Posts by Carl Colijn

Is there any good external HDD encryption software?

And fifth TrueCrypt

Have used Cryptainer LE in the past (free light edition), but switched to TrueCrypt later on; no need for me to look back. Same kind of software, but Cryptainer for one is limited to 25 MB volumes in the free edition.

I also have an external hard drive that I use for backup purposes of my business data. However, since when the time comes for me to actually use the backup my original PC will likely be R.I.P.'ed, so I opted not to format the whole drive but made a file container as large as the drive itself minus the size needed for the TrueCrypt installer and runtime version. This way I can easily access my data on other machines as well. Maybe in hindsight I could have also chosen to set up 2 partitions for this, but hey, this works well enough for me.

Down the Digital River, into the heart of download darkness

DR is obvisouly going down...

To shed another light on this issue: I'm running my own independant software company, and I also employ an e-commerce shop to handle the orders for my software. It's not that I'm lazy or stupid, but for me it really makes sense to offload the order process, credit card transaction details, VAT issues, purchase order and phone/fax purchases etc. This way I end up with more time developing my products, so I'm happy to pay them a percentage of the revenue for it.

That being said, I am also quite disgusted by the latest Digital River tactics. I used to use SWREG and was very happy with them, untill they got bought up by Digital River (like so many other e-commerce shops) and started pushing these scams into my shopping basket. Sure, I could opt out of this crap by parting with a bigger share of my revenue, but then the word got out they added this stuff to the ordering pages of some vendors anyway. WTF? It caused a big riot in the private vendor groups, and that was the moment I left them and searched for an alternative. Which I have found with Avangate by the way; a nice and honest company just the way I like it to be for my customers.

And, as a side-note: my customers can download their software -including license keys- 'till days end from my server for free as well; no 'download insudance' and all. After all: what's the cost for me? The cost would probably even be higher (support-wise) if I didn't offer this. Shows at least some companies do care about the customers and the customer service quality they provide.