download on an infinite number of systems and with no time restrictions.
During our tests we noticed that the utility played extremely fair with us, measuring this 2GB limit only on files we actually chose to recover.
Impressively, Wise Data Recovery keeps its feature set virtually identical across all product tiers, so if you decide to pay for the product you’ll get benefits in other areas.
The more affordable of the two paid options costs $40 (approx. £32 / $60 AUD), and it includes a one-year license for one system.
If you want to spend an extra $10 (approx. £8 / $15 AUD), you’ll be able to register the software across three different PCs. Those are good prices – lower than many of Wise Data Recovery’s contemporaries.
If you buy either of those paid options you can access premium, faster technical support services and automatic updates for the length of your license alongside unlimited file recovery capacity.
Sadly, no enterprise options are easily visible on the site, so you’ll have to talk to Wise directly if you want to deploy this software across your organization.
Wise Data Recovery: Features
The number one reason to choose Wise Data Recovery for file recovery is its adaptability. The software is able to recover thousands of file types, including almost every common type of document, image, and video file. It can also save email files, zip folder archives, and executables from permanent deletion.
Windows users also won’t have to worry about compatibility with multiple file systems on partitioned hard drives. Wise Data Recovery for Windows works with FAT, NTFS, HFS, HFS+, HFSX, Ext2, and Ext3 file systems. Mac users may run into more trouble, though, since the software doesn’t support exFAT file systems.
When we previously reviewed Wise Data Recovery in October 2022, it offered two scanning options: Quick Scan and Deep Scan. Quick Scan Was extremely fast and was generally used to recover recently deleted files. Deep Scan, on the other hand, took significantly longer and is more suited to recovering files from formatted or damaged drives.
From checking the online documentation, deep scan is still advertised as a feature for Wise Data Recovery - both the free and Pro versions. However during our tests we didn't see any "deep scan" option and the instructions to activate it didn't match the version of the software we seemed to be using.
Naturally whether a scan is "quick" or "deep", what really matters is whether your lost data's recovered but if the scan features have changed, we felt there should be more information on the "Wise Cleaner" website.
Wise Data Recovery: Client & client setup
Setting up Wise Data Recovery for hard drive data recovery is fast and simple. Just download and install the software on a clean hard drive, and it’s ready to run.
If your computer’s boot drive is damaged, you can install the software to a USB flash drive on a working computer and move it to the damaged computer. The "Portable Apps" website even has a handy USB-installable version of the utility.
The software’s user interface is modern and easy to navigate. It will automatically recognize all connected hard drives. Once you select a drive, the scan begins automatically. Discovered files are displayed in a familiar table format. You can sort results by size or file format, or use the keyword search tool to find specific files.
Wise Data Recovery does have a "preview" feature for files like images but during our tests, we found that it was only able to display a part of the file. We were told to click "Recover" to copy the files to another location to see them in full.
Wise Data Recovery: How we tested
For our data recovery tests we used a virtual machine with a clean install of Windows 11. The only third-party tools installed besides Wise Data Recovery were VLC Media Player and GIMP.
Data files
The files we chose for recovery are an album of Mozart's Music available from the Internet Archive.
We did this as we wanted to see how the utility performed with a wide variety of files.The album included 4 music files (2 in Mp3 and 2 in FLAC) format, 6 JPG image files of album covers (with thumbnails) and 4 PNG image files. The files also included 2 XML files, a torrent file and an 'SQLite' file containing details of the album. There were 25 files in total.
We copied the files in the music album to a 512MB virtual NTFS-formatted hard drive, which was then attached to the Windows 11 virtual machine.
Data tests
The tests were performed one after the other on three separate virtual drives:
File deletion: the album files were simply deleted from the drive and the Recycle Bin emptied. No other data was copied to the drive. We then tried to recover the files.
Delete & format: The files were deleted as outlined above and we also performed a 'Quick Format' using the 'Disk Management' utility built into Windows 11. We then tried to recover the files from the formatted partition.
Recover corrupted files: We used the freeware program 'Victoria' to overwrite the volume header of the drive containing the files with zeroes. The drive didn't mount automatically in File Explorer and showed as being unpartitioned in Windows "Disk Management" utility. We then checked if the utility could see it and if so, recover the files.
We do not believe that running data recovery tools in a virtual environment has a significant effect on how they function. Still, if you're considering buying software we encourage you to read all reviews thoroughly and make sure that the developer offers a refund policy.
Wise Data Recovery: Performance
Wise Data Recovery is relatively fast and does an impressive job at recovering files.
In our original test we used an undamaged 107 GB SSD. The Quick Scan finished in about 18 seconds, while a Deep Scan took about 7.5 minutes. The utility's "Deep Scan" feature did turn up a folder of multimedia files and TIF images that had previously been deleted from the recycling bin, but were not wiped from the drive.
We did something similar for the first of our most recent tests with a 512MB virtual external drive where the files had simply been deleted from the Recycle Bin.
The drive appeared immediately inside the utility and the scan lasted less than 3 seconds. A total of 38 files were found. When we recovered these to another drive we found all 25 files intact with their filenames. The remaining files were duplicates of these or system files.
Wise Data Recovery didn't do quite so well on the drive that had been formatted after the files were deleted. In that case only 13 of the 25 files were recovered. These included all 4 of the audio files, all 4 of the PNG image files and a JPG thumbnail. The remaining 4 were system files. With the exception of the thumbnail, the utility was also able to recover the filenames.
The corrupted drive wasn't visible in file explorer but Wise Data Recovery showed it as a "Lost Drive" almost immediately upon launch. When we selected it, it took less than 10 seconds to find 49 files. The 'Preview' function told us that we could only see them partially, so we copied the files to another disk.
All 25 of the original files were present and correct, with their filenames. We opened each individually and found non were corrupted. The remaining files were duplicates of the originals or system files.
Wise Data Recovery: Efficiency
What we found most impressive about Wise Data Recovery was the fact that the software kept a minimal footprint even when performing a Deep Scan.
During our original tests, the software never used more than 20% of our computer’s processing power, and memory usage peaked at around 450 MB. Our most recent tests were on a much smaller drive but even when we tried scanning a 185GB drive we had similar results, with an active scan taking up just 253 MB of RAM.
That’s a big plus, since it ensures you can run this software even on computers that are having widespread memory and drive damage issues.
In previous reviews, we lamented the fact that scans only showed a blue bar. There was no "estimated time remaining". Fortunately the most recent version of Wise Data Recovery clearly shows the percentage of a scan progress along with the ETA to completion.
Wise Data Recovery: Photo recovery
Wise Data Recovery has an impressive core of photo restoration features. As one of the best photo recovery apps, it can restore more than 1,000 types of files, which instantly lifts this app above many of its rivals – and when it comes to photography, that means you can hunt down common formats like JPG and PNG alongside pro-level files like RAW, CR2 and SWF. That means this app is a worthwhile option for hobbyists, home users, and professionals who need more power and versatility.
Beyond photography, this app can recover every common video format, documents, audio files, email archives and compressed folders, so it’ll find photos even if they’re not stored using conventional formats.
The versatility doesn’t stop there. Wise’s software can recover data and photos from conventional devices like hard disks, SSDs, USB drives and external storage, but it also works with memory cards and digital cameras – another area that will handle professional needs.
It has a portable version too, so it’s ideal for file recovery on different PCs or crashed systems. Bear in mind, though, that the portable version can’t boot directly into a recovery environment, so any stricken system must be mounted from another device in order for this to work.
Wise Data Recovery is easy to use. Load the app, select a drive or device to scan, and the software will get to work. It’s one of the quickest photo recovery apps you can use today, and it does a good job with results – it displays files in clear categories so you can easily see the types of files you’ve found.
Users can restore photos while the scan is ongoing, and batch recovery is also possible. The app supports file previews, although as we said you can often only see a partial preview until the full system or device scan is completed. The search function is fast, and filtering by file type, size or modification date is similarly rapid.
Beyond this impressive speed you’ll find a clean interface and support for Windows and MacOS file systems, albeit with less generous free data recovery allowances if you want to use the version designed for macOS.
The app also has some notable omissions: you can’t scan specific folders – only entire drives or devices.
Other admittedly pricier tools include photo and video repair, more support options and compatibility with a broader range of devices, so it’s worth considering those apps if you need mission-critical software for professional photo recovery situations.
Wise Data Recovery: Support
Support for Wise Data Recovery is available by email. This is why we were pleased to see that there are now some extra support features.
The basic user manual is available online or via a PDF. You can access this from within the utility. There's also a link to the support forum.
You can now also click on "Feedback & Suggestions" to open the support center. Although this doesn't connect you to a live chat. It does allow you to select "function abnormal" or "other issues" to flag any problems. Clear instructions are given on what information to provide, such as screenshots.
The support team is available 24/7, but how long it takes to get a response depends on whether you use the free software or pay for a Pro subscription. Free users may wait up to three days, while Pro users can expect a response within 24 hours.
Unfortunately, there’s not much documentation for Wise Data Recovery online. The website includes a brief FAQs section, but it doesn’t go into any detail about troubleshooting the software.
Wise Data Recovery: The competition
Wise Data Recovery can recover files from damaged or formatted hard drives, but there’s no Deep Scan available and not much additional information if you run into difficulties.
If you feel comfortable without having your hand held, you could consider using the free and open source TestDisk and PhotoRec file recovery utilities. These were able to recover all files during our tests, though the interface is quite basic. You can use the graphical QPhotoRec tool if you don't feel comfortable with the command line.
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Pro offers alternative data recovery software that includes more options for trying to recover deeply buried data from a formatted hard drive. While it’s more expensive than Wise Data Recovery Pro for a one-month or one-year subscription, EaseUS offers a lifetime subscription for $149.95.
Wise Data Recovery: Final verdict
Wise Data Recovery is a good choice for file recovery if your main goal is to save recently deleted files. It works with almost every common file type and Windows file system, although Mac users may have issues since exFAT file systems aren’t supported. Wise Data Recovery is simple to use, although that simplicity may be frustrating if you’re not able to find the files you want to recover.
We’re used to testing data and photo recovery tools that offer free versions without the power or versatility of their paid upgrades, but that’s not the case with Wise Data Recovery. Download the free app and you’ll get access to all of the features that are offered with the paid upgrades – you’re limited elsewhere, like in file restoration capacity and access to upgrades.
Wise Data Recovery is impressive in use, too. This app is fast and intuitive, does a good job of recovering lost files, and displays its findings in a straightforward manner. It’s got a portable version and it works with every kind of file format and device you’ll likely encounter when you’re restoring photos in mainstream situations.
During our tests we saw that it was able to recover all the files, with filenames intact from a drive where they'd been deleted and even from a drive with a corrupted volume header. It only fell down on a drive that had been formatted, where only a small number of files had been recovered but of those that were, they opened without issue and almost all had their original filenames.
We feel this is more than balanced out though by the very generous 2GB free data recovery allowance for Windows users. This means you can try the software without obligation to see if it can recover files, even from a formatted drive.
Indeed, there aren’t many big issues here – some apps have better previews, others support an even broader array of devices, and some companies offer more support and extra granularity.
None of those issues are dealbreakers, though, and Wise Data Recovery remains a great option if you want a free or affordable app for photo restoration. You’ll only want to hunt out alternative software if you need specialist settings and abilities.
Wise Data Recovery can recover files from damaged or formatted hard drives, but there’s only one level of Deep Scan available and not much additional information. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Pro offers alternative data recovery software that includes more options for trying to recover deeply buried data from a formatted hard drive. While it’s more expensive than Wise Data Recovery Pro for a one-month or one-year subscription, EaseUS offers a lifetime subscription for $149.95.
Degoo is a cloud storage service designed for consumers, focusing mainly on photos and videos. It uses artificial intelligence to highlight your best shots. While it only has a web app for desktop, its Android and iOS apps are the primary tools for using Degoo Cloud. It also has apps available in Samsung and Huawei app stores. Although it's not packed with features, it's worth considering if you need a place to store your photos.
You don't get any kind of desktop client or scheduled computer backups with Degoo Cloud, just the web app as far as Windows and macOS goes – so this is by no means a comprehensive business backup solution. You need to upload files manually if you're working on a computer, though Degoo can take files of any type. A limit of 256MB per file applies on free accounts (down from 512MB previously), though this is upped to 50GB per file for monthly subscribers.
It's with the mobile apps that Degoo really starts to shine: here you can upload files automatically (from your camera roll, for example), as well as documents and audio files if needed. Photos can be automatically uploaded for free, but you'll need to pay a subscription fee to auto-upload other files (such as videos).
There's even a photo storage maximizer tool here, so lower-res versions of your pictures are stored on your phone or tablet to save space, while the full-res versions are kept safely in the cloud (again, this is only for paying members). On the web, you get some basic photo editing tools to play around with, but they feel like more of an afterthought in Degoo – maybe don't cancel that Photoshop subscription just yet.
Music and videos can be streamed from the internet rather than being downloaded, if needed, so you can create a sort of personal Netflix or Spotify for yourself if there's enough space in your Degoo account. In terms of playback and sharing options though, the service is a little on the limited side.
It’s best to think of Degoo primarily as a photo gallery backup service, that in many scenarios will run happily in the background with little input from you. This makes it the perfect companion app for users who like to take photos on their devices with the reassurance of regular backups - ideal for holidays, then. It doesn’t offer quite the same smooth inter-device experience as iCloud Drive does with its Photos app, which is best thought of as an Apple-only product across the macOS, iOS and iPadOS lines.
Degoo Cloud interface
Degoo Cloud is obviously aiming for intuitive, easy navigation when it comes to the interface of its apps: big text, cartoon images, chunky on-screen elements, and so on. It's not the most sophisticated set of interfaces we've ever seen, but finding your way around is straightforward enough.
You only get simple options for uploading and filtering files, but to be fair that's all that a lot of users are going to want – Degoo Cloud might be right for you if you're looking for something that's as accessible as possible and that requires the minimum of effort to use. If your cloud storage needs are more complex, you might have to look elsewhere.
Degoo's attempts to pick out the highlights of our photo roll were a bit hit and miss, so we can't say that's something you can particularly rely on – but then again we'd rather choose our own highlights rather than have an AI engine pick them out anyway. It’s a similar story with other automatic highlight-pickers, like the ‘Days’ view in iCloud Drive’s Photos. However, if you're in a rush and just want to see some best picks, it can be helpful.
Upload and download speeds were mostly fine, though we noticed occasionally sluggishness – more so with the mobile apps than with the desktop interface. On average, a 1GB test file took a little over nine minutes to process and upload, which is fairly average though can be beaten by the likes of iCloud Drive, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, all of which reside natively inside their respective operating systems, working smoothly in the background. The same file took just over one minute to download, which is about as good as it gets.
On the mobile side, you can set uploads to only happen when you're connected to Wi-Fi in order to preserve mobile data, but it lacks the finesse and control that a more powerful desktop client would have, such as bandwidth throttling.
Degoo Cloud security
One interesting security feature Degoo Cloud offers is what it calls zero knowledge storage: supercharged end-to-end encryption, so not even Degoo employees can access your files, and data spread out across multiple servers for extra redundancy. It's something that Degoo seems to take very seriously, and is another point in its favour, though this particular feature is another of those only available to paying members.
Across all tiers you get very decent 256-bit AES encryption that is applied to data in transit and at rest in the storage facility - and on that note, users’ data is stored across various sites for optimal security. The service also offers two-factor authentication (2FA) as long as you use a Google account to sign in – we'd prefer it if Degoo had its own 2FA solution in place, but support through Google is better than nothing.
Part of the way that free accounts are kept free is that they contain ads. These are removed for paying customers, however free subscribers can choose to allow personal ads - or not.
Degoo Cloud pricing
Degoo offers a free, ad-supported option for users who want to try out the service or don't need a lot of cloud storage. This option provides 20GB of storage that can be used across three devices. Users must log in at least once a year to keep their free account active.
For those interested in a more comprehensive plan, they can upgrade to 500GB of space for $2.99 per month, or opt for 10TB of space for $9.99. Upgrading to a paid plan removes ads, allows for backup from more devices (10 for the 500GB plan and unlimited for the 10TB plan), and adds encryption.
Regardless of whether the account is free or paid, users can increase their storage by referring friends. Each friend who signs up gives an additional 10GB of storage on paid plans (or 5GB on the free plan), up to a maximum of 100 friends.
Degoo Cloud testing
We conducted three important tests on the Degoo web interface to evaluate sync speed, file recovery, and versioning. These tests were carried out on a Windows 11 virtual machine using the Degoo web client. The virtual machine was connected to the internet through fiber broadband and a VPN server. In our speed tests, we achieved an average upload speed of 850 Mbps.
Test 1: Sync speed
During our testing, we copied a 589 MB folder into the application directory and measured the time it took for the desktop client to synchronize the files with the cloud. The folder contained 228 files spread across nine folders, including MP3s, images in PNG and JPEG formats, metadata files, and a PDF.
Although we received a warning that Degoo would not upload files exceeding 250MB on a free plan, we could create a backup copy of our folder in just under 50 seconds. It's incredible that it only took 50 seconds.
Test 2: File recovery
In our next test, we wanted to see if we could restore files that we had previously deleted. To do this, we selected the file mentioned above on the Degoo web interface and clicked “Delete.” Immediately, the file was removed and sent to the Deleted Files area of Degoo. This means the files remained on the Degoo server. To restore, we simply clicked “Restore,” and the folder returned to its original state on Degoo.
We permanently deleted the folder to end the test.
Test 3: Versioning
During our final test, we attempted to upload a Microsoft Word file to Degoo to see if we could view a revision after uploading a newer version of the same file. Unfortunately, we encountered an issue. Unexpectedly, we received a message stating, "Premium required to use Degoo on desktop." Interestingly, we could use a different browser on another computer to continue the test.
Ultimately, we could not view different versions of the same file on Degoo, which was disappointing.
Degoo Cloud verdict
Consider Degoo Cloud for what it offers—a mobile-focused, consumer-friendly, photo-centric archive tool. It's a well-developed solution, especially if you're willing to invest in a monthly subscription. You'll access extra features like zero-knowledge encryption and more comprehensive auto-upload options by paying for a subscription. However, if 100GB of storage is sufficient for your needs, the free version should work well for most basic users.
Degoo faces a challenge because Apple and Google already provide excellent photo and video cloud storage solutions, and their apps are readily available when setting up a new phone. However, if you're seeking an alternative that prioritizes security and is independent of major tech companies, Degoo Cloud is worth considering.
If you’re looking for the best video conferencing software, BlueJeans has no shortage of features that help it stand out, such as high definition video and crystal-clear Dolby Vision sound, encrypted conference calls, and advanced user management, which will appeal to professionals and business owners alike. Find out if BlueJeans video conferencing software is right for your business by reading our full review below.
BlueJeans: Plans and pricing
BlueJeans charges a fee for each host—someone who can organize and lead meetings and invite attendees—like the majority of video conferencing providers. Given that no meetings can be held without hosts, you'll want to secure enough hosts for your organization. The good news is that BlueJeans never puts a time limit on your meetings; conference calls can last for as long as needed.
On the starter end is the Basic plan, which comes in at free. The standout feature is that there is no time limit on the length of the meeting, unlike other competing free tiers. It has Dolby Voice for clear audio, and can be used to host up to 25 participants.
The Pro plan costs $13.99/host/month and comes with unlimited meetings of up to 150 participants and 25 hours of video recording per month. Enterprise plans cost $16.66/host/month and support up to 300 participants, with unlimited hours of recording, advanced call analytics, and live transcriptions. Both plans can be paid annually to benefit from a 20% discount, making this a good deal.
Tailor-made plans can be had with flexible licensing, brand customization and advanced support at custom prices for organizations.
Finally, you can try out the software with a risk-free14 day trial, before making any commitments.
BlueJeans: Features and utilities
BlueJeans is compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS/iPadOS and can be accessed through any major browser. There are a number of standout features in the software that will appeal to business owners and professionals. A meeting recording can be broken down into chapters, with highlights of segments, task assignments, and smart follow-ups.
In addition to meetings having no time limit, hosts can divide participants into 20 breakout sessions if needed, allowing them to collaborate on subtasks. You can share your screen with ease, annotate with whiteboard features, and even grant remote desktop access to an assignee -- great for smooth presentations. For even greater privacy and distraction-free meetings, we did miss out on the ability to blur backgrounds.
Advanced user management features are available to administrators, who can also enable or disable features on a group or company-wide basis.
BlueJeans: Setup
Our 12.9" iPad Pro and 16" MacBook Pro both had no trouble installing BlueJeans. You only need to download the program and log in to start using it. We were up and running on both devices in less than 2 minutes. It will take a little longer to add users, assign groups, and manage permissions on the admin side of things, but we thought the admin interface was quite user-friendly and appreciated all the starting-out tips and tutorials.
BlueJeans: Interface and performance
The BlueJeans UI is incredibly user-friendly and intuitive, in our opinion. It was simple to schedule and begin meetings, and we appreciated the click-to-copy tool for sharing your meeting's ID. Recording, participant management, chat, whiteboarding, screen sharing, and other "apps" were all bundled together and easy to discover. The Low Data and Commute modes on the iPadOS were quite enjoyable in use.
We were pleased to note that BlueJeans utilized just approximately 25% of the CPU on our 2.6 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7 and just a little RAM. However, we would have gladly given up a few more system resources for higher latency because it is longer than some competitors' video and audio delays, which are about 1.5 seconds. The 720p visual quality is excellent and matches what most competitors offer, and the built-in Dolby Vision technology ensures that sound is clearly audible.
BlueJeans: Security
In order to keep your meetings and data secure, BlueJeans boasts excellent security and offers a number of client-side and on-server measures. Calls can still be AES-128 encrypted even though end-to-end encryption is not supported (which is normal for conferencing software and relates to the technological difficulties involved in encrypting video for numerous participants). Additionally, administrators can mandate that users connect through channels that support encryption.
Additionally, administrators have complete control over meetings and can add a passcode, remove or muffle attendees, enforce specific user password policies, and enable or disable features like session recording and remote desktop control.
Overall, we found BlueJeans’ security plenty sufficient for a variety of business settings and, just as important, simple to understand.
BlueJeans: Support
First off, BlueJeans has a rich knowledge base and FAQ, plus lots of tutorials and live training videos to get you started, understand features, and set admin preferences appropriately for your business. On top of this, BlueJeans’ phone support and online chat are both available 24 hours a day, seven days per week—that’s a big advantage for businesses, who may need quick support at any time.
BlueJeans: The competition
Businesses now have more options as suppliers expand to satisfy rising demand for video conferencing solutions.
GoToMeeting is another great business-oriented suite. Starting at a slightly lower price point of $12/host/month, it has an intuitive interface and, in exchange for a slightly heavier use of system resources, a smoother audiovisual experience. If your conferences tend to include lots of active conversation, this may be a better option.
Alternatively, for those with conference needs that are relatively light, with short, infrequent meetings, Zoom’s free plan is a surprisingly feature-rich solution. It supports an unlimited number of meetings with up to 100 participants for up to 40 minutes which may be sufficient. Upgrading to the Zoom Pro plan allows for unlimited time on the meetings, adds polls and recording capability, but at a cost of $14.99/host/month.
BlueJeans: Final verdict
BlueJeans provides various useful business capabilities, including video recording, meeting highlights with task assignment, and up to 20 breakout sessions for collaborating on subtasks. The program was designed with security in mind, and administrators will like the extensive control they have over participants and features.
While the image and sound quality are excellent, we found the lag to be slightly longer than that of some other video conferencing solutions. Try the free tier, or sign up for a free 14-day trial, and test out the program on your own network to check whether the latency meets your needs. If favorable, then take advantage of BlueJeans' business-oriented features, including excellent security, and ease of use.
In this Splashtop review, we’ve analyzed some of the best remote desktop software available. Splashtop offers a range of remote access solutions, from business IT managers to support teams and personal users.
Additionally, Splashtop easily enables users to connect numerous devices with different operating systems. Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and more are supported, and robust security features back all versions. Finally, its worldwide server infrastructure and reliable network mean you can be confident in its long-term performance.
Splashtop: Plans and pricing
Splashtop offers various pricing plans to suit different needs. The exact cost will depend on the specific plan and features you require. For remote access, prices start at $5 per month for the "Solo" version, while the "Pro" version costs $8.25 per month for each user. The "Business Performance" package costs $13 per month per user.
For Splashtop's remote service product, packages start at $17 monthly.
Prices are subject to change, so it's always best to check the official Splashtop website for the most accurate and up-to-date pricing information.
Splashtop: Features and utilities
Splashtop provides highly targeted remote access solutions that come with their own specific features. However, there are a few global features that are worth mentioning. These include a simple interface and the ability to remotely access a client’s computer without them having to install any software.
At the same time, Splashtop enables you to access and manage unattended computers from any device with its intuitive app. You can connect numerous unattended computers to ensure you always have access to important information.
Splashtop also comes with a selection of additional features that vary according to the plan you’re using. For example, all subscriptions come with file transfer tools. Session recording is available where applicable, and support packages include a built-in chat module.
Splashtop: Setup
New users can trial Splashtop’s software for seven days without providing payment information. Getting started involves signing up for a new account, providing a few personal details, and installing the required apps on the devices you plan to use.
Once you’ve created your account, you will be guided through a straightforward setup process, which will vary according to the plan you use. We trialed the Remote Support plan, which involved installing the Splashtop app on the device we wanted to connect from. A streamer package then needed to be downloaded onto the devices we wanted to access. This done, the devices could be connected at the click of a button.
Splashtop: Interface and performance
We tested Splashtop by connecting to a Windows computer from an Android smartphone. Overall, the user interface is simple and intuitive, but don’t expect any fancy features.You can screen share and access different devices remotely, and both the desktop and smartphone apps are attractive and work well. It’s important to note that your exact user interface will depend on the subscription you’re using. Different devices also use slightly different interfaces, as to be expected.
Overall, Splashtop performs well. We tested it with an approximately 50 Mbps internet connection and in general, the software was fast and responsive. At times, there was a small lag (less than one second) with the screen share features, but mouse tracking and clicks registered almost instantaneously. The file transfer feature was also fast and efficient.
Splashtop: Security
Splashtop’s software is backed by a selection of powerful security integrations. For example, its cloud services are hosted on Amazon Web Services, a platform secured by firewalls, encryption, DDoS protection, and more. Similarly, intrusion detection and defense mechanisms are in place to provide an extra layer of protection.
All devices used with Splashtop must be authenticated and two-factor protection is available. All data transfers are backed by 256-bit AES encryption and TLS. Technicians can also remotely blank the screen of a connected device, securing sensitive information.
Splashtop: Support
Splashtop provides online ticket submission and chat support for all users. Staff are friendly and knowledgeable, but wait times can be lengthy. Fortunately, you will also have access to a large, beginner-friendly knowledge base containing a wealth of information. Guides and how-to articles are cleverly categorized by category and the built-in search engine works well. A community forum is also available for more complex questions.
Splashtop: Pros and cons
Below, we delve into Splashtop and weigh its significant advantages and potential drawbacks.
Pros of Splashtop
1 Ease of Use: Splashtop's intuitive interface makes it easy to set up and start using, even for non-tech-savvy users.
2 Cross-platform Support: Splashtop supports many monitoring systems, ensuring users can access their desktops from nearly any device.
3 High Performance: Splashtop boasts high-speed connections with low latency, offering a smooth and responsive experience comparable to sitting in front of a computer.
4 Security: Splashtop provides robust security features, such as TLS and 256-bit AES encryption, two-factor authentication, and device authentication, keeping connections secure from unauthorized access.
5 Cost-Effective: Unlike other remote desktop solutions, Splashtop offers competitive pricing, especially for individuals and small businesses, making it an affordable option without sacrificing quality.
6 File Transfer: Users can quickly transfer files between devices, increasing productivity and eliminating the need to rely on cloud storage to access essential documents remotely.
7 Remote Printing: Splashtop lets users print documents from a remote computer to the nearest local printer, facilitating work processes.
Cons of Splashtop
1 Internet Dependence: Like all remote access tools, a stable, high-speed internet connection is crucial for a seamless experience. Any connectivity issues can impede performance.
2 Subscription Model: Some users may prefer to purchase software one-time, but Splashtop operates on a subscription model, which might increase the long-term costs of continuous use.
3 Mobile Experience: Though Splashtop is available on mobile devices, controlling a desktop from a small screen can be challenging and may not suit all tasks.
4 Resource Usage: Running remote access software can be resource-intensive on the host computer, potentially slowing down other operations if the system is not adequately powerful.
Splashtop: Final verdict
Overall, Splashtop is a powerful remote desktop connection manager with highly targeted plans and strong security. New users can benefit from a seven-day trial with the software package of their choice, but payments are only available on an annual basis.
Splashtop is a great choice for those with limited tech experience. It’s easy to set up, and the user interface is responsive and beginner-friendly. The software also includes excellent extra features, strong security at all levels, and a detailed knowledge base.
In conclusion, Splashtop stands out as a formidable remote desktop solution due to its ease of use, high performance, and strong security features. It's an excellent tool for those looking to increase their productivity and maintain access to their digital workspaces from anywhere. However, users must consider the importance of a stable internet connection, the limitations of free versions, and the subscription cost when choosing Splashtop as their remote access solution.
Whether for business use or personal convenience, Splashtop provides a compelling service that meets the needs of a broad user base. However, it’s essential to weigh these pros and cons to decide if it's the right tool for you.
The competition
Although Splashtop is a great remote desktop access and screen sharing tool, there are numerous competitors that should be considered. For example, TeamViewer offers a huge selection of additional management tools such as a built-in meeting tab and IoT device control—but it is a little expensive. Meanwhile, Remote Access for Windows is a great free alternative, but it can only be used with Windows devices.
In today's digital age, remote desktop solutions have become a cornerstone of business operations, enabling employees to access their work environment anywhere in the world. This technology supports the growing remote work trend and ensures that organizations can maintain their productivity levels, irrespective of their physical location. But with many options available, how do you choose the right one for your needs? Here are some key aspects to consider when searching for a remote desktop solution.
Seamless Connectivity and Accessibility—The foremost attribute of an efficient remote desktop solution is its ability to provide smooth, easy-to-establish connections. It should empower users to access their desktops and applications with minimal effort and without the need for extensive technical knowledge. The solution must be compatible across various devices and operating systems to ensure all team members can stay connected regardless of their preferred gadgets.
Security Features - With cyber threats at an all-time high, security has never been more critical. A suitable remote desktop tool should offer robust security measures, including end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, and regular security updates to protect against vulnerabilities. The ability to set granular access controls and monitor user activity can further enhance the security of sensitive organizational data.
Performance and Reliability - The effectiveness of a remote desktop solution also hinges on its performance. It should provide a smooth, lag-free experience, closely mimicking the feel of working directly on the host computer. High reliability, with minimal downtime and quick recovery options, ensures that work can proceed uninterrupted, thus maintaining high productivity levels.
Support and Scalability—As businesses grow, their needs evolve. A scalable remote desktop solution that allows for easy addition of new users and resources can be a valuable asset. Equally important is responsive customer support. A provider that offers prompt, efficient help when issues arise can save precious time and resources.
Cost-Effectiveness - While it's crucial not to sacrifice— essential features, the cost is a significant factor for most organizations. The ideal solution would offer a transparent pricing model that scales with your needs, ensuring you only pay for what you use. Evaluate not just the initial costs but also long-term expenses, including updates and support.
User Experience—Last but not least, the user experience cannot be overlooked. A user-friendly interface, minimal latency, and the ability to personalize settings can make a big difference in daily operations. The solution must have intuitive controls that don't steep the learning curve for new users.
Choosing the right remote desktop solution involves carefully balancing performance, security, ease of use, and cost. As businesses continue to evolve, the ability to work remotely efficiently will become even more critical. Evaluating your options based on these criteria can go a long way in ensuring that your choice meets your current needs and is a viable long-term solution as your organization grows. In this selection process, insights from current users and expert reviews can also provide valuable perspectives, helping to narrow down the choices to the solution best suited to your unique requirements.